As I've indicated elsewhere, I'm almost prefectly confident of the line that stretches from me to Nathaniel Gardner Reynolds. Pre-NGR, however, the trail gets cold. My original internet-based inquiries led me to published sources that hold that NGR's parents were Benjamin Reynolds and Lydia Watson. Benjamin's line was traced as far back as "the" Reynolds, Robert Reinolds of Kent County, England.

Shortly after I began my little investigations, my parents gave me a copy of some family-history papers, plus a family tree that my mother had begun twenty-five or thirty years ago. To my surprise, Nathaniel Gardner Reynolds's parents were given as Griffin Reynolds and Martha Gardner...with no additional information.

Here the trail ended, until, not quite a year ago, my childhood friend Dave Fryxell provided me with some information from, primarily, the Daughters of the American Revolution. Martha Gardner's father, it seems, was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. The DAR info has a passing reference to Griffin Reynolds as "son of Jas." I knew that "Jas." is an old-fashioned abbreviation of "James," and armed with this new tidbit, I was able to eventually establish--with some degree of confidence--the ancestry of Griffin Reynolds that is presented here.

I think the confusion in the published sources about the ancestry of Nathaniel Gardner Reynolds has to do with the fact that his father, Griffin, had an uncle by the same name; and the name "Nathaniel" was ridiculously popular among Reynoldses in the eighteenth century. I haven't bothered to work it all out, but I suspect that someone's uncle got recorded as someone's father, and confusion ran rampant.

Ultimately, NGR's ancestry--my ancestry--hooks back into "the" Reynolds line, which ends with the aforementioned Robert Reinolds, who was born around 1477 in England (probably East Bergholt, which seems to have been the ancestral home). For me, though, this created a number of problems--

1. Why does the trail end there?

The answer to that came from one of my "internet friends," Linda McIntire. A Reynolds by birth, Linda and her husband were living in England, and she went to the source...where she discovered that there had been a fire around 1500, which destroyed virtually all public records prior to then. Mystery solved...but we're still left with the question of why Halls of Records seem to be so damn combustible.

2. How do we get out of England?

It's entirely possible that a Reynolds or two wandered from Ireland to England at some point before 1500 or so, and that from that wanderer eventually sprang our old friend Robert Reinolds. But it seems unlikely I'll ever be able to prove it. And speaking of old Bob...

3. Does it make any sense to presume that everybody descended from this one guy?

Anyhow, I put it down here as I've found it...but with an eyebrow raised, and raised pretty high when it comes to 'most everything that is pre-Griffin Reynolds. Too much speculation, and no one around who can authoritatively refute much of anything that anyone asserts. But here it is, for completeness' sake...and for whatever entertainment value it might offer!

William J Reynolds
June 2003