My shared step-ancestral connection with Betty and Barney Hill — via Henry Dow who died on April 21, 1659 in New Hampshire.
Eunice Barrett, aka Eunice Elizabeth “Betty” Barrett aka Betty Hill was born in New Hampshire in 1919. She married Barney Hill and they became the most famous couple in UFO history after having been abducted by extraterrestrial aliens in 1961.
Eunice Barrett was my 4th great-grandmother, born in Stratford, Connecticut in 1771. She was not the Eunice Elizabeth “Betty” Barrett of the Betty and Barney Hill UFO encounter — my Eunice Barrett married Thomas Cooley. However…
Betty Hill and I are connected in a roundabout way through Betty Hill’s 8th great-grandfather Henry Dow. I found this while looking for a Barrett connection in spite of it being a longshot once I knew that the two Eunice Barretts were different women, born in different states a century and a half apart.
Technically Betty Hill was the “step- 8th great-granddaughter of the wife of my 9th great-grandfather Richard Kimball.
Richard Kimball of Rattlesden, Suffolk, England married Ursula Scott and lived in England as a wheelwright. They emigrated to America on the ship “Elizabeth” in 1634 from Suffolk, England to Watertown, Massachusetts. Their daughter Sarah was born in Watertown. Sarah Kimball was my 8th great-grandmother.
Richard’s wife Ursula died in 1659 and he remarried, this time to Margaret (Cole) Dow, the widow of Henry Dow who also died in 1659.
Henry Dow was born sometime around 1908 in Runham, Norfolk, England. In 1631 Henry Dow married Joane, the widow of Roger Nudd. Henry and Joane were married in Ormsby, Norfolk, England, and later they emigrated to America and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts.
After Joane died, Henry married Margaret Cole so she became Margaret Dow. After he died eighteen years later, his widow Margaret remarried, this time to my 9th great-grandfather Richard Kimball.
So there is no blood-connection between me and Betty Hill, at least not through Henry Dow. Just a whole lot of widows and widowers marrying other widows and widowers creating a labyrinth in the family trees of everyone involved, forever interconnecting people by marriage who were not related by blood.
Henry Dow was the 8th great-grandfather of Betty Hill, aka Eunice Barrett, aka Eunice Elizabeth “Betty” Barrett of the Betty and Barney Hill UFO encounter.
Henry Dow was the “previous husband of the 2nd wife of my 9th great-grandfather Richard Kimball.” Richard’s 1st wife Ursula was my 9th great-grandmother.
My 4th great-grandmother Eunice Barrett does not factor into the Henry Dow or Betty Hill connection except for sharing a name with Betty Hill aka Eunice Barrett and triggering my plunge into the rabbit hole of genealogical musings.
We know that extraterrestrials follow family trees and bloodlines. But do they also branch out with their fishing nets to capture the friends, families, neighbors, ex-wives and husbands?
Did Henry Dow encounter extraterrestrials? Was he the point in which extraterrestrials entered into our families and extended families?
Like Betty and Barney Hill, I was abducted not just once, but many, many times, and I’ve shared a few of my experiences in Alien Nightmares: Screen Memories of UFO Alien Abductions.
Primary genealogical research sources, from which I fanned out:
- History of the Town of Hampton, New Hampshire, Volume 2, 1638-1892, by Joseph Dow, edited and published by his daughter in 1893, published in Salem, Massachusetts.
- History of the Kimball Family in America, from 1634 to 1897, by Leonard Allison Morrison and Stephen Paschall Sharples, published by Damrell & Upham in 1897, in Boston, Massachusetts.
- Margaret Cole on FamilySearch.org
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KD75-5SX - Henry Dow on FamilySearch.org
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KD75-5SX - Margaret (Cole) Kimball on Geni.com
https://www.geni.com/people/Margaret-Kimball/6000000007512715650 - Florence Dora Rollins on FamilySearch.org
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KKMW-JRY - Dora Lavina Dow on FamilySearch.org
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KG8L-4KW - Various Ancestral Lines of James Goodwin and Lucy (Morgan) Goodwin of Hartford, CT, Volume 2, compiled by Frank Farnsworth Starr for James J. Goodwin, published by The Tuttle, Moremouse & Taylor Press in 1915, in Hartford, Connecticut.