In the more than 75
years since the publication of MaIlman's "Historical Papers on Shelter
Island and Its Presbyterian Church," a wealth of new or supplementary material
has become available on the lineage of the Havens family, with which the
genealogical pages of MaIlman's work were principally concerned. Some of
it is to be found in published works like Mather's "Refugees of 1776
from Long Island to Connecticut," much has been published in periodicals
like the New York Genealogical & Biographical Record, and a
great deal has been researched by private individuals.
As one of the descendants
of William Havens of Rhode Island, the first to arrive in this country,
and of the Havenses who early settled in Suffolk County, New York, I have
been particularly concerned with the genealogy of this family. In the course
of my research, it very soon became apparent that it was necessary to consult
very widely dispersed sources. As a consequence, it occurred to me that
I could perform a useful service for the benefit of other genealogists
in, or interested in, this family by organizing and assembling my material
in the form of one publication.
The pages which follow
are, as the title declares, confined almost entirely to the Havens family
in Suffolk County, although they do follow some of their migrations elsewhere.
They are based on MaIlman's valuable work, but they contain a great deal
of new material. They also contain some revisions -- corrections, if you
will, for MaIlman, being human, was not immune to error.
The MaIlman records
cover only those Havens families in Suffolk County who descended from either
Jonathan--313 and Hannah (Brown) Havens or John--315 and Sarah (Conkling)
Havens. So far, I have been unable to uncover information on any Havens
families in Suffolk County who go back to other ancestors in the third
generation. It seems to me highly unlikely that the ancestry is so restricted;
some names are found in the old Shelter Island records, for example, for
whom I have been unable to establish the parentage. They may have been
lines from George--312 who died on Fisher's Island.
To conserve time, labor
and expense, the main entries in my material are limited to male heads
of Havens families. Each of these is the nucleus of a family group, with
attention centered on, but not limited to, the head of the household. Although
the daughters are not overlooked, the information concerning them, their
marriages and their children, is generally restricted, by force of circumstance,
to what can be handily summarized as part of the information covering the
family group.
It is interesting to
note that, of all the 370-odd marriages between Havenses and other families,
the family that they made the most marriages with -- 13 in all -- was Havens.
In other words, more Havenses married Havenses than they did members of
any other family.
The numbering system
used has a twofold advantage. The first digit, from one to ten, indicates
the generation to which the individual in question belongs, starting with
William of Rhode Island as the first. The remaining digits form the distinctive
number assigned to the person as an individual in that generation. For
the convenience of those wishing to correlate individuals with Mailman's
entries, the MaIlman number and/or pagination follow, in parentheses, the
name of the head of the family, at the beginning of the entry. If no MaIlman
data are found, it is because the main-entry individual is not found in
Mailman but was uncovered by later research. I believe I have covered every
Havens male in MaIlman's book -- and of course many more.
Source material referred
to in the text is designated by A (for Reference) numbers, and documentary
details are provided in Appendix I.
The greatest enrichment
of the Mailman information will be found in the pages covering the first
six generations. From that point on down to the tenth generation, the new
or supplementary data taper off rapidly, until the final listings are almost
entirely exact duplicates of MaIlman's information. Even there, however,
some information will be found on lines of descent that have come to light
recently. In those later generatIons I have supplied less information on
tne collateral lines, excepting those not covered by MaIlman, feeling that
further details can be obtained from the MaIlman opus itself.
There remain, of course,
many riddles still to be solved, and there is much work yet to be done.
A detailed extraction of statistics covering heads of families found in
census records is badly needed, plus similar organized research of other
records. For example, there may be a mine of information in the material
accumulated by the late Judge Dwight C. Haven of Wilmington, North Carolina,
who carried on extensive research of the Haven-Havens families. This material
is now in the possession of the New York Genealogical and Biographical
Society. I believe it would be advantageous to establish contact with all
Havens descendants who are interested in their family history, and the
formation of a Havens Family Society would be one means of accomplishing
this end.
The accumulation and
preparation of my material would not have been possible without the help
of many individuals scattered throughout the United States. I am particularly
grateful for the assistance or contributions from Mrs. R.S. Andrews of
Hillsborough, California; Mr. Charles E. Craven of Wilton, Connecticut;
Samuel B. Cross, Westhampton Beach, N.Y.; Mr. & Mrs. William Hannah
of the Suffolk County Historical Society -- and that society's splendid
library; Mrs. Charles E. Havens of San Jose, California; Mr. Edwin Havens
of Arleta, California; Mr. John H. Howell of South Charleston, West Virginia;
Mrs. Adele D. Jackel and other members of the staff of the Genealogy Section,
New York State Library in Albany; Mr. David A. Overton, Brookhaven Town
Historian, Patchogue, New York; Mr. Chester G. Osborne of Center Moriches,
New York; Mr. Robert H. Pelletreau of Patchogue, New York; Mrs. W. K. Russell
of Irvine, California; and my wife Jeanette, for her constant encouragement
and invaluable assistance.
Scotia, New York
November, 1974