The Intent of This Blog

The Chandler Family Chronicles blog is an attempt to share electronically data and documents which have been collected from a variety of sources. Some 90 documents are original source documents obtained from family members. Some date back to the 1780s. These original documents are supplemented by materials gathered from such diverse locations as the historical archives of Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio and the New Orleans City Library. The source of each document will be cited as each is published here.

The genealogy, when posted, will be based on data collected by Gilbert Cope, published originally in 1887 for the 200th anniversary reunion of the Chandler Family in America. The initial work was greatly expanded and republished in Philadelphia in 1937 for the 250th anniversary reunion of the family. It can be found under the title "A Record of the Descendants of George and Jane Chandler (who emigrated to Pennsylvania from Wiltshire, England, in 1687) with a Pedigree of the Chandlers of Oare, Wiltshire." The work was published by the Chandler Family Reunion Committee.

It is my intent to publish on the blog both a transcription of materials gathered and, when possible, scans of the documents themselves. In some cases, the condition of documents dating back 220 years does not permit their being scanned with the equipment available to me at present. Please note that I will make every effort to present accurate transcriptions. However, editorial corrections have been made in rare cases where interpretations of the original documents were necessary to make sense of the text.

Please note also that family names are often followed in the transcriptions by numbers placed in parentheses. These numbers refer to the numbering system used by Gilbert Cope, a professional genealogist and historian as well as a member of the Chandler family, as presented in his original work. The numbers are inserted in transcribed documents to help readers follow the family connections through more than two centuries of family history.

Finally, an occasional discourse will be added to present background information gathered by me which I hope will assist the reader in understanding the historical context in which the original documents were generated.

I will begin at the beginning of the source documents and publish on the blog in chronological order.

I welcome your comments and invite your active participation in ensuring the accuracy of the information presented.