I was never very interested in history growing up or into family history until I started having kids. I spent many years homeschooling my children and the fun times teaching them about the US of A's beginnings and World History. The interest grew as I learned more about the Lovejoy's and the many areas they contributed to events over the years. I will share these events in later posts. Also my faith in Jesus and the history around His life also caused me to have an interest in things and times of the past.
I am adopted and grew up with the maiden name Miller. Miller is such a common name that when I started spending time researching that family line I was overwhelmed with the amount of Millers out there and how hard it would be to follow my adopted family line. My birth name was Dean. I have spent some time researching this family line but can only go so far because I was adopted and I have limited amount of information.
Over the years I thought it would be fun to try to write a historical fiction story about the first Lovejoy who was John Lovejoy who came over from England to the New World. I found the information about this person in The Lovejoy Genealogy - With Biographies and History 1460 - 1930, by Clarence Earle Lovejoy, 1930, 466pp. The dates are vague in The Lovejoy Genealogy about how old John Lovejoy was when he came over from England. I thought it would be fun to write about the boy, John Lovejoy being about 12 years old, but it is thought that he could of been between 12 and "16 years old" (Lovejoy, 2009), and working on the ship that brought him over to the New World. I don't know the circumstances but as I've thought about this person and wondering why he left his family and came to the New World, many ideas came to mind. Was there a famine? Plague? Religious persecution? Family Quarrel? I don't know. The year that John Lovejoy arrived in the New World was thought to be "1638" (Lovejoy, 2009). "It was believed that he came aboard the ship Arabella, this however may not be true. In Fact some discussions that I have read on-line say that he actually came aboard the ship Confidence from Southhampton, England and arriving at Newbury, Massachusetts" (Lovejoy, 2009). I will research historical data on what was happening in England around 1638 that could have caused a boy to leave his family behind and sail to a New World. What was that boy thinking? Imagine being 12 years old and deciding to leave with a possibility of never seeing your family again. I would love to go back in time and interview that boy. He was the boy who later got married and had 12 children who then had children and is the main link for many United States Lovejoy's to their family history.
I am excited to blog my ideas and research so that maybe someday I will write that historical fiction novel about the Lovejoy start in the USA from my imagination.
A Lovejoy
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Lovejoy, Clarence Earle (1930). The Lovejoy Genealogy - With Biographies and History. 466pp.
Lovejoy, David (2009). Lovejoy Family Record. In FreeServers [Online]. Available: http://www.lovejoyfamilyrecord.9f.com/index.html [2010, October 3].
