Saltmarsh Genealogy

Firstly, some background. My name is Michael Patrick Saltmarsh. Capt. Thomas Saltmarsh, the first Saltmarsh in America, is my 6th great-grandfather. I was originally born in New Hampshire, living in Concord/Penacook (a veritable hotbed of Saltmarsh's) for the first 30 years of my life. I went off to Arizona for 9 years and returned back to New Hampshire in 2004, working at Allegro MicroSystems (formerly Sprague Electric - my first job!) as an Electrical Engineer. I've been interested in genealogy since my Dad showed me a letter from Frank N. Saltmarsh addressed to my grandfather. This "letter" of about 50 pages contained a vast amount of information gathered by Frank. I suppose its depth especially sparked my interest. It wasn't for another 20 years before I finally took the plunge, thanks to a purchase of Family Tree Maker. Doing everything by paper wouldv'e been too cumbersome for me; the program coupled with the internet took a firm grasp of me. It's now been about 3 years or so since I've been doing this, and I believe that I have the largest resource of Saltmarsh information for North America available, at least that which is freely available on the internet.

Individuals Included

So who's in this thing besides every Saltmarsh in America I could dig up? Because this is focusing on such a large pool of individuals (at least in my eyes), I have limited who makes it in here to these criteria:

Saltmarsh's
Spouses of Saltmarsh's
Parents of spouses
Children of Saltmarsh women
Spouses of children of Saltmarsh women (though I think I've been sporadic with this)
Some lines of families which have more than one Saltmarsh ties (for instance, if one person married a Saltmarsh, and her brother's grandchild also married a Saltmarsh, the line to connect the brother and sister will be included).

So for the most part, I don't have brothers of non-Saltmarsh spouses, etc. Maybe someday, but I've got enough work ahead before I could even think of doing all the work to include these. What I'm currently doing on is in the Current Research page.

One Saltmarsh in particular was a slave holder (Alanson) and as such starting in the 1870 census there are a number of black Saltmarshes from the area he lived in (many of whom joined the Colored Infantry in the Civil War). They are included in the database. If you're a Saltmarsh, regardless of how you got the name, in you go. I have added a race field to the facts page, but only for those identified as African-American. Given that the vast majority of Saltmarsh's are white, it would be cumbersome to enter this for most folks. On the other hand, I felt it was important to identify those of African heritage especially as an aid in identifying genealogical lines. At least one of these lines exist today. I would love to hear from more.

Information Included

Also, there are likely duplicate people in there. There may be a Mary, husband of George, and a Mary, daughter of William who may be the same person, but the connection hasn't been documented yet.

Sources

I'm an engineer, I'm an A-type, I'm meticulous. Well, I guess this is an area that it's worth something - I try to be as complete as possible with the sources. With so much conflicting information out there, it helps tremendously. It also helps those who wish to research a line off of the Saltmarsh line to figure out where they can look.

Locations

Mostly North America right now, although I'm starting to include England here and there. Someday I'll add the Aussies. In the database is a line of the suspected Thomas Saltmarsh ancestors (starting with Elnard de Saltmerse), as well as ancestors of other North American Saltmarsh lines.

The Website

Yes, it's fairly bland. It's not because I can't throw in eye-candy. It's because I won't. I *hate* slow loading pages. I managed a good sized website at work and used the same attitude to the joy of my coworkers. I think. Frankly, I thought the background color might be extravagent. It took up a whole 17 bytes. And yes, I have a dry sense of humor.