JIM WALTERS' HOME PAGE FOR THE PARMELEE FAMILY

(NOTE: The 'Welcome Page' does not update. To see what's new, click here.)

Welcome to my website dedicated to all members of the Parmelee family. From Palmerlee to Parmaly to Parmale to Parmley -- and there are nearly 200 other ways to spell it -- the Parmelee family is virtually all one.

Here’s your chance to get acquainted with the rest of us, learn our history and share your branch’s news with the rest of us.

Just about everyone with this name in the United States, Canada and the Philippines today is linked by blood, adoption or slavery to the John Parmelees Sr. and Jr., two of the founders of Guilford, Conn., who immigrated from Lewes, a small town south of London, in the 1630s. (That's John Sr.'s name from the founders' Covenant, at right, but note that this is not his signature.) And the rest can be traced to a Parmley family from Middleton-in-Teesdale, in northern England, who arrived in Pennsylvania shortly before the Civil War.

Because there are only two main families, and the uniqueness of our name -- as opposed to all the different Smiths and Johnsons, for example -- our roots are easier to trace than most. We’re your typical American family: preachers and convicts, slaves and slave owners, politicians and suffragettes, farmers and businessmen, soldiers and prisoners of war -- even clockmakers, authors and lighthouse keepers. At least five towns -- in South Dakota, North Carolina, Florida, Kentucky and another in Arizona that is now a ghost town -- were named for us.

I've been collecting facts, pictures and stories about the family for about 25 years now and have more than 22,000 Parmelees and their spouses in my database. And I've been collecting family pictures and other memorabilia too. (The oldest portrait that I've run across, of Ebenezer (1738-1802) of Guilford, is at the left.. ... And that's Joel's (1679/80-1748) tombstone in Durham, Conn., the oldest headstone that survives.)

If you're not sure where you and yours belong, I'll do my best to figure out which twig in the family tree is yours.

Meanwhile, see what's going on with the rest of the family -- by clicking here -- and stop back frequently!

A total of Parmelee cousins have visited this page since March 27, 1997.