First, thank you to all the readers of this blog. It has truly been a pleasure for Jim and I to meet you and to communicate with you. It is also a pleasure to hear from so many Daytons and Dayton descendants, spread far and wide! Your interest is appreciated. In response to your questions, the promised paperback should go on sale in the next two weeks, if there are no more delays.
Now, let’s talk about family.
Unless I’ve just missed the conversations, it seems that Isabel Calder and we are the only persons who have publically expressed our belief that it is more likely that the Ralph Dayton family landed at New Haven, and not at Massachusetts Bay, about 1639. If any of you have come to this conclusion or have seen this theory espoused or discussed, please let me know as I am very curious to hear what others have to say about it.
At the time I came to this belief, I thought that to present the idea might be bold and almost provocative, unaware that Calder had expressed the same assumption almost 80 years ago. Reading her book, The New Haven Colony helped validate our thinking.
I also agree with Calder that the Ralph Dayton family probably stayed with members of the Whitfield group at Menunkatuck or Guilford for at least a few years before their move to New Haven. Records at New Haven (or lack of records) suggesting this are not explicit, but hint that the possibility is very real. Interpretations of our family in the New Haven record have long been built on presuppositions of Ralph’s continuing residence there, having come directly from the bay at Boston.
Dayton Ancestry 