Looking for Ancestor Samuel Wiggins

Hi, My name is Jeanette and I am a volunteer with IrelandXO .

I saw some of your many posts searching for a birth or christening record in order to access entry into DAR.

Records of Births as well as Christening records for certain time periods can be extremely problematic in locating if they have managed to survive at all due to a variety of events, such as natural disasters, wars, religious troubles and governmental changes.

However, my understanding, a forebear gaining entry does not depend on obtaining a Birth/Christening record from the 1700?s. Rather, proof of ?service? as well as proof of direct lineage to yourself is what is necessary. ?Service? definition is not just limited to actual military enrollment and includes provisioners, guides, transportation, aid, etc? in the struggle for independence according to DAR.

The following link can help guide you in establishing your lineage.

http://www.learnwebskills.com/patriot/documentingthelineage.htm

Also by contacting your local DAR chapter, there is available a person who will make suggestions on where to search for the documentation, as they are in the field of historical preservation of such data and have gained in-depth knowledge of the various changes for the time period.

I have several forebears who are DAR registered which show an approximation of some DOB data. As the British, German, Dutch, Spanish, French, etc?governments created records, as well as the fledgling U.S., (in local churches, meeting houses and local governmental bodies), records may or may not have stayed stateside after the revolution.

Searching for this data however, has required delving in-depth into local histories under a variety of names for the physical area, as many carried multiple names for the same town at the same time. For example, the Wheeling West Virginia area was known as Fort Fincastle, Fort Henry, Pennsylvania Colony, Virginia Colony, Vandalia Colony as well as another half dozen or so names. Documents for certain early time periods that apply to Wheeling, can only be found in Pennsylvania today though, due to political machinations during said time period.

 Although I did not see a specific area in Pennsylvania for the family you are tracing, I would expect this above scenario to be also applicable given the history of Pennsylvania.  Looking at old maps is an excellent way of tracking down a forebear as the name changes for the areas will guide your efforts.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_land_claims_and_cessions_1782-1802.png  You can see in the attached image that a large portion of Pennsylvania was actually claimed by Connecticut and did not actually belong to Pennsylvania until 1786. Part of Pennsylvania was also claimed by Virginia at the same time as well.

I would caution however, as basis for your ?lineage linkage?, that each item retrieved from online or printed genealogies be proved with hard data, be it supporting histories of the areas and events combined with written biographical histories for those areas or actual birth/church/marriage/taxes/land records.

Many times online data that is carried over from one source to another has not been proven and is speculative theory at best. Proving the data only serves to make ?our theory? stand strong.

Hope this all helps,  Jeanette