Possible Immigrants

When the Leigh Descendancy Chart was created, we focused on our direct descent from Ralph Leigh in 1597, and we paid less attention to our collateral lines. If no data about such collateral uncles, aunts, and cousins appeared within the records we used on the life events and deaths of our own ancestors, we did not try to locate other documents to fill out the lives of these other relatives. In fact, we often assumed that lack of documents meant lack of life, and thus wrote the suggestion of an “early death?” by all names without data! The advent of Y-DNA studies, however, forced us to recognize that this new tool to identify family members separated by great distance and time gave equal importance to all males in the male-to-male line. A paternal uncle or male cousin carried the ancestral Y-DNA as effectively as the direct ancestor we had earlier considered unique and essential to finding our Leigh family line.

During 2008 DNA tests identified a group of 14 men named Lee whose Y-DNA samples are a close match to the Y-DNA sample of a great grandson of Samuel Leigh (see the DNA Relatives page). This degree of closeness in the match indicates that Samuel Leigh’s descendant and the 14 men named Lee have a common ancestor within about 4-10 generations of those living donors. So we set about to understand this new DNA relation.

Unfortunately, the 14 Lee men know their family tree only a few generations back, and none yet know their ancestry in England. Our Leigh Descendancy Chart was less helpful than we expected. It showed no one who was known to have emigrated from Wales in the relevant time period except our own well-documented ancestors, 103. Samuel Leigh and his brother 102. Daniel Leigh, as well as two distant cousins who left England quite late (both died in the US in the 1940s). Clearly we need to focus on male family members who might have emigrated to America without our finding any record of their emigration. Such emigrants could scarcely be found among those whose life in Wales or England was well documented, so they probably existed among those we had labeled as likely dead.

To make the search easier, now that we know it must have a new focus, we have extracted from the Descendancy Chart a list of all names of men in a clear unbroken male-to-male line, whose life events we cannot document and thus do not know if or where they lived. We consider them as possible emigrants. Obviously these men might not be emigrants themselves, but they may have had descendants who later emigrated. Such information should be added to the list,

In the list, the numbers to the left of the names correspond to the numbers in the Descendancy Chart, and the names are links to the position of that person in the Chart, so click on any name to bring you to whatever we presently know of that person. The first two men listed in the Chart were last known (or at least last said to be) in England, but from then on all persons were last documented in Wales, except the sons of 83.Eliezer Leigh who settled in England by 1808. It is important to keep in mind that the List gives only the names we could identify from documents in Wales, but likely there were parallel families growing up in England as descendants of relatives who stayed in England when our Ralph Leigh moved to Wales. These later descendant English Leighs could not appear on the List, of course, but notice that Ralph's one known brother James I Leigh is listed with a possible location in England, and the name James was carried on for at least the next generation in James II, son of Richard II.

1.Richard I Leigh (est b. 1540 – ?bef 1597) Staffordshire? a clothier?
wife Ann Galand? Galant? Garland? (est b. 1545 - ?bef 1597) Devon?

3.James I Leigh ( ?living 1597 ) “of Lyndon” = in old county of Rutland?

5.James II Leigh (bef 1608 - ? ) died young or emigrated?

6.Harri I Leigh (bef 1608 - ? ) died young or emigrated?

12.Francis Leigh (abt 1630 to 1654 – aft 22 Oct 1660) died early or emigrated?

33.John I Leigh (est 1650 – aft Feb 1696) dyer in Carmarthen

34.Richard Nash Leigh (est 1654 – aft 18 Jun 1696)

35.Harry/Henry II Leigh (bef 1671 – aft 19 Mar 1696) died early or emigrated?

38.Thomas I Leigh (bef 1671 – ?bur 10 Mar 1742 St Peter, Carm) wrong identification?

56.Richard VI Leigh (chr 5 Dec 1671 - ? ) died young or emigrated?

62.Sheldon Leigh (chr 29 Apr 1684 - ? ) died young or emigrated?

72.Edmond I Leigh (chr 29 Dec 1711 – bef 3 Mar 1743 father’s will) died early or emigrated by age 22 years?

75.David I Leigh (chr 29 Sep 1738 Caldicott Mons. – aft Feb 1750 guardianship) died early or emigrated after age 12?

79.Ebenezer Leigh (chr 31 Jul 1775 - ?) died young or emigrated?

107.William Flexney Leigh, bur 1890, Father 83 ELIEZER LEIGH , had three wives (his several sons and grandsons are mostly unnumbered in the Descendancy Chart). Two are known emigrants to Massachusetts in the US, Albert in 1889 and Arthur in 1904, but they may have had no surviving sons. Email normarudinsky@leigh.org for contact with the active researcher of this Leigh branch in England, including 108a,108c, and 108d below.

108a.Edmund Flexney Leigh (chr 18 Nov 1812 – aft 1871, possibly 1890) Father 83 ELIEZER LEIGH emigrated?

108c.Samuel Flexney Leigh (abt 1819 – aft 1838 marrage) Father 83 ELIEZER LEIGH emigrated?

108d.Joseph William Flexney Leigh (1821 – 18 Jul 1890) Father 83 ELIEZER LEIGH died in England but he had 3 sons & 2 grandsons who might have emigrated?
Joseph Emmanuel (2nd marriage 1902), Montague C. (living London 1891), and Alexander F. Leigh (marriage 1891) had at least 2 sons Archibald and Sidney of whom we know nothing.

109. Dafydd LEIGH (chr 23 Mar 1822 – aft 1861 census) farm laborer, emigrated?

110a. Edward Huntingdon LEIGH (abt 1826 – aft 1841 census} emigrated?

126.Oakley III Leigh/159.David VII Leigh. Oakley III had at least nine illegitimate sons by various women, many of them being recognized in his will as his “natural” children. Several sons are traced into the 20th century but others are unknown and they or their sons could well have emigrated. This group requires careful study.

By Norma Leigh Rudinsky
November 2008

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