These Ancestral Tablets are the result of the labor of more than ten years at spare moments amid the duties of an active ministry.

The purpose has been, without writing a biography, to identify each ancestor with the times in which he lived and those with whom he associated, that he may seem not merely a name, but a real personality and that to some extent the living may be brought into sympathy with the dead.

The plan of the work needs but little explanation. Commencing with the American progenitor of the Welles family, there is a history of each generation and of the families with which through marriage it was allied. This causes the greater portion of the record to relate to the mothers through whom the family has been perpetuated.

Enlightened public sentiment is rapidly placing woman on an equality with man, and the more the laws of heredity are understood the greater will become the recognized importance of maternal ancestry.

For various reasons, but especially because the compiler has wrought for the instruction of his kindred, rather than the information of the general public, the record is not encumbered with constant references to the sources of his information, many of which would be found inaccessible, to most of his readers, without an expenditure of both money and time. In the place of such references, there are copious foot notes, historical, geographical and explanatory; the perusal of which, it is believed, will prove instructive and interesting. An index systematically arranged renders reference easy and facilitates research.

The labor of preparation has been pursued as recreation, and in its prosecution information has been gathered from every available source accessible through the genealogical literature of America, or so far as possible, through family records, official documents and the written or verbal testimony of the living.

The compiler has sought to ascertain the truth, and has made record only of what he believes to be the truth, but as the purest purpose, however assiduously pursued, and the utmost caution, however constantly maintained, do not insure infallibility; it would be passing strange, if in copying dates and names well nigh innumerable, there was never a slip of the pen, and equally strange if in arranging facts collated from many sources, there was never an error of judgment. The reader should, therefore, remember that the writer was not Divinely inspired, and if errors are discoverd in the work he has wrought should regard them as the result of the imperfection that invariably characterizes the labors of mankind.

THEODORE W. WELLES.

PATERSON, N. J., 1893.

Surnames as family names were unknown, except in rare cases, before the middle of the eleventh century and their use was not firmly established until after the thirteenth. They originally designated occupation, estate, place of residence or some particular thing that related to the person, and not unfrequently were formed by adding the word son or its equivalent to the name of the father. The patronymic Welles is from the Norman French valles, a valley. It first occurs with the suffix de in the ablative plural de vallibus, from the valleys--subsequently as de Welles--and finally Welles.