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Tubbs Family Records Title Page

Tubbs Family Records Introduction

Several years ago, as I was looking through the index of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record magazine for references to the Tubbs family, I came upon the following in the query section of the magazine: "Mr. Charles Tubbs of Osceola, Tioga County, Pennsylvania is compiling a genealogy of his family, which is descended from William Tubbs, who settled in Plymouth County, Massachusetts in 1635" (vol. 18, p. 182, 1887).

When I contacted the historical society for that area, the Tioga County Historical Society of Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, I learned that they had an unpublished collection of 200 family group sheets that had been collected by Charles Tubbs in his research. After finding that fifteen pages contained information on my own Tubbs ancestors and their descendants, I realized that the information on these group sheets would be very valuable to anyone else whose ancestors were included. I then volunteered to copy, type, and index the records.

The Honorable Charles Tubbs (1843-1913) was a well-known resident of Tioga County, Pennsylvania in the late 1800's. He was a lawyer and a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for two terms, as well as being interested in local history and genealogy. In collecting these group sheets, he evidently corresponded with as many Tubbs as he could find, and the letters he received from them are preserved in this collection, many written on the back of the family group sheet form that he sent them. Also included are newspaper clippings, biographical narratives, and descendant charts that he was sent.

The Tubbs families in the collection lived mainly in the northern United States, as far west as Washington and California, and including one family from Arkansas and Texas. Most of the group sheets were filled out in 1887, although several had dates as late as 1906. (These exceptions are mentioned in the notes.) The time period represented by the information in this collection is roughly 1750-1880, depending on how much information about their ancestors the respondents had.

The form that Charles Tubbs used for collecting his information was a family group sheet, containing spaces for recording information as far back as the great-grandfather of the head of household. The actual page size of the original is 8 1/2" by 14". On my copies of the forms, I put the name of each box on the original form on the left side of the page, followed by the information written in that box on the right side. (However, the names of some of the boxes were changed slightly for clarity or to fit space requirements on the copies.) The box names that are not indented roughly correspond to the leftmost boxes on the original form, most of which contained names.

I tried to copy the information exactly as given, with the exception of capitalizing all letters in surnames, and in spelling out names that were abbreviated. When clarifying or missing information was added, I enclosed it in brackets [ ]; any other parentheses or questions marks were on the original forms. When portions of the forms were hard to read, due to the handwriting style or the faintness of the writing, I tried to check other pages referring to the same family, or in an atlas for geographical names, or in the Tubbs material collected by Louis M. MacCartney. Sometimes the person who filled out the form wrote information in the wrong space, or misinterpreted whose information was to go in a particular space. (For example, on the father's line, the box referring to his "date, place of death" was sometimes filled in with his wife's date, since her name immediately preceded that box.) When I noticed an obvious mistake, it is mentioned in the notes.

The family group sheet forms were numbered at some point in their history, and this numbering has been preserved in the copies. When there were letters or other information on the back of a page, or following it, they were indicated by adding "A" to the page number. When there was more than one following page, which was of a different type of material, "AA" was used for that page.

The index contains all of the names listed on the forms, including both the maiden and married names of the women, if known. The maiden name is enclosed in parentheses when giving the married name. If a woman was married more than once, there is an entry for each surname, with the previous surname in parentheses. Please bear in mind that spellings of the same name were not always consistent from page to page, so variations of a name should be checked as well.

The notes (at the end of each "chapter") include several types of information to supplement or correct the forms: where I noticed discrepancies between pages; to mention which pages were filled out by Charles Tubbs instead of a correspondent; or where additional information is available from another source. If a page has a note for it, a [note] link will appear after the page number.

As with any work of this type, it is easy for errors to unintentionally creep in when copying, or in interpreting handwriting that is hard to read. Therefore, any serious student of these copies should get a copy of the original page from the Tioga County Historical Society (address on title page), or from my copies. Any corrections of my interpretations will be gratefully received, and any additions of further information on a family will be welcome.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following people have helped make this work possible, and I would like to give them due credit.

1. Mrs. Rhoda English Ladd, former genealogical librarian of the Tioga County Historical Society, for sending me copies of the original pages to work from, giving general guidance, and answering questions that came up.

2. Mr. Louis M. MacCartney, whose work entitled, "Some Descendants of William Tubbs of Duxbury", was helpful on many occasions in clarifying details of dates, places, or family relationships.

3. John Steed, author of the computer genealogy program "Brother's Keeper", which was used to produce the descendant charts. [In the printed version of the book but available upon request.]

4. My husband, David A. Peterson, for providing programming advice for the original project, and my son, Timothy J. Peterson, for help and advice in converting the pages to electronic form.

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Last modified October 4, 2021.