Reverend Thomas DUNGAN, Sr. was my maternal 9th great grandfather. He married Elizabeth WEAVER. As I said in my previous post, my mom’s family was thick as thieves in the Poconos and foothills in the 1700’s and this line is right in there with the PARSONS, BRINKER, and SEELY families! The line of descent for me goes from Thomas and Elizabeth to their son Jeremiah, to Jeremiah’s son George, to George’s son Jeremiah, to Jeremiah’s daughter Sarah. Sarah DUNGAN married Zebulon SMITH and they were my 5th great grandparents. Sarah and Zebulon’s daughter Elizabeth married Squire DALE and they were my 4th great grandparents. Elizabeth and Squire had a daughter named Sinthia who married James P. BULLOCK and they were my 3rd great grandparents. The line of descent continues through Sinthia and James’ son James M., to James M.’s daughter (and my great grandmother) Laura BULLOCK RITER. Fun fact about Thomas and Elizabeth: they had 38 grandchildren!¹ Now wouldn’t THAT make for an interesting Cousin Camp in the summer?!

Dungan Family Roots

Thomas was born about 1634 in London, England. Thomas’ father, William, was a perfumer and a London merchant. An interesting side note about William: one researcher believes William died due to a disease associated with the plague but not of the plague itself due to wording in his burial entry and the fact that no “P” (for ‘Plague’) was noted beside his name.⁹ William is said to have come from a Dublin, Ireland branch of the DUNGAN family that was “ennobled by Queen Elizabeth”.² (Other accounts say the family is from County Kildare, Ireland.³ Still other accounts say this DUNGAN line is not of noble lineage at all.⁹ (I’ll be covering this again in a future blog post.)

According to information at Geni.com, “The Dungan genealogy was traced by researchers in the early 1900’s back to Emperor Charlemagne, 800 A.D.”³ I found the lineage written out in a book on Ancestry.com.⁴

Thomas’ mother, Frances LATHAM DUNGAN, was the daughter of Lewis LATHAM who was the Sergeant Falconer to Charles I.²

Thomas Dungan & Elizabeth Weaver

Thomas immigrated to the U.S. in 1637 with his mother and other family. They settled in Newport, Rhode Island.² He married Elizabeth WEAVER about 1663 in Rhode Island. Elizabeth had also been born in England and immigrated to the U.S. prior to 1663. Thomas died in 1687 in Cold Springs, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Elizabeth lived another 10 years and also died in Cold Springs. I was unable to find their burial locations. All traces of the church Thomas founded and also it’s accompanying cemetery where they were buried have disappeared with time. Together, Thomas and Elizabeth had 9 known children – William, Clement, Elizabeth, Thomas Jr., Rebecca, Jeremiah (my 8th great-grandfather), Mary, John, and Sarah.

Thomas held smaller elected offices between 1656 and 1681 including being the Representative from East Greenwich to the Rhode Island Assembly. In 1677, just before he came the Representative to the Rhode Island Assembly, he was named as a Patentee in the charter of the town of East Greenwich. Thomas also served as a Sergeant in the Newport Militia.

In 1682, he sold his East Greenwich, Rhode Island, property of 100 acres to his nephew and conveyed his homestead in Newport, Rhode Island (a 50-acre property) to someone else. Shortly after that he moved to Pennsylvania and settled at Cold Springs, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Cold Springs & the Baptist Beginnings

In Cold Springs, Thomas founded a Baptist church – the first of its denomination in Pennsylvania. He was also the first Baptist preacher in Pennsylvania. He pastored the church he founded until his death in 1688.^{5, 6} The famous Pennypack Church (also written as Pennepack or Pennepeck)⁷ was an outgrowth of Thomas DUNGAN’s little Baptist church in Cold Springs. I was unable to locate the church nor was I able to find anyone who could tell me where the church had been. It has been lost to time as has the cemetery associated with the church.

This picture was found on FindAGrave website but I was never able to locate the place when I was in Pennsylvania this past May.⁸

Although I was unable to locate Thomas’ or Elizabeth’s graves, I did find an image of a memorial to Thomas DUNGAN. This image came from FindAGrave:⁸

One last item on Findagrave was a photograph of the recorded will of Thomas DUNGAN. I always hesitate to say what is someone’s signature but this does appear to be his signature since it doesn’t say “his mark”. So, for what it’s worth, Thomas DUNGAN’s signature on his will (bottom right corner):⁸

I always like to look through wills of my ancestors to see what they owned when they died. Thomas’ will recorded on 1 February 1688 lists household goods of “Linnen, wooling, Bedding, brass, pewter” but it specifically excluded his son Clement’s bed, his daughter Marie’s bed, and two brass kettles. As I was searching the internet for pictures I came a cross a costumer’s blog. If you’d like to see how the working men were dressing in 1688, I recommend clicking over to the Costume Historian blog. The post I linked shows a drawing of a sweep as he would have been dressed in 1688. If you’re interested in what the bed and mattress would have looked like in the 17th century around the time that Thomas died, I recommend going to the Pennsbury Manor website. They have a great article about it which you can read at the link. They also link out to a site that shows you how to stuff the mattresses. Look at picture at the bottom of the Pennsbury Manor article. Who can remember seeing mattress ticking like that at Granny BATES’ house?? Finally, the one specific item on the list – a brass kettle. At William Dykes Antiques website I found a brass kettle listed as late 17th-early 18th century and it stated this form was the earliest kettle form and that this kettle was of Dutch or English origin.

Maternal Pennsylvania

Since I’m going in order of the names I researched in Pennsylvania, that means next week I won’t be writing about my mom’s family but I’ll be back to her family again soon. I hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know Thomas DUNGAN as well as the SEELYs and BRINKERs and PARSONS. My maternal Poconos ancestors have been fun to learn and write about. We’ve covered approximately half of my research out of a 10-day research trip to Pennsylvania. I’m looking forward to bringing you the remaining stories soon. Once I tell all the Pennsylvania stories we’ll move on to my trip to Missouri. It’s been an exciting summer of research. I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I have been. One last note for my cousins descending from Thomas DUNGAN: be happy! Ancestors in his paternal and maternal lines typically lived to about 100 years old. You have good genes, cousins!

Until next time,

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

Resources

1. Dungan Family of Pennsylvania. Monroe County Historical Association, Stroudsburg, PA.
2. Davis, William W. H. History of Bucks County, Pennyslvania, from the Discovery of the Delaware to the Present Time. Accessed on the Internet Archive on 8 July 2022.
3. Geni.com. Accessed on 9 July 2022.
4. Justice, Alfred Rudulph, compiler. Ancestry of Jeremy Clarke of Rhode Island and Dungan Genealogy. Accessed on Ancestry.com.
5. Dungan Family History accessed at both Ancestry and ReligionDocBox.com on 8 July 2022.
6. Baptist History. Accessed on 8 July 2022.
7. GodRules. “History of Baptist Denomination – Pennsylvania.” Accessed on 8 July 2022.
8. Findagrave website. Accessed on 8 July 2022.
9. “The Ancestry of William Dungan”. The Genealogist. p. 194-202. Notebook located at Monroe County Historical Association, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.