35 Grant was mostly of border stock, but identified primarily with his Puritan forbears, Matthew and Priscilla Grant, who came to Massachusetts ca. 1630. Matthew Grant’s Puritan diary survives in the Connecticut State Library. Grant’s mother was Hannah Simpson, from a Pennsylvania family whose origin was unknown to the future President. He wrote in his memoirs, “I have little information about her ancestors … her family took no interest in genealogy. … on the other side my father took a great interest in the subject” (I, 22). His mother was in fact the granddaughter of John Simpson, who emigrated from northern Ireland to Pennsylvania in 1763. Grant’s New England father married Rachel Kelly of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
36 He was descended from Richard Harding, who came with his brothers to Massachusetts before 1640, and whose children and grandchildren intermarried with Puritan families and moved west to New York and Pennsylvania. His mother, Phoebe Dickerson, was of a Quaker family who settled in West Jersey before 1680.
37 The first Washingtons were two Royalist brothers of an old Northampton gentry family who came to Virginia, ca. 1656. The President’s mother, Mary Ball Washington, was descended from Col. William Ball, the second son of an armigerous Berkshire family who emigrated in 1650.
Thomas Jefferson’s paternal origins are unknown; his mother, Jane Randolph, was the daughter of Isham Randolph of a Royalist gentry family in Warwickshire which appeared in Virginia ca. 1650.
James Madison’s roots reached to an emigrant from Gloucestershire who patented 600 acres in 1653 and whose children intermarried with the Catlett, Conway and Taylor families.
James Monroe was descended from Capt. Andrew Monroe, a cavalry commander who emigrated after the battle of Preston in 1648.
William Henry Harrison was the son of Virginia’s governor Benjamin Harrison (1726-91), and grandson of Robert (King) Carter. His mother was Elizabeth Bassett, a relative of Washington.
John Tyler was the descendant of Henry Tyler, a Royalist who emigrated to Virginia ca. 1650. His maternal grandmother was Anne Contesse, a French Huguenot; all other American ancestors were armigerous English gentry who emigrated in the mid-17th century.