In his book, "Winders of America", written in 1902, R. Winder Johnson describes three immigrant Winder families. These families lived on the east coast, and branches pushed to the frontier as soon as it was opened. The paper trail of that time is vague and incomplete, and it impossible to sort the families out. So we propose to
- Get DNA samples from each of the known lines of immigrant Winders
- Get DNA samples from each "brick wall" line and compare to the known lines, to find out who belongs to whom.
- Get DNA from as many Winder lines in the UK as possible, to determine any connection between the known immigrant lines.
The three families mentioned by Johnson, all from England, are:
- John Winder of New York ( -1675), immigrated in 1674
- Thomas Winder of New Jersey (1680-1731), immigrated in 1703
- John Winder of Maryland (1635-1698), immigrated in 1665
- Christopher Figan Stofel Winder (1787-1870), immigrated in 1816 from Switzerland
- James Winders (ca 1805- ), was in PA by 1833, from England
- John Burton Winder (1795-1866), immigrated in 1818 from England
- John Rex Winder (1821-1910), immigrated in 1853 from England
- John Winders (1844-1884), immigrated in 1870 from England
We clearly need a lot more participants, but we will get there eventually!