My tenth-great-grandfather John Prettiman (1610–1688) was an immigrant to the English colonies in the New World. While the connections between him and his American descendants are relatively solid and well-researched, the connection between him and his English birthparents has so far been impossible to definitively prove. I can only hope that some day a document might come to light that resolves this lack of certainty. Until then, as my cousin Pat Coonan stated in his 2005 work Minnesota Prettymans, 

…a process of elimination must be used to speculate on who the actual ancestor must be. Probabilities indicate that the John Prettiman that came to America is the son of Robert Prattyman and Dorothie Goddard.

I had originally intended this post to be a summary of all that we know of John Prettiman, but before too long I was astonished to discover all of the information that survives about John Prettiman after his arrival in Maryland. Accordingly, I’ll limit this post to just the events of John Prettiman’s first decade or so in the New World, from his arrival in Maryland in the mid 1630s to his departure for Virginia in 1643. Continue reading →