The entry in the family Bible gave Mary Polly Duweese as the wife of Michael Edward Stanton of Dublin, Ireland.
I always assumed she came from Ireland with him.
Wrong!
The DeWeeses have been in this country since the 17th century.
The second paper mill in America was run by the husband of a Willemyntie Dewees.
Valley Forge was on the land of a Colonel William Dewees.
Apparently all Deweeses in America can be traced back to about 1570 in Holland.
One of the Holland Deweeses was Adrien - he owned a bookstore in Beverwijk, near Amsterdam and was a friend and patron of (dealer for) Rembrandt.
There is a possibility that they were French Huguenots before that.
Ain’t genealogy grand.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a complete paper trail connecting Mary Polly to the rest of them. We know she is connected, but the documents aren’t there. Her mother died not long after she was born, the children were farmed out to other families, her father remarried . . . .
And there was a courthouse fire, which destroyed the records we need. Sigh.
So this is what we’ve got.
Very little of this could have been done without of Jack Vaughan, the official Deweese Genealogist. He made the connections between the different generations, then I scurried around and found as many documents as I could. I could never have sorted out all the Deweeses without his help - the generations overlap amazingly, and the same names appear over and over again.
Narrative
Early Deweeses
Adriaen 1594-1674 - Holland
Hendrick 1615-1661 - Holland -> New Amsterdam
Gerritt - Zytian Lieuwes 1640 - ~1700 - Holland -> New Amsterdam -> Germantown, PA
their children
Cornelius - Margaret Kuster
their children
Garrett - Mary Unknown
Henry - Elizabeth Hughes
their children
John - Elizabeth Sams
their children
Henry - Amelia Hudson
their children
Absalom - Elizabeth Sams - Mary Ann Armer
Children of Absalom and Elizabeth
Children of Absalom and Mary Ann
Mary Polly - Michael Stanton
their children: John, Alice Belle, Michael jr, Rufus, Flora, Clarence, Pearl
Information arranged geographically
Pennsylvania
Virginia
North Carolina
Kentucky - mostly census index info - often without the page number (at the time, I was just looking for where people were located). Also some marriage and cemetery listings.
Kentucky counties with extra information: Ballard, Butler, Hickman, Logan
Illinois
Indiana
extra information in Warrick County
Tennessee
Military Information
Revolutionary War info
Absalom’s Civil War file
Families connected with the Deweeses
Harper
Sams - John Deweese married Elizabeth Sams; Absalom Deweese married Elizabeth Sams
Hudson - Henry Deweese married Amelia Hudson
Stanton - Mary Polly Deweese married Michael Stanton