Back to the Books

 

While source documents are vitally important as we push our way back in time to more distant ancestors, I keep comparing notes with those trailblazing genealogy books. Since we discussed my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandfather William Ijams yesterday, I thought I'd hop over to the pages of Harry Wright Newman's 1933 book, Anne Arundel Gentry to see what else could be found in addition to the 1734 will of William Ijams we already reviewed.

Sure enough, the names we saw included in William's will lined up exactly with those mentioned by author Harry Wright Newman. The book included a few more details about William Iiams' children, which will also need to be verified. No descendants were missing, though, to my relief.

Noted also were the names of this William's parents: William and Elizabeth Cheyney Iiams—or Eyams, as Newman put the spelling in his introductory comments to that section of the family's chapter. Newman portrayed this earliest William as "the Pioneer," though he also mentioned that any arrival record for the founding settler William had not yet been found.

Newman's best guess is that William Eyams—or Iiams, or Ijams—arrived in colonial Maryland by 1665, not long before his marriage to Elizabeth Cheyney before 1670. The author also noted that this earliest William drew up his will in 1698, but that it wasn't probated until November 10, 1703, in court in Anne Arundel County.

Having that date handy now, let's pop back to the digitized court records for that time period to double check which names William mentioned before his passing in July of 1703.