Hi all,
I'm currently researching a cluster of my DNA matches that all share a pair of ancestors in James T. Redfern and Rachel Faith Milberry. Looking at existing trees, James' birthplace and date of birth is all over the place (the best I can say at the moment is 'early 18th century'), but it seems fairly certain that he and Rachel settled in North Carolina: Randolph and possibly Anson county.
Now none of my matches seem to agree on who James' father was, but one of them claims he was the son of a Thomas Redfern (b.1701 in Bakewell Derbyshire) and his wife Ann Ruth Shepherd (b.1703 Tibshelf, Derbyshire), a.k.a. Chana Sarfarti de Pina.
As you might tell from the use of an alias by Ann, the story goes that she and Thomas were members of a crypto-Jewish community of former conversos, who originally came to England from Portugal by way of Amsterdam, with a brief stop in Recife during Dutch control of the colony in 1630-1654. In this telling, Thomas' parents were Isaac Fonseca de Recife (a.k.a. George Redfern) and Alice Dias de Milão (a.k.a. Alice Millington). The Fonsecas had supposedly made their money as merchants in London before buying a property in the Wirksworth Hundred in Derbyshire; it was there that they supposedly adopted the local surname Redfern.
Now I've run across this story many times while researching Redfern families for myself and others, and annoyingly it is never sourced by those who post it. It seems to be too detailed and widespread an account to have simply been made up by one person, so my hunch is that it's an oral history that has been passed down (which is of course not to say that it's necessarily a true history).
All attempts to get in direct contact with the people that have posted this story to places such as wikitree and geni.com have failed, so I'm posting here in case some Derbyshire-based local historians know any more details of the local Redferns that might either confirm or refute this story. It would be a big help in untangling (or entangling) a number of Redfern families.
Thanks in advance!
