This information is being posted by me, Roger Eldon Bissell, a presumed descendant of Captain John Bissell b 1591 of England and Connecticut. Here is the lineage, as I suppose it to be:
John Bissell b 1591, m 1 ca 1628 Mary Drake, m 2 ca 1642 Elizabeth Thompson
Thomas Bissell b ca 1630, m 1655 Abigail Moore
John Bissell b 1661, m 1689 Sarah (White) Loomis
Benjamin Bissell b 1701, m 1728 Mary Wattles
Joseph Bissell b 1731, m 1753 Hannah Partridge
John Partridge Bissell b 1757, m 1790 Temperance Stark
William Bissell b 1793, m 1 ca 1814 Lois Beebe
Pierce B. Bissell b 1817, m 1841 Sarah Van Boskirk
Richard Pierce Bissell b 1846, m. 1870 Frances Eliza Cloud
Richard Nathaniel Bissell b 1879, m 1905 Lena Eliza Rachel Almond
Eldon Keith Bissell b. 1925, m 1947 Deloris Ann Schellenberg
Roger Eldon Bissell b 1948 (and sister, Julie Ann Bissell Tupker b 1952)
We speculate that our great-great-grandfather Pierce B. Bissell is the son of William Bissell son of John Partridge Bissell, whose ancestry is well established--and his first wife, Lois Beebe, eldest daughter of Gideon Beebe of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Pierce B's sister Mary, born in 1815, was still living in 1880, and her census entry said both her parents were born in Connecticut; and her obituary said she was born in Erie, Pennsylvania and "from" Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. A Lois Beebe married in 1814 in Luzerne Co., PA to a "David Bissell," but we believe this was an error in interpreting the marriage news. (David Bissell first married several years later. He had a much younger brother William, and we believe that the marriage was reported as being between William Bissell and Lois Beebe, and the newspaper editor, knowing David's brother was too young, decided it must have been David who married her. Actually, instead, we believe that William Bissell of Coitsville OH and Mercer Co. PA met Lois's father in the army in late 1814, and that he is the one who married her in November.) We have thoroughly checked the 1830 census and found only one household with a teenage boy and girl, and that was William Bissell of Mercer Co. PA, not far from Erie, Pennsylvania. The Bissell genealogy by Edward P. Jones shows William as having married Sarah Cory in 1824 and lists only three of the six children he was known to have had. In 1824 William was already 31 years of age, and he could easily have had a first wife 10 years previously (about 1814) who gave birth to Pierce B and his sister Mary, then dying before the 1820 census. (William does not appear as head of household in the 1820 census, but in the 1820 census of Coitsville, OH, where William's family settled in 1800, there is an adult male with a young boy and girl in the household James Crooks, the step-father of William's second wife, Sarah Cory, and we surmise that these mystery people are William and Pierce B and Mary, and that several years later, after his marriage to Sarah, they all moved the several miles across the state line to Mercer Co. PA.)
Numerous specific facts link Pierce B. and Mary with the children from William's second marriage, so we feel very confident that we have found our connection to the Connecticut Bissell family descended from Captain John b 1591. However, despite our high level of confidence in this connection, it currently hangs not on documented facts, but on a huge amount of circumstantial evidence, so we are now pursing the DNA route for two reasons: (1) in order to more firmly establish our paternal descent from Captain John (rather than one of the other Bissell or Bizzell clans), and (2) more specifically, to establish a reference for any other male Bissell descendants of William's father or grandfather who can be located and persuaded to take part in this project and, we hope, to show that we have a common ancestor with them at the 5th or 6th generation (Joseph or John Partridge Bissell). (The sons from William's second family apparently have no surviving male descendants with the Bissell surname.)
If you have information or suggestions you think would be helpful in our quest, please feel free to contact me by email at rebissell AT aol.com. Also, feel free to peruse the Bissell Genealogy website at the URL listed below.
Best regards to all,
Roger Bissell, editor and publisher
Bissell Histories and Mysteries
http://www.rogerbissell.com
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