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Cyberspace Odyssey (January 11, 2025) - The latest updates to the Newhouse Family Webpages include: • Our family tree database keeps growing, and as of January 11, 2025, it contains the names of 26,070 individuals, all connected by blood or marriage. You can see the details of various family trees that have been updated and posted in PDF format at our family web site. The latest versions of these PDF trees contain updates to Newhouse, Getchell/Gatchell, Bowker, Berry, Hatch, Dieffenbach/Defenbaugh, Patrick Reed, Alexander, Thomas, McClelland, Hess, Strack, and Rex ancestors, among others drawn from our family tree database. The most recent family tree updates include updated family tree reports for Getchell descendants, and Getchell and Bowker ancestors. And for Newhouse ancestors and Hess ancestors. Significant additions were made to the family tree database to accommodate the ancestral line going directly back to Robert Treat (1622/24 - 1710) who was a founder of Newark, New Jersey, a military hero and an early governor of colonial Connecticut. He is credited with leading the Connecticut troops that turned the tide in the "Great Swamp Fight" against King Philip in 1675 in the King Philip's War. Other renowned direct descendents of Robert Treat include Thomes Edison, Jodie Foster, and Thomas J. Watson, among others, all of whom are distant cousins on our family tree. I have found additional direct connections to other New England ancestors by reviewing the work of Walter Goodwin Davis, a reowned genealogist who documented many common ancestors who lived in Massachusetts and Maine. And the database includes lineage connections to many different Presidents of the United States who have a common heritage, mostly back in the New England area. I have gone through the book entitled "Ancestors of American Presidents". On the Getchell side, the family lineage connects directly to common ancestors with 12 presidents! Meaning that all these 12 presidents are distant cousins. These Presidential cousins include Gerald Ford, George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, James Garfield, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, Calvin Coolidge, Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft, Franklin Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon. This business gets even more intriguing. When making these updates to the genealogy database with specifics such as birth, death and marriage dates for the Getchell connections to the Bush presidents, I surprisingly noticed that the Bushes also descend from a Susan Alexander and John Shannon, who lived in central PA in the middle 1700s. Susan Alexander and John Shannon were already in the family database on the Newhouse ancestral side. The father of Susan Alexander is Jacob Alexander, and Jacob and her brother William Alexander are Newhouse ancestors via several maternal links, specifically via a McClelland ancestor who married an Alexander. This makes Jacob Alexander a common ancestor between the Newhouse family and the Bush Presidents. To be precise, it means that George H. W. Bush is a 7th cousin, and George W. Bush is an 8th cousin to Marty, Eric and Ben, and to their Newhouse 1st cousins. As a result, there are ancestral linkages to three presidents via the Newhouse side of the family. James Polk is the other one. He is a 4th cousin six times removed. He is connected through Newhouse ancestral connections to the Thomas family, which came from Virginia and moved to Ohio. The Polk line supposedly goes back to Fulbert the Saxon, an ancestor and illustrious warrior for William the Conqueror of England. For his deeds in battle, Fulbert was awarded extensive lands in Scotland. • On March 28th, 2012, we added the transcript of the biography of another ancester Colonel Samuel S. Spangler. Sam was a very early settler of Fairfield County, Ohio, and he became deeply involved in the early affairs and politics of that area as it became established. • Thanks to DNA tests conducted by Family Tree DNA on samples provided by various living Newhouse cousins, there is strong DNA evidence that our Newhouse ancestry is directly connected to a papermaker named Anthony Newhouse, who lived in Germantown, near Philadelphia, in the 1740s and 1750s. This Anthony Newhouse provided paper supplies for Benjamin Franklin's printing press. This same DNA evidence, along with other documented evidence, casts doubt on the 1914 claim by John Richey Newhouse that our Newhouse ancestry goes back to the Revolutionary seaman named Anthony Newhouse, who died in service with the Virginia State Navy in 1780. Newhouse Origins in America discusses this evidence and the most likely possibilities as to who our original Newhouse immigrants might have been. • The family tree updates include genealogy stories and connections, including the Great Corwin Burglary of Salem, Massachusetts; family connections to the royal British family through the late Princess Diana, and finally absolute proof on the direct relationship between the original New England Gatchell immigrants and the Gatchell Quakers of Pennsylvania. • Evidence exists that our ancestor Amiziah Reed was a scout with the 7th cavalry just before "Custer's Last Stand" at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876? Also see Amiziah's genealogy. • We've added a photo ancestry of the Cassani Family. This page contains an album of pictures of Carmen Cassani and both her ancestors and descendants. • Check out pictures of our Strack ancestors. • Review the transcribed will of John Newhouse of 1754, as well as his estate's probate record of 1756. • Palatine ancestors among Pennsylania "invaders" in the 1720s. • The Kobel Massacre.
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