Thirteen generations on one thread.

The weavers of Witney

Witney is a market town on the River Windrush, twelve miles west of Oxford. For centuries it was known for one thing: woollen blankets. The family's story begins here, with a weaver named Thomas Merryman and his wife, Joan.

Thomas's will was proved on July 22, 1559, so he had died by then. His son Gregory also worked as a weaver in Witney. Gregory married Mary Ring, the sister of William Ring of Witney, and died in 1596.

A cooper in the City

Gregory's son George left Witney for London. On June 19, 1606, the court of the Coopers' Company recorded "George Merryman, son of Gregory Meryman, weaver of Witney," and named his master, Raphael Warter. That single entry is what links the London Merrimans back to the Oxfordshire weavers.

Coopers made barrels. In the 1600s a cask held almost everything that travelled: beer, wine, salted fish, flour, gunpowder. George served his apprenticeship and became a citizen and cooper of London.

If the chart's birth year of 1573 is right, he lived into his eighties. His will, dated October 31, 1655 and proved May 19, 1656, remembers a son an ocean away:

"my son Nathaniel Merriman, now resident in New England"George Merriman's will, as transcribed in Henry F. Waters, Genealogical Gleanings in England, vol. 2, p. 1445. He left Nathaniel £10.

ConfirmedGeorge's will names Nathaniel in New England.

Strong evidenceThe 1606 Coopers' Company entry makes George the son of Gregory.

UncertainGeorge Meryman married Anna West at St Bride's, Fleet Street, on August 24, 1610. Nobody has shown that this groom was our George, or that Anna was Nathaniel's mother.

Forty-eight days on the Whale

Nathaniel was born in England in about 1613 or 1614. When he was about eighteen, he boarded a ship called the Whale. It left Southampton on April 8, 1632 and reached Boston on May 26: forty-eight days at sea.

He was one of the Great Migration. In the 1630s, about twenty thousand English people crossed to New England, most of them in family groups. Nathaniel's father stayed behind in London. Twenty-three years later, George still wrote of him as the son "now resident in New England."

Five generations in Wallingford

Nathaniel settled in Connecticut. The Battlefields of the Pequot War project names him as a Connecticut man who served in the 1637 war, and reports that in 1698 his son John received a five-acre grant for that service. He married Joan, whose surname is still unknown. The chart lists twelve children for Nathaniel, more than for anyone else in the direct line.

He died in Wallingford on February 13, 1693/94. For the next hundred years the Merrimans stayed. Caleb was born in New Haven in 1665. His son Moses, grandson Benjamin and great-grandson Amos were all born in Wallingford, and the chart gives each of them the same occupation: agriculture. Wallingford appears in the records of 37 people in this archive, more than any other town.

Not all of Nathaniel's sons grew old. The chart says his son Nathaniel was "killed in attack on Indian fort in Rhode Island during King Philip's war" on December 19, 1675. That is the date of the Great Swamp Fight. Two generations later, another Moses, Moses's son, is recorded as having "died in the French and Indian War" in 1758.

Over the hills to New York

After a century in Wallingford the family began to move north and west. Benjamin, born in Wallingford in 1722, married Susannah Crittenden and died in Richmond, Massachusetts, in the Berkshire hills, on August 8, 1813. He was 91, the longest life in the direct line.

His son Amos went further still. He died before 1825 in Herkimer County, New York, near Fairfield. Amos's son Orramal was born in Richmond on May 20, 1796. He married Amanda Van Namee in 1825 and farmed in St. Lawrence County, in New York's North Country. He died in Gouverneur, New York, on October 18, 1876.

Six generations in a row, from Nathaniel to Orramal, the chart gives the same occupation: agriculture.

The mayor at the falls

Orramal's son Orlando Crosby Merriman, known as O.C., was the first in the line to leave the farm. The chart lists him as a lawyer and mayor of Minneapolis. His Wikipedia biography adds the rest.

He studied at the Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary in spring and autumn and taught school in the winters. He was admitted to the bar in 1854, married Rose Hanna Herring, and practised law in Wisconsin. In 1859 he moved to St. Anthony, Minnesota, a milling town on the Mississippi at St. Anthony Falls. A week before the Civil War began, St. Anthony elected him mayor. He later served as a captain in the 6th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry in the Dakota War of 1862.

Back in St. Anthony he was mayor again, invested in lumber and helped build a lumber mill on the falls. In 1875, after St. Anthony had merged into Minneapolis, he was elected mayor of Minneapolis with the support of both parties. He died on August 2, 1906 and is buried in Lakewood Cemetery.

Two engineers named John

O.C.'s son John Herring Merriman was born in Minneapolis on October 29, 1866. He became a mechanical engineer and married Lenora Belle Herring in 1906. His son, John Herring Merriman Jr., was born in 1908 and became an electrical engineer. He married Alberta Marcella Miller in 1940.

Father and son both died on October 16, twenty-eight years apart: the elder in 1947, the younger in 1975. Both are buried at Sunset Cemetery in Minneapolis.

The thread goes on past this page. The archive below holds all 189 people in the pages, including every brother, sister and cousin the chart names.