Bridgett, you'll find conflicting opinions on the historical origins of the Hamrick family and many of those conflicting opinions are held by descendants of Hoyle and Bulah Hamrick. (your G-G-Grand parents)
My ideas and opinions have been shaped by the research that my mother Mallie and her sister Martha started decades ago and is still being carried on today by my Sister Yvonne Kimbrell-Gray. The research that they conducted over all those years has been well documented in many places and in many forms including courthouse records, US census records, ships logs and more.
Much misinformation has been injected into the currently popular beliefs of some family members because of books that were written over the years that detailed or repeated false or misleading data on blood lines and places of origin. The research conducted by Mallie, Martha and Yvonne has been ongoing for close to 50 years and I have complete trust in their findings. One book that caused a lot of the misinformation to be spread was a inaccurate accounting of the families origins that your G-G-Grand Father Hoyle had read that was written by a man who was careless in his research and in fact even had Hoyle listed incorrectly in his book. The book listed him as Ira Hoyle when in fact his name was Ira Hoyle Hamrick... but grandpa believed the story anyway. Mallies research later proved the book to be completely off base in the details of where the family came from.
In
This Topic I posted an excerpt from an article written by Mom and Yvonne back in 2005 about 'Our First Hamrick Forefather in America', Hans George Hamrick. In the article she detailed how he left his native Germany in 1730 and arrived in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1731 and married a lady named Nancy Cook and had 24 children.
You can read Mallies original article
HERE.This image is a photocopy of the ships log for the ship 'Snow Louther' that Hans George traveled on as he came to America, you'll see his last name listed as Hamerich and you'll also see his oldest son Paul listed in the 'Under Sixteen' category. Mom tells me that according to her research Paul being listed that way probably means that he was very close to 16 years old because they tended to not list younger children in the ships logs and manifests.
Over the next weeks and months we will be posting more family history information including several documents that are being researched by Yvonne now.