Week 13 - A Family Pattern - Dillingham
The family pattern that comes to mind immediately is the name Nathaniel Dillingham.
Although I can take the Dillingham name back into very early England history, our first immigrant arrived in 1632 to America.
From "Dillingham's of Big Ivy, Buncombe County, N.C. and Related Families, " compiled by Margaret Wallis Haile, Gateway Press, Inc., Baltimore, 1985:
"...Edward with his wife, Ursula, and three of their children came to Boston in 1632, settled in Lynn, and later in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Three daughters of Edward and Ursula remained in England. Edward made his Will, 1 May 1666, and it was proved June 5, 1667. The Will named his two sons, Henry and John. His other child who came to America was a daughter, Oseth, who married Stephen Wing. There are baptismal records in England of Edward and Ursula's children. These, with the baptismal, burial, and marriage records of Rev. Henry Dillingham's children--his other sons died in childhood--ship passenger lists, land and court records, determine that Edward Dillingham, the immigrant, was the ancestor of all the Northern Dillingham's. Descendants of Edward's sons, Henry and John, have been researched and records compiled before 1930, as "A Genealogy of the Dillingham Family of New England." This was the work of Winthrop Alexander of Washington D.C. and Roxbury, Massachusetts.
The pattern name first shows up with my paternal great-grandfather Nathaniel Gates Dillingham. He was the son of Sydney (Melatiah, Thomas, Melatiah, John, Henry, Edward - the immigrant) and Katherine (Sweet) Dillingham. He was born August 25, 1838, in Troy, Rensselaer County, New York the second of twelve children. As the family moved west from New York, they settled for a time in Michigan and then in Illinois.
Nathaniel Gates enrolled in the Civil War at Rockford, Illinois on the August 13, 1862, as a Private, in Co. E 74th Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He was honorable discharged at Nashville, Tennessee on the Jun 10, 1865.
While he was fighting, most of the family moved on to Iowa in 1864 settling in Lynn Grove, Cerro Gordo County. After he returned from the war he married Ellen Berry December 25, 1867, in Rockwell, Iowa.
They had 14 children, all living to adulthood. The fifth child was Nathaniel Blizzard Dillingham who was born March 17, 1875, in Cerro Gordo County. Family stories state that he was born in a blizzard and that is where his middle name came from.
Nathaniel Blizzard married Lola Etta Paist June 3, 1903, in Dennison, Iowa. They were the parents of nine children: Hattie, Lillian, Dorothy, Sidney, Mildred, Margaret, Lola, Nathaniel Byron, and Jean.
Nathaniel Byron was born December 31, 1918, in Perry, Iowa and married Edna Mae Allen April 6, 1943, in Betheny, Missouri. They were the parents of three children, two living to adulthood. Their son Nathaniel Alan is the last to carry the name, as far as I know.
I had spent a few years corresponding with Nathaniel Byron before his death and he told me that his grandfather went by Nathaniel, his dad went by Nat, he went by Nate, and his son went by Nathan.
My father's middle name is Nathaniel and as far as I know, that is the only use of the name since.
I have not found the name in the Dillingham family before Sydney and his wife Katherine, so I feel it may have been a family name in the Sweet family. Unfortunately, I have not been able to follow Katherine's lineage. We all have our 'brick walls'.
Barbie
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