My closest Y matches. The Elmer/Elmore family descended from Edward Elmer. Edward was one of the founders of Hartford Connecticut. Here is a link to his grave in Find-a-Grave.
This family, along with the Knowlton family are the most familiar to me from Y research. I’ve been working with Elmers of one branch or another from the very beginning of my searches at SMGF using my ancestry.com Y results.
Over the last several years I’ve been working with friends who are also related to Edward to figure out how all of us fit into the picture and..at some point in the future, to hopefully take us farther back to England and connect up with an Elmore/Elmer there.
a monument to the founders of Hartford listing Edward borrowed
As of writing this (Feb 2015) I have my closest Y match in the line of Edward Elmer 2 (son of Edward) and his son Hezekiah Elmer born in 1686 in Hartford and possibly dying in Massachusetts or Vermont as the borders may have changed.
The crest was blatantly stolen from Find a grave for Hezekiah Elmer added by PhotographerintheWoods. I believe the birds are Cornish Choughs a member of the crow family, but Since the English Thompson arms feature hawks..I think it’s nice we get to stick with the bird motif.
The image above is Blatantly stolen from an auction site. This is John Aylmer son of Bishop Aylmer. Many Elmer family trees include him as an ancestor to Edward Elmer but we haven’t been able to prove that relationship.
As things progressed in my DNA research, it became clear that the U106 Thompsons are actually Elmores before 1925 and then Elmers before that, back to the 1600s. Although when I began Y DNA testing six or seven years ago the Elmer family was just one of many possible links to the past, they eventually became THE link to the past for my little branch of the Thompson family. Finding and documenting our Elmer and Elmore cousins connections to Edward Elmer also revealed their connections to my family. In our case, sunlight is good medicine.
