The Newberry Family
 Native People in New England
Native American Settlers and Colonialism
In New England native acculturation started early in the 17th century with the Christianization of America's first people.
Plagues, war, intolerance, and pressures from the Europeans for land forced the Native people to constantly move along
ahead the tidal wave of settlers. Their history is, of course, far more complex  than these simple sentences can convey.

Much of their history is not written. Much of what is written, is only the white man's version of what happened. Native
Americans fought freedom battles for the American's, French and  English and  they often fought among themselves.
When they were unsure of their loyalties, they remained neutral on the advice of their elders.

This process of moving from their homelands began in the 1600's and continues well into the 21st  century.  Our family
line began moving early in the 1700's from Connecticut. The Newberry's were not just Native American but a mixed-
blood family whom we are only beginning to understand. This is still in the conjecture phase. I welcome any new
information.

The surnames they used were probably picked up when they became Christianized or intermarried. SMITH  for
instance, is a common name in most cultures around the world.  When I first started this search, I found the name
Smith to be common to the Tuscaroras, in a reference encyclopedia of names. STEPHENS  is also found in the
Mohawk Tribe.  HOLLEY is a Cherokee/Tuscarora  name, as is NEWBERRY. Newberry is found affiliated
with the Cherokee of North Carolina in early history. Names may have come from intermarriage with traders or
as a result of indenture. Some names were also chosen when an individual was baptized into one of the Christian
faiths, that were busy converting Native people in various time frames.  Intermarriage was frowned upon, but it did
happen. So just how did these people become Newberry?

The towns of Stonington and Groton, Connecticut were primarily Indian towns and joined the towns of Farmington,
Mohegan,  Niantic, Charlestown and Montauk as busy centers for the Indian people. (Note significance below with
John Newberry information.) Most were rocky, and did not support the type of farming the English were accustomed
to.

The town of Mystic up river from Groton was destroyed in the first half of the 1600's (1638) by the English who
were helping other tribes to secure the land from the  Pequot.  After King Philips war in 1676 the surviving
Pequot Indians were put out as servants and slaves to the English, or sent to the West Indies for slave labor. (see
reconnection below.) Women and children went into slavery as a way to survive after their husbands and sons were
killed in the war.  Orphaned children were often raised in English households becoming none like their parents and
loosing their Indian-ness.  It is tragic that these people were traded like commodities and property.

Indian Slavery

After the King Phillip War, it was common for the victors to ship the warriors away to the West Indies as slaves. Some
of these people have recognized their family in Bermuda and made an attempt to reconnect. This website is an interesting
story of those people
Reconnecting in Bermuda.

For those who were left behind, to protect themselves, and their families, they tried to assimilate and blend into the
conquerors world..  As the white man moved  further into the interior, their brothers and other tribal families were to
feel the same pressures.

Newberry Moniker

We are unsure as to where the Newberry name was acquired by our ancestors. Could it have been bestowed under
servitude and Christianization of the remaining Pequot?  Or could our Newberry clan have risen from English traders
from the Southern Colonies who mixed with the Cherokee nation?  Travel between the colonies was frequent, and
mixing of tribes began early. Connecticut's coastal towns like Groton were seaports very early, allowing the English
and Dutch to trade with the Indians.

More on names
In the past six months, I have run across a book that has been especially helpful in native surnames.  Many of the
names associated with my Newberry family by early genealogists have been found there. In November of 2004,
I was tipped by another researcher, that one of my family members had been doing research and discovered the
Newberry name might be tied to the Wampanoag tribe.  When asked about this, the researcher, who will go unnamed,
said that he had made a mistake, and that the information was incorrect for Tryal Newberry, whom he thought was of
the Wampanoag tribe. Since then, I decided to look into it myself.

The volume, Territorial Subdivisions and Boundaries of the Wampanoag, Massachusett, and Nauset Indians,
by Frank  G. Speck has been extremely instructional in determining tribal surnames, and in one case the roots of one
known collateral ancestor George John Wixon who was married to Electa Louisa Newberry, daughter of James A.
Newberry. Interestingly, this man was connected with the line of Massasoit.  In checking the index against early names
in my family lines, I found the following:  Dodge, Haskins, Rose, Stephens, Smith, Wixon and Williams. However,
Tyral Newberry  is not shown in the listing. Stephens, Beebe and Holley are also shown in other N.E. tribes.

So many of the other names that I found in this book also appear in the New York towns where the Newberry's resided. 
Without further research it would be hard to say for certain that these people were Native, but it certainly looks like |
there was a mass exodus of people from New England into New York, who later crossed the Hudson River and settled
in Orange Co.
The stories are beginning to come together, but the one story that always touched my heart was the fact
that when the people who settled in Orange County arrived there, they invited many of the Lenni Lenape to come back
and live among them.  Knowing the attitudes of most of the early English settlers, I would say that this would be an
uncommon invitation, so one might surmise that these people in Orange County were indeed also descendants of the
early New England tribes.  Many small clues tend to come forth and lodge in the consciousness of someone such as
myself who is interested in the possibility.  Some of the leading names of the town of Warwick, New York, can also
be found in the listings of people detailed by Briggs - see links below.


Another book that is especially helpful in the history is Indian History, Biography and Genealogy pertaining to
the Good Sachem Massasoit of the Wampanoag Tribe and His Descendants
by Ebenezer W. Pierce and Zerviah
Mitchell. Another which has been extremely useful is The Wampanoag Genealogical History of Martha's Vineyard,
Massachusetts
Referenced to Banks' History of Martha's Vineyard, Mass. Volume 1: Island History, People and Places
from Sustained Contact Through the Early Federal Period
, by Jerome D. Segel/Pierce and R. Andrew Pierce.  Pierce has
a new volume that will be published in the near future, of  which he has shared some parts of with me.

Research back from 1710

Up until recently, I have not had the inclination to go backward from 1710.  The reasons are as follows, and continue
to present a conundrum of missing, unverifiable information.

Research genealogists in the East who have done extensive work on the Newberry name, have found our John Newberry
cannot
be tied to the Newberry’s of Windsor, Connecticut.  I have not attempted to go back further than the John
Newberry born in 1710 for a number of reasons – the main one being the
documentation is poor and suspect. Though
I have discussed this with other genealogists, and they disagree with me on some counts, I feel there is something more
that is missing in the research, that needs to be re-discovered. There is however, a Bible that documents John Newberry
circa 1710 owned by his son Jonathan from 1767. Jonathan was the brother of our John in Warwick, N.Y. part of which
is transcribed above. Jonathan however did not detail his parents vital records in the Bible.

Helen Bourne Joy Lee the author of  The Newberry's in Connecticut  published in 1975, stated unequivocally that
our James Newberry born circa 1791, (son of John in Warwick, who is the son of John born in 1710)
cannot be connected with the Windsor people.  She also says there were no Newberrys in the Groton, Stonington,
or Mystic areas before 1836, (or at least none of her Newberry line who were the primary English line).2 Yet, if one accesses
other Connecticut records, some Newberry people DO show up in the area. There are some records that appear to
connect this line and they can be seen at  the following website The Aaron Stark Chronicles.  However, I personally feel
that there is something missing in the record that we have yet to find. The Barbour Records are also helpful in understanding
colonial Connecticut. Some of the Stonington Barbour records can be accessed at this site.

In the 1870's Hannah Maria Newberry Morris' son George V. Newberry Morris, b. 1850, attempted to map out the family line.
In a letter dated 1876, Hannah Maria requested from her brothers and father more information on their ancestors. However,
I believe they had no further knowledge. Her father and mother, James and Mary Newberry left a record called Baptisms for
the Dead,
(BFTD) in which they posthumously baptized their deceased relatives into the LDS faith.  In those records neither
had enough information to accurately name their own grandparents, let alone anyone further back. They are simply identified as
great grandfather Newberry, etc. Later, Susan Easton Black, professor at BYU, wrote a book in which relationships were
attempted for these records.  They were done with the help of the familysearch.org database, which has been developed
over the past 150 years by members of the LDS Church.  This information was done by, amateur family genealogists.
Black incorporated this  information into her assessment to show to whom the BFTD records were referring, which in my mind
is not proof at all.  In the case of the Newberry family, she may have some of it correct, but we have found that some of it is not.
My point here is, if James Newberry didn't have the information; how sure can we be certain of information that was uncovered
by genealogists who had access to less primary documentational information than we have today?  The problem remains, many
people did not use first sources, if  they existed at all. Additionally, it appears the Temple recorder, (that is the person who recorded
the information during the baptisms) had only the information provided to him by the members who were being baptized.

In yet another letter, a genealogist wrote a letter to George V. Newberry Morris  indicating that his line could be seen in the
publication, Newberry Genealogy, The Ancestors and Descendants of Thomas Newberry  of Dorchester,
Mass., 1634
 
Published by J. Gardner Bartlett, for John Strong Newberry, Boston, Mass.1914. However, George was never
able to connect his line to that of the Windsor people. He did however, write a ledger for the LDS Church showing all the
Newberry people who had been baptized for the dead, identified from this book for that purpose. None of them were his
own line. This ledger after his death was rescued from a trash bin by a family member. I have a copy of the original book from
microfilm and a copy of the ledger, how much actual use it is to naming our family line is negligible.

Tyral tied to the Wampanoag

From some of the work done by other genealogists it appears that there may be as many as three lines of Newberry's. 
The one to which our John Newberry is most often linked was through Richard Newberry as the first generation, then
Tyral, John, John in Connecticut and then John in Warwick. Some of these early genealogists believed that Tyral was
in some way attached to the Wampanoag tribe.  I have lately been trying to assess this information.  There are several
lists which show that some of our collateral lines could possibly be connected to the Wampanoag, but so far the
Newberry clan does not appear here.  The Briggs lists from 1849 and associated information show the Hyatt, Rose,
Stephens, Dodge and Haskins families.

Oral Traditions

The part of the Newberry line that was Native American, will not likely have much information. The Native people
carried down their stories orally in most cases, but some of it was written down by Native ministers of the gospel
who were trained early in New England at Harvard and Dartmouth Colleges. Most available written records were
produced by the towns and hamlets where these people lived, in the form of records of marriage, birth, death, and
some court records. Massachusetts and Connecticut have the best records available. The Wampanoag people had
more autonomy early on than did other surrounding tribes. Intermarriages took place, or we wouldn't be seeing so many
of our indigenous kin with what appears to be an English name. Proper records regarding native people start emerging
after about 1677, but still, they often hid their ethnicity and attempted to blend with the society of the time.  Therefore,
when the census' began in 1790 most native people who could, hid their lineage by claiming to be white, which, many
were to some degree.  It was not unlike today, where we claim our heritage based on which ever feels best to us. 
So many of us have extremely varied ethnic lines, that one or the other may not seem important - and so it probably was
with our ancestors. 

Marriage Practices

According to one researcher, Ann Marie Plane, colonial marriage practices of the native people of this time, were not
structured like those of the English.  Native American  people were a matrilineal people and had lineal family lines rather
than nuclear family ties.  In the late 17th century the  English cajoled native families into adopting their ways of marriage
and civilization, and only at that time will we find  written records - when the Indians began to become "literate" in English
sense of the word, and "civilized" by the definition of English marriage.3

Ann Marie Plane gives the flavor of Indian marriage in her book, Colonial Intimacies, Indian Marriage in Early
New England
Cornell University 2000.  In her introduction she explained.

"Marriage itself forged a bond between a man and a woman, but it was usually a bond that could be dissolved should
either party wish to take a new spouse or sexual partner.  As in all passionate human relations, separations were fraught
with a potential for acrimony, wounded feelings, and even violence or community censure.  Still, dissolving a marriage
did not necessarily affect the distribution of property, the legitimization of children, or the ability to sustain oneself and
one's family.  Thus it was relatively easy to accomplish, when compared with contemporary European divorces."

Indian relationships were far more complicated and harder for the European mind to understand, therefore, they believed
them to be ill conceived, and outright immoral.

Click here to continue to New York information on the Newberry family

1 Plane, Anne Marie, Colonial Intimacies, Indian Marriage in Early New England .
Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2000.

2 Lee, Helen Joy Bourne, The Newberry's of Connecticut   published 1975.
3 Plane, Anne Marie, Colonial Intimacies, Indian Marriage in Early New England .
Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2000.

Other Topics and Destinations:

Newberry Researcher's Corner - BRICK WALLS  This page is dedicated to the continuing research of the family and the
 researchers who continue with me to sift through the ancient records of the New England and New York.

All pages
Stage 1
/Connecticut / New York / More Newberry's in New York Samuel Smith / Smith Farm / Revolution /Old School Baptists /
Native people in New England
/ Stage 2 / Ohio / Missouri / Illinois & Iowa / Nauvoo / Flight to SW Iowa / The Half Breed Tract /
Cutlerite membership
/ dissidence in NauvooDeath of James Newberry / Wives and Family / Children who Went west /Stage 3 /
Exodus to Utah
/ Utah Morrisites / Hannah's Children / Hannah's Necklace / genealogy table / Addenda /Newberry Brick Walls
Whispers - beginning the search
/ Bibliography / Family Album / Jonathan Newberry Bible /

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