Goodman History and Genealogy Introduction
Click any of the major topics in the main menu above to see the sub-pages for that specific main topic in the sidebar menu. In addition to the extensive family and historical information on this site, for the most accurate and complete family tree for my ancestors, back to the Benjamin Goodman, ca 1678-1735, of New Kent / Hanover Virginia and his descendants, start at his individual record on FamilySearch at: Benjamin Goodman Sr. (Login or free user registration may be required). If you do not already have a free membership on that site, and cannot view that record, you should sign up there.
If you were looking for content previously located on the old GoodmanGenealogy.com website: That content, if it is not duplicated already, and is still current, is in process of being merged into the pages and navigation structure of this website. Please be patient as we complete that process.
Purpose
The primary focus of this website is on the history and genealogy of early GOODMAN and related families of England and Wales, and in Colonial America through the 1800s, including those in the states of VA, NC, TN, KY from 1600s through early 1800s, and KY, IN, IL, KS, MO, TX from early 1800s thru now. You will also find at least some information on ANDERSON, BLOCHER, BRIGHT, CONWAY, FENTON, FOWLER, FUQUA, HARPER, LEWIS, OVERTON, POND, REYNOLDS, RICHARDSON, ROUTH, TERRELL, THORP/THORPE/THARP, WILLIAMS and many other families related to these early Goodmans.
This site is always and continuously a “Work In Progress”. It contains my own personal conclusions and surmises based on the documentary evidence and other facts as currently known by me, or by our other website contributing authors. Some pages on this site may also contain extracted and interpreted data from various publicly posted EMails, bulletin boards and sources other than my own research. These are referenced, including some URL links, wherever applicable.
New Website and Features!
You may have noticed some changes! This is the 4th generation of this website since its original inception in 1991. In this latest version, I have converted it to the WordPress platform for easier maintenance and its ability to support a “blogging” capability and allow comments to be posted on any article (temporarily limited to preregistered users). This new platform also better supports mobile phone and tablet web browsers, and provides a better experience for those users when reading our content.
As part of this conversion, I have dropped the “Database” page and its search capability, as that can now be more readily done on Ancestry and FamilySearch.org (our preferred and generally the most accurate and up to date genealogy website), and other lesser used and less accurate genealogy websites, where many users have posted their family trees. Some of those a are basically accurate, but many not so much so. You cannot always rely on the accuracy of many those uploaded trees, and many, including many of the Goodman trees I have looked at on Ancestry, have few contemporaneous sources, and many have errors and old information that has since been corrected on FamilySearch.org and this website. Our old forum has also been discontinued for the same reason. The Goodman forums on RootsWeb and Ancestry have a wider audience and greater participation. Individual person records on FamilySearch also allow for notes and discussions that are very person specific, and are probably the best way to share information about that person.
While I have made every effort to insure that all of the old page links still work, and.or are redirected to the correct new pages, if you have a link from your own website to mine, or in one of your “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” lists, or have posted a link to one of my pages to another website, like Ancestry or FamilySearch, please confirm that it is the correct new url. Links to this website created before 2008 most likely will not work, and will need to be updated.
Your Goodman queries should be sent to the Goodman Message Board on Ancestry.com or posted to the applicable individual on FamilySearch.org. However, I will personally respond to specific questions regarding persons in my direct lines as posted on this site, and welcome any feedback and/or supplemental information.
Background on Ron Goodman’s Goodman Genealogy Research
In 1979, my aunt, Josephine Goodman (Routh), published a wonderful, small book about the histories of our families and shared it with her siblings and nieces and nephews. While some details may have been elaborated, for the most part it was well researched, and including extensive interviews and discussions with those few remaining members of our Goodman and Blocher families that were living in her time. In 1989, she sent a few pages of updates to her immediate family. This website is intended to supplement that book, major portions of which have been scanned and transcribed, and now are included here in the Family Chronicles section of this site. Her hard work and results have been an inspiration to me, and this work owes much to her efforts. It has also been expanded in scope to include the results of my own extensive research on even earlier Goodman families in America, not only our own, but many that seem to me to possibly be related. In addition, it includes much about the origins of the Goodman name and possibly related lines of Wales and England.
In recent years, computer technology, online systems and databases have grown to encompass the area of genealogical research. Personal computers and the Internet have made genealogical research available online to much of the public. A computer CDROM can contain data on up to 1,500,000 individuals. Some institutions and companies, such as Banner Blue software, are collecting genealogy data from their users, as well as public sources, and are publishing large CDROM indexes and databases. Many individuals and organizations are contributing to this effort, and standards have been established for the exchange of genealogical data via computers. Much of these materials were originally collected and organized in that way.
More recently, websites like Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org have provided databases of original source records for online research, and platforms for folks to post and share their own family trees. Unfortunately, in the case of Ancestry.com, many unsourced and incorrect trees have been posted over the years by many, leading to propagation of erroneous genealogies that have perpetuated a great many errors. In many cases in my experience, the owners of those trees either don’t care or refuse to make appropriate corrections, even when notified of those errors. FamilySearch.org, in my own opinion, is usually the best and most reliable of the new online genealogy websites, because it is a shared worldwide database, and any registered user can update information and correct errors. However, sometimes FamilySearch users will still replicate an error they found on Ancestry.com or some other website, without appropriate verification and without providing appropriate contemporaneous sources to substantiate their changes. So constant vigilance is still required to catch and correct those errors. For my ancestors here, their individual pages will contain links to their FamilySearch records, where you can see their actual sources and notes, as found and contributed by myself and many others over the past many years.
In addition, the telecast of Alex Haley’s “Roots” mini-series in the early 1980s, based on his 1976 book, has raised the awareness and interest levels of people all over the world about the significance of their family heritage. As a result, many public institutions, including the Public Libraries of many cities, have collected genealogical materials, and made them available to the general public. Many new genealogical books are being published, and many older works are being reprinted and/or posted online when copyright status and author permissions allow. The Orlando, Florida Main Library maintains a large genealogy department, primarily for the Southern states. That collection was my first major exposure to the science of genealogy, and provided much important data. Genealogy has recently become the fastest growing hobby in America. Other large public libraries, such as the main library in Denver that I use now, also have extensive and growing genealogy and history departments. These often contain books and other documents that are not yet available online.
To all of those individuals and institutions that have contributed to this effort, I give thanks in the “Sources” section at the end of this material. And, to all of you who read this, I hope that you will be encouraged to research your own roots, and contribute to this website and to the FamilySearch.org world tree in the future, especially if you are related to any of the families mentioned in this work. See the Sources section for additional information about how to help with this effort.