It has now been several years since this Association blog went public.

Needless to say, the response has not been overwhelming. What has been rewarding is that each week there is an inquiry from someone about their family. As a result, ancestors have been tracked down, people have been connected to family they did not know and pictures and stories have been posted for perpetuity.

Arp 2010

Soon, the East Indian Trading Company will be sending this old English Gentleman back to the States, but before I do, I am going on one more Last Great Adventure to Egypt. I will travel with an armed escort of Bengal Troops and a letterof safe passage through Pakistan, signed by Lord Ellenborough of India himself, by caravan down to the Port city of Karachi from the city of Kandahar, Afghanistan. There, I will board an Indian Sailing Vessel to the Port city of Alexandria, sailing around the countries of Oman and Yemen to the Red Sea and through the new Suez Canal. In the Port city of Alexandria, I am going to link up with a current expedition team, exploring the lost underwater city of Cleopatra and her Palace. The city lies somewhere inside the Eastern Harbor of Alexandria. Historians have said that the city collapsed and fell into the sea after several earthquakes; taking with it the famous characters of the world such as Alexander the Great,
Cleopatra, Caesar, and Mark Antony. We are in search of Cleopatra’s sun boat that exits somewhere inside her palace. Also in the area, there are three wrecks of Napoleon’s Navy. The “Orient”, which was the largest ship in his fleet, the “Serieuse” and the “Artemise”. The goal of the Expedition, is to find the “Orient” and bring up the lost Gold that was stolen from Malta while Napoleon was on his way to Egypt.

I will then board a Tramp Steamer down the Nile River to the city of Cairo. There I will visit Sakkara, the vast necropolis of old ancient Memphis. Sakkara, was the first step pyramid complex, the oldest substantial monumental structure to be built of finished stone. The Teti’s pyramid, with its subterranean chambers containing walls inscribed with columns of hieroglyphs, known as the Pyramid texts. I will visit the great pyramids of Giza and the enigmatic sphinx. i will travel down Al-Muizz Street, which is one of the oldest streets in Cairo, and is known to have the greatest concentration of medieval architectural treasures in the Islamic world. And last, I will enjoy a sunset camel ride and Bedouin dinner in the desert before I leave.

May 2010

Well, I finally made it home in the states, safely last night. The side trip to Egypt was as great of an adventure as the last four months in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. Sherine, my tour guide, was outstanding. She was a wealth of information not only on the city sites and landmarks, but also had an in depth knowledge of the history of Egypt. The last night in Egypt was memorable, with the camel ride out in the desert, the Egyptian dinner and the light show of the Pyramids. And for that, I want to thank her for her service. The three days in Egypt were a cross section of pyramid exploring, underwater exploring, and exploring the streets of Old Cairo.

Until next Adventure, dispatches from the Middle East….

Capt. John R. Prigmore
Fellow Adventurer, World Traveler and noted Explorer

In Nichols History and Antiquities of Leicestershire, there is reference to John Pridmore being one of five freeholders in this estate in 1630.

This is the oldest known reference to a Pridmore in England. Pictured below is the village today in Leicestershire.

In Dec 1991 June Rayfield Welch wrote this piece on Prigmore Origins.

“Probably the first evidence of the oirgins of the Prigmores that came into my hands was a version of Miles Prigmore’s History. I don’t know how I got it, perhaps from Elsie Smith Costells. The folliwng is perhaps the first version of that valuable item.

One day, about a century ago, the beloved teacher Sarah Prigmore told nephew Miles Prigmore the family history as she understood it. (She is to be trusted on matters within her personal knowledge, but some events prior to about 1800 are myth.)

Miles spelling is sometimes poor and he made a least one mistake: Joseph Jr. married Kesiah Murray, not Moore, but his is what he wrote on letterhead that read David Shanks, phone 122, Den T. Prigmore, Shanks and Prigmore, Real Estate Loans and Insurance, Sweet Spring, MO: Read More

I believe that we can trace three former slave families, now Prigmores, to John Prigmore III born in 1820 in McMinn County, Tennessee. These are the families of Thomas Prigmore, born 1817, John Prigmore, born 1819 and Julia Prigmore (maiden name and spouse unknown), born 1845.

A the end of the American Civil War, 9 Apr 1865, slaves were freed and it was often the case that the families adopted the surnames of their owners, having no record of their own family names.

Joseph Prigmore [1750-1818], great grandson of John Pridmore [1661-1745] moved to Tennessee from Pensylvania in about 1793 and settled in Knox County. Joseph Prigmore is listed with two slaves on the 1806 tax roles. In his will in 1818, he bequests ‘one Negro woman, one Negro boy’ to his wife Kizziah. He also notes ‘four Negros and some money due from William and Isham Cox.’ The property of his estate went to his eldest son Joseph Prigmore, Jr., [1795-1830] who had no heirs. His other sons were Ephraim Prigmore 1783 and Thomas Prigmore 1787.

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I have been corresponding with Steve Skye about the Huguenot connection. By way of  connection he sent me the following note:

“I’m president and historian at a history museum here in the Hudson Valley, NY. The museum is in Cuddebackville and around 1909 D. W. Griffith made some films here. He perfected some of his filming technique right here. When he was up from New York City he stayed at the Caudebec Inn owned by C. V. Predmore. (Lestor Predmore was his son.) This line of Predmores came from New Jersey. Mr. Predmore was fond of showing Griffith great locations for the scenes Griffith would film. So, the Predmores (and Prigmores) played an important part in the creation of the American film industry.”

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The information shown for most of the individuals in the family tree is pretty basic. It has been my practice to fill in an approximate birth date for everyone…some could well be off by a decade, but my experience is an estimate is better than nothing. When it comes to maiden names, if unknown I have used the spouses surname, again on the theory it better than nothing.

For my line of Prigmore’s, I have studied a lot of sources and have included deed references, will references, stories and where available pictures. If you look at the Profile of William Hail Prigmore, 1908 you will see and example.

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The search engine on this website is different than the search engine on www.ancestry.com or the likes of google. It is was specifically designed to search GEDCOM files, the standard for ancestry work. It can search many fields in addition to peoples names, such as dates and places of birth, using specifiers like includes, starts with, before, after, etc.

In addition to the Pr-more Family Tree, a number of other Family trees can be searched using this search engine or a search can include all of the sources. Read More

The Church of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) commonly known as the Mormon Church has been a pioneer in the collection of source materials and developing standards and software for genealogical research. My first questions was why would the church make this huge commitment.

One of the tenants of the LDS beliefs is that only those who have been baptized and live by the tenants of the church will enjoy eternal salvation. Well lots of people did not know about the church, as it was only founded in the 1800’s in America; are they all to be denied salvation? For the Morman Church the answer is no, we can baptize the dead. For more on this see http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_BaptDead.shtml#why.

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