While watching Faces of America last night I found a new cousin, Meryl Streep. My ears perked as soon as Henry Louis Gates,Jr. mentioned Bucks County, PA. I know that my Doane, Twining and Deane ancestors came from Eastham, MA. to Bucks County before 1700 and therefore was quite interested in seeing if there were any connections in Meryl’s tree. When the generations chart came up, I noticed a familiar name, Mary Twining. I knew that there had to be a connection because my Twining ancestors lived in Newtown in Bucks County.
I opened my RM4 program and there was Mary Twining. She was the grandniece of my seventh great-grandparents, Daniel and Mehitabel Twining Doane. Her grandfather was Stephen Twining, Mehitabel’s brother, named after his maternal grandfather, Stephen Deane, who came over on the Fortune in November, 1621 to Plymouth Colony.
When Meryl Streep mentioned that she was told that some of her ancestors were hanged in PA. for being horse thieves, it is quite possible that she was speaking of cousins Levi and Abraham Doane, two members of the notorious Doan Gang, hanged September of 1788. I would have loved to hear more about this branch of the family.
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Ancestral Notes by Earline Hines Bradt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Filed under: Doane, Faces of America, Meryl Streep, Twining
Ancestral Notes 