He discovered c.30 more abstracts concerning this family in various manuscript collections, and concluded that Myles must have been descended from this Standish family of Ormskirk and the Isle of Man, with Huan of the IOM as the great-grandfather of the Will, the descendant of an undetermined younger son of Standish of Standish many generations earlier. (See Some Recent Investigations Concerning the Ancestry of Capt. Myles Standish, NEHGR, Vol. 68, Boston, 1914; Captain Myles Standish: His Lost Lands and Lancashire Connections, A New Investigation, Manchester Univ. P, 1920.)

This new version of his ancestry, totally divorced from Duxbury, was surprisingly accepted by many descendants, who jettisoned the old family traditions. The theory is wrong. Many original documents in the Hesketh of Rufford Muniments (particularly DDHe 59/52, 58, 61, 69; 26/124, 60/48) prove that the lands owned by this family could not possibly be those claimed by Myles in his Will. Some were inherited by Robert Hesketh, a High Sheriff, when he married and outlived the widow of the man who had bought the Standish lands, and by 1609 he had bought all the rest.

The Standish Monument

Duxbury, Massachusetts

The deeds were witnessed by various local worthies, most of them closely related to Standish’s, and Myles must have known all about the sales. The “remarkable coincidence” of the appearance of lands of two l6th.c Standish families in the same places turns out to have been the almost inevitable consequence sooner or later of the re-amalgamation of remnants of the l2th.c inheritances of the children of Warine de Busli, Baron of Penwortham, one of whose grand-daughters received the manor of Standish (and other lands) on her marriage to Radulphus, who founded the line.

G. V. C Young (Myles Standish, First Manx American, Manx-Svenska, 1984) accepted Porteus’ ancestry and previous theories of Myles being from Ellanbane, and argued that he must have been born there in c.1584, the older brother of William Jr., b. 1586. The theory is flawed. A 1604 Manx document (Liber. Vast., Kissack notes. 8, 22) naming William as the owner of intack lands, overlooked or ignored by Young, ultimately proves that the elusive older brother was John (d. mid-1607), leaving no space in this family for Myles. Incidentally Myles’ first son was Charles, not John, as Young claims. (Details of the proof will be presented in Part 5).

Anyone who wishes to read a summary of the above theories and an almost immediate and highly critical response to Young’s theory and a Manx connection in general should visit the Isle of Man web site, “Was Myles Standish a Manxman?” Rev. R. Kissack, 1986/7” -“Huan” of Ormskirk should be “Hugh”. His conclusion was “not proven, hardly probable, but conceivably possible”, elsewhere “there never was a Manx Myles”.)

The “Isle of Man” at the end of Myles’ list was almost certainly the one in Croston, Lancashire, owned jointly by Standish in the l3th.c and l4th.c (see. DP397/13/1).

The only facts known about his immediate ancestry and youth have come entirely from 17th.c New England sources: