Nicholas Ackley was an early settler of Connecticut, the first of my ancestors in the New World. He arrived in Hartford between about 1650 and 1652, just 15 years after the town was founded.

When I launched the project of writing up the 400-year genealogy of my Ackley ancestry, it was clear that Nicholas would require more than a couple of days’ research and a brief summary. In this era of instant internet genealogies, Nicholas’s story had been badly mangled. Information about him was easy to find, but it too often was inconsistent or contradictory — and some was just plain wrong.

As I began to wade through it all, I realized two things. First, sharing the results of my research might help counter some of the worst mistakes about Nicholas and his family that appear over and over again in online genealogy sites. And, second, some of the gaps in information about the Ackleys could be at least partially filled by understanding their times, England in the 1600s and early colonial Connecticut from about 1635 to 1700.

Due out in late 2021, Discovering Nicholas Ackley details what documented facts about Nicholas and his family exist. Where firm facts are missing, “educated guesses” about what is most likely to be true are based on the norms and customs of the time — and carefully identified as probable, not certain. Setting the story of Nicholas in the context of his times also provides a much richer view of this early Ackley family than is possible with just names and dates.

Nancy A. Mattison, 7th great granddaughter of Nicholas and Hannah Ackley

UPDATE: In progress! The publisher had a glitch with production, so it’s delayed, but look for it by the end of January 2022.

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