McNitt

Country of origin:  Ulster (North Ireland), Scotland, England, The Netherlands, Germany, France
Most recent immigrant:  Barnard McNitt, 1720

My most recent McNitt ancestor to immigrate to the United States was Barnard McNitt (1700-1773) who emigrated from Ulster in 1720 and settled in Massachusetts.  Family surnames on my McNitt side include Chapin, Chase, Delano, Garfield, Handy, Hatch, McNitt, Merrill, Warner, Warren, and Wilder.

Scotch-Irish Presbyterian immigrants were not welcomed warmly into the established Puritan towns of Massachusetts, instead they were encouraged to move out to the frontier to establish new towns where they could serve as a human barrier against the Indians (At that time the frontier was no further away than what is now central Massachusetts).  For the next couple of generations the McNitts lived in Scotch-Irish communities and married into other Scotch-Irish families (Maklem and Rogers) that arrived in New England at around the same time as the McNitts.  Later generations began marrying into old New England families established by immigrants from England who arrived in the 1620-1660 era (including one family of ancestors who came over on the Mayflower).

Although the McNitt family is of Scotch-Irish origin, the family arrived in America so long ago that most of my grandfather's ancestors are from English families which settled in the American colonies during the 17th century, with a smattering of Dutch and Germans.  Along a couple of the lines, there are connections to Huguenot families that left France, lived in England for several generations and then moved to the American colonies.  There is also a small amount of Dutch ancestry (Van Dyck, Wiltse, and Marinus) leading back to families which emigrated from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam in the middle of the 17th century before that colony was taken over by the English and renamed New York.  On the Marinus line, there are a couple of marriages into families of German origin (Seibel and Ecker) who arrived in the American colonies in the early 1700s.

 The name McNitt comes from the Scottish clan MacNaghten or MacNaughton.  To learn more about my Scottish roots, you can visit the Clan MacNaghten website.