Name/Title
AU Smith, Malcolm Lambert - 1975-10-31 letter to Elsie Pauline (Lambert) WarfelEntry/Object ID
1989.2.8Context
3332 M St. S.E.
Washington, D.C., 20019
October 31, 1975
Dear Pauline,
Your good letter of last January has gone unanswered for too long. This summer we attended a conference in Stockholm and spent four weeks in travel in Norway, Denmark, Scotland and England. While there I thought often of our English ancestry and wished I had the time, and necessary information, to do some research there. But I realize that there is much more I need to know about our lines on this side. Also, in September we went back to Fruitland at Ozark and helped my brother Homer with applepicking again. It was good to be in that big house again but it is sadly lacking in maintenance since it is only used for a guest house.
Now that I am no longer working at the Navy, I have begun doing a bit more digging for old family records. At the Library of Congress I have found two interesting Lambert items: In 1838 Edward R. Lambert published a History of the Colony of New Haven in which he had "A Genealogical Sketch of the Lambert Family of Milford, Conn." A 1933 publication, Roger Lambert and his Descendants, compiled by Ira C. Lambert of Toms River, N.J. speaks of the Lamberts of New Jersey and especially those around Elizabethtown. He refers to the 1838 book and claims to have carefully studied all the Lambert families that settled along the coast. Yet it is strange that the names and dates for the various families do not seem to match at all with our family records of John Lambert and his ten children who we think lived at Elizabethtown, N.J. in the 1700s before moving to North Carolina.
I note that your father started his "Record of the Lambert Family in the U.S.A." by saying "Part of this information was copied from a book brought to Ohio from North Carolina. Can you identify that book? Would it be one that you have? I would like to separate the information we have into two categories of what is well-validated and what has been handed down orally but without verification. Since Uncle Ott recognized there were some limitations,
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can you examine the sources he worked from and identify the part which is firm and other items which may need more research?
Of course it may be that this Ira Lambert was really only able to report on prominent Lamberts (I note most of his seem to have been Presbyterians) and our line may have been much less notable or simply not in the church records he examined. Do you think our line was probably Quaker in faith at that time? Anyway I'd like to know your thinking and how solid you feel our record to be.
Our Smith line now seems to be well established back to Abram Smith who helped found the first Baptist church in Cape May, N.J. in 1712! It was later that that family became Quaker.
I hope it has been a pleasant year for you. With all best wishes
Sincerely,
{Malcolm}
Malcolm Smith
