Hi Michelle:
The Nurse family directly related to Francis and Rebecca appear to be well-documented, particularly with relation to their descendants. The only questionable area is Francis Nurse's ancestry - he likely arrived as an indentured servant, and his parentage isn't really that clear.
The Towne family is much more clear, and there is a Towne Family Association that has carried out a large amount of research on Rebecca's side. However, much of their resources, for the time being, are at cost. Still, they are at:
I've been using mostly free resources, such as:
The Towne Family Memorial:
http://www.archive.org/stream/townefamilymemor00hubb/#page/n5/mode/2up
The research of S.J. Walker, who compiled work on the family in 2002:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~walkersj/Nurse.htm
Right now I'm working on events closer in to the arrest, trial, and execution, and there is a published day-by-day record I've been working from entitled "The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege":
http://books.google.cl/books?id=TvxES1lB6XoC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA...
Plus there are numerous other online resources that I've been posting attribution on - you'll have to look into Rebecca's timeline to find these.
Basically, when researching a tree, you'll want to try to find what are called Primary and Secondary sources of information. The genealogist at the Thomas Rogers Society passed this along as a guide toward my family eventually hunting down proof of descent. It's a pretty good set of criteria to start working with, whether you are hunting down descent from a "Mayflower-child", a Salem Witch Trial victim, or an early Ostrogoth king:
Primary Sources:
Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to what actually happened during an historical event or time period. A primary source reflects the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer.
- Vital Records of or information collected by government agencies. Many kinds of records (births, deaths, marriages; permits and licenses issued; census data; etc.) document conditions in the society.
- Diaries, journals, speeches, interviews, letters, memos, manuscripts and other papers in which individuals describe events in which they were participants or observers.
- Memoirs and autobiographies. These may be less reliable than diaries or letters since they are usually written long after events occurred and may be distorted by bias, dimming memory or the revised perspective that may come with hindsight. On the other hand, they are sometimes the only source for certain information.
- Records of organizations. The minutes, reports, correspondence, etc. of an organization or agency serve as an ongoing record of the activity and thinking of that organization or agency.
- Published materials (books, magazine and journal articles, newspaper articles) written at the time about a particular event. While these are sometimes accounts by participants, in most cases they are written by journalists or other observers. The important thing is to distinguish between material written at the time of an event as a kind of report, and material written much later, as historical analysis.
- Photographs, audio recordings and moving pictures or video recordings, documenting what happened.
- Physical objects (such as grave stones)
Secondary Sources:
A secondary source is a work that interprets or analyzes an historical event or phenomenon. It uses primary sources and is at least one step removed from the event. if you were to look at the bibliography of this article you would see that the author's research was based on both primary sources such as vital records and other primary documents, speeches and personal letters. Published books (NEHGR, Mayflower Families Through 5 Generations, textbooks and encyclopedias are also examples of secondary sources.
Generally Unaccepted Sources:
- We (meaning the Mayflower-related societies, apparently) do not accept “Pedigrees of Some of the Emperor Charlemagne’s Descendants” Vol. I, II , or III
- References to Membership in other societies are not acceptable as proof
- LDS
- Group Sheets
- Internet genealogies or family genealogies that do not reflect primary sources
- Unpublished genealogies
Unaccepted Publications:
- We (again, Mayflower related societies, apparently) do not accept “Pedigrees of Some of the Emperor Charlemagne’s Descendants” Vol. I, II , or III
- “Magna Charta Barons” and “Americans of Royal Descent” by Browing
- “Magna Charta” by Wurts
- “Compendium of American Genealogy” by Virkus
Hope that this helps... -Ben.
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