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SKILLMANS of AMERICA (aka SOA) Hosted by: William Alfred Skillman - My Home page 719 Maiden Choice Lane, Apartment BR630, Catonsville, MD 21228Seventh Great Grandson of Thomas SkillmanApril 8, 2012 |
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HOME - OVERVIEW The purpose of this site is to be a resource for genealogical research on the Skillman surname. The name Skillman was brought to America from England by Thomas Skillman (#22) in 1664. Virtually all Skillmans in America (except descendants of slaves who took the Skillman name) are descended from Thomas. Since this Thomas had only one son, Thomas II, we are all descended from him, too. Six of his seven sons have living descendants. Two of his daughters married Atens; so many Atens are descended from Thomas. The third daughter had one child, no known descendants. In England, Skillmans go back to about the 13th century. Other spellings include Skilman, Skileman, Skylman and Schilleman. Considerable effort has been expended to establish the ancestry of Thomas, but without success. Thomas' family tree (descendancy) is presented online and also as downloadable files. From privacy considerations the one online tree and one downloadable file ("Priv") do not have any information on living persons except for their names. A "Full" online tree and one downloadable file have information on living persons and are password protected so only approved persons may view them. See "Privacy Policy." A Skillman "DNA project" was recently started to help verify the ancestry of Skillmans. "Interesting Links" has a collection of interesting links for research and information. "Explore further": Tom's Trees mentioned above only consider Tom's direct descendants and spouses in a fixed format. If you wish to view collateral lines (relatives of the spouses) and/or view genealogy information in other formats, then you can download a Read-only version of RootsMagic, the author's genealogy program and a compatible file of all people in his database. Finally, another page lists "Skillman places," such as Skillman NJ and Skillman, KY, Skillman Streets, Avenues, etc. Also a number of named locations. How complete is the Skillman database? A genealogy database can never be complete for many reasons. Early family data was sparse and gradually improved over time. Early U.S. Census had only the name of the head of the family and a count of children by age group. Today, the count of living people changes rapidly due to births and deaths. One measure of completeness is to match our database to another database. Find-a-Grave (www.findagrave.com) is a database of burials. It has now expanded to include 74 million burials. The data is variable, a picture of a gravestone may be included, a write-up may be included and sometimes the listed dates don't match what is visible on the tombstone. Many times the stone is unreadable. I just completed matching all the Skillman burials to my Skillman file. Amazing, to me, out of 1656 burials, I matched 1332 to my file, an average of 80.4%. Another current database online is the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) that lists people who received SS benefits. Eleven years ago there were 748 Skillmans in the SSDI and I matched only 225 or 28%. The message is that completeness improves as you go farther into the past. How you can contribute. I encourage you to send me your family tree data, no matter how large or small. Data should include as much as you know of full names, birth dates, marriage dates, death dates, and locations for all events. Other data such as occupation, military service, education, etc. will also be used. The preferred format is a Backup file from RootsMagic. You may also send a GEDCOM file or a text file in any format. Send it all to wskillman@aol.com. If you have material unsuitable for e-mail; photocopies, pictures, etc., you can mail it to me at the address above. A Group Sheet form is available online that you might find handy to submit family data. You fill out the form for each family and when you hit Enter/Return it is sent as e-mail to the author. Be careful not to hit Enter until you are ready to submit the form. How many people are descended from Thomas? Since we will never be able to catalog all of Thomas' descendants, we can only say that the numbers below represent a minimum as of January 8, 2011. Thomas of 1664 had four children. Rootsmagic reports 11,928 descendants for Thomas I, 11,557 for Thomas II, 342 for Elsje, 1 for Sarah, 11 for Lijsbet. Both Elsje and Lijsbet married Atens so their descendants trace back to Hendrick Aten of the Netherlands, born about 1590, whose son, Adriaen, came to America in 1651. Thomas II had six sons that have living descendants: John, 4108, Abraham, 1034, Isaac, 3477, Jacob 2212, Benjamin, 1542 and Joseph, 1818. Annetje had 12 children, no known grandchildren, her sisters had no children. The total is 14,204 which exceeds the 11,557 above due to intermarriage among the lines. Probably the largest common line is that from the marriage of Jacob's son, John, and Abraham's daughter, Ann, which totals 1003. This reduces the sum to 13,201. Other Surnames Many surnames are included in Thomas' descendancy. All are listed in the online descendancies. The highest frequencies are: Unknown, 948, McLaughlin, 232, Stryker, 220, Smith, 176, Voorhees, 155, Reed, 122, Johnson and Holcombe, 110, Williams, 106, Jones, 103, Beekman, 101, Hart, 93 (see DNA Project), Van Dyke, 90.
Copyright © 2012; William A. Skillman. All rights reserved. Tree graphic courtesy of JOD |
