The two histories for Gardner give some limited info on where the "Early Settlers" came from but did not delve further into their past. I tried to do so. Also, there were some blanks for some of the last names of the wives so I tried to fix that, as well. Given that the books dealt with people essentially living in the 1800's, my other goal was to determine what happened to them and find out where their people spread to. I decided to track everyone found in the 1850 census in addition to the original settlers. It was a big but tractable project made possible by the abundance of information now available online through the Familysearch database. I later added the 1870 & 1900 censuses and found that many new names could be included, especially the Irish/Swedish/Finnish immigrant families. It now includes people from the surrounding towns, too. However, I merely added them and their ancestry if they were in the town vital records (from the series for MA recording data up to 1849) and they connected in somewhere into the Massachusetts tree. I didn't tend to track them if their origins were from the other local states. It currently has about 200,000 people. I have provided the latest version in a GEDCOM format for you to download here --->>> Gardner Genealogy to use on your genealogy programs. For those of you without a program, I have also uploaded it to Ancestry.com.
You can review the individual early settlers below. I have listed them in alphabetical order (1878 history is mostly alphabetical). However, I have only listed the heads of the families. Their children & wives can be viewed under their links. It is possible that I have corrected some of the data found in the links below since initially setting up this page.
You can review the individual early settlers below. I have listed them in alphabetical order (1878 history is mostly alphabetical). However, I have only listed the heads of the families. Their children & wives can be viewed under their links. It is possible that I have corrected some of the data found in the links below since initially setting up this page.