About This Blog

Over many years, members of my family who knew of my interest in our genealogy have urged me to share what I have learned by writing a Goodspeed Genealogy. And for many years I thought I would do just that. But as more and more information accumulated, the project became more and more daunting, until it all went onto a shelf, to be ignored and then forgotten.

In July 2013, I had a conversation with a relative, who recommended that I publish short chapters, instead of trying to finish it all up in one big package. This makes a lot of sense, especially since I am already doing just that with the history of my area of western New Jersey. (If you are interested in seeing what I have been writing about since 2009, you can visit my website here: Goodspeed Histories.)

This was not the first time my family research has languished. I had done a fair amount of work in the 1970s and 1980s after being given a copy of The Goodspeed Genealogy written by Weston Arthur Goodspeed, published in 1907. Most interesting to me were the women who married into the Goodspeed family. But the complexity of it all was discouraging. Then a few years ago, my youngest son, Benjamin Zimmer, began to take an interest, and, being the good researcher that he is, he turned up some amazing stories. Many of the sources that I will be referring to have come from Ben’s research.

The Goodspeed family tree is a large one. This website is devoted to one branch of that tree, and is written for my close relatives who are curious about their ancestors.

The first question to answer now is “Where to start?” I could start with Roger and Alice Goodspeed, the first of that name to live in America (Roger arrived in 1639; Alice came two years later). Or I could start in England, where the Goodspeeds resided before Roger left for Massachusetts. But I think I will begin closer to home, with the first Goodspeeds in our line of ascent to settle in Michigan.

To me it makes the most sense to write about couples and their families, in order to convey their experiences in the most coherent way. Matters pertaining to their parents or their children will be mentioned, but only in passing. It is far too easy to get distracted and go off on a tangent.

One of the most distracting tangents that Ben and I have come across is the story of the second wife of John W. Goodspeed, about whom most of the family knew nothing until Ben turned up an article about her. Eventually I will try to tell her story, but I don’t want her to monopolize the website, as she could so easily do. And that is true of most of the women who married into the Goodspeed family. Perhaps once I’ve exhausted the direct line of Goodspeeds I can venture into these side paths.

Sometimes I will go forward in time, and sometimes I will go backward. I intend to follow the path of least resistance. We’ll see where it goes from here.

I hope that family members who read these lines and have memories or information to add to these stories will contribute their knowledge in the comments section below.

A Note About Numbering:  All too often genealogies present their readers with a plethora of incomprehensible numbers. I just don’t see the need for that. To simplify matters, I am using the identification numbers found in the Goodspeed Genealogy so that readers can easily look up the people who appear in this website. Relatives who do not have Goodspeed numbers will have to do without. That's what search boxes are for.