[Ancestor] Dunham

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Husband [Ancestor] Dunham

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• Ancestry Information: George P. Donehoo, Pennsylvania - A History (New York, NY; Chicago, IL: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1926).
To read a brief sketch of the early ancestors of this family and related families, click here.

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Wife

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Children

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1 M Thomas Dunham ¹

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General Notes: Husband - [Ancestor] Dunham

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The Dunham family was founded in England by Rychert Donham, who was born in the year 1294, and at an early date settled in Devonshire, England. He was probably a Spanish adventurer, but little is known of his ancestry. He engaged in raising sheep and in manufacturing woolen goods, becoming a person of great importance in his time and founding a family that became connected with the English royal line and was interwoven with English history for the following several centuries. The name has been variously spelled, Donham, Dunham and Denham; and the coat-of-arms adopted by Sir John Dunham, in 1498, was: Azure, on chief indented, or, a label gules.
Two grandsons of Rychert Donham, Geoffryde and John, born respectively in the years 1350 and 1351, removed from Devonshire to Norfolk, England, and founded the city of Norwich. Their descendants were influential in that section of England down to the time of the civil wars, when John Dunham, son of Thomas, born at Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, in 1589, became identified with the Separatists. During the religious persecution in the early part of the seventeenth century, he escaped to Holland with others of the same religious views, and became a prominent member of the colony at Leyden that subsequently came over to America in the "Mayflower," landing at Plymouth in 1620. His name appears on the passenger list of the "Mayflower" as "John Goodman," the cognomen which he assumed in Holland for the sake of safety; and this name he still retained in America for ten or twelve years. It was not until 1632 or 1633 that the name "John Dunham" appears on the records of Plymouth colony, when he was chosen a deacon in the church. He was married at Leyden in 1619, to Abigail Wood, a distant cousin, and there his eldest child was born just prior to sailing for America. [GPHWP, 1219]

1 John W. Jordan, LL.D., Genealogical and Personal History of Western Pennsylvania (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1915), Pg 1219.