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Foreword
I shall write in the first person, after the style of a personal diary. It is easier than to try to be impersonal all the way through. My appearing egotistical is of little consequence as I am not writing for the public at large. It is mostly for my own amusement and pastime.
A number of years ago it was an ambition of mine to compile a complete family record of the Gilcrest family, reaching back, if possible, beyond my Grandfather Gilcrest's day. Along with this I had hoped to gain some history of the origins, both of the name and family, especially in America. But I met with such indifferent response to my efforts, and at the same time became involved in increasing professional duties and family cares, that the task was laid aside as rather a hopeless undertaking.
However as the years have come and gone, and I am come out of days of labor into days of leisure, I have been reviewing the scrappy materials that had been secured in that effort, and will try to get them together in such shape as may render them of interest in a future day, possibly, to some one. Be that as it may, it will furnish me much not unwholesome pastime, that my days of leisure may not be altogether days of loneliness.
Some of my investigations in this renewed effort of late, have led me into openings that aroused
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curiosity somewhat, and that curiosity has prompted excursions into the more distant past not at all anticipated in the first conception of my plan.
It may not interest others in the least, but, to me, these excursions have furnished pleasure; not wholly in the matter of securing what I am looking for, but also in finding many other interesting things by the way. I refer to the fact of the discovery of more ancient origins than was expected, the connections of which are of considerable historical interest.
It is not expected to make any part of this memorandum complete, not to say perfect; not even the record of Grandfather William Gilcrest's family. This is due to the indifference of many people, and to discrepancies in the data furnished by others. Many of these discrepancies it is possible to eliminate by comparison with other data, but not all. The most of them belong to minor details, rather than to more important facts; so, it is hoped the general features will be, in a large measure, correct as far as the record goes.
Beyond Grandfather William Gilcrest's day I have been able to obtain only meager information as regards his relations in America; and also very little relative to my mother's ancestry, the Guthries. That latter part, however, would concern only the line of her own descendants; but such as I have will be preserved in their own proper place in these pages.
With these words of explanation and apology the purposed task will proceed. If you care to read farther I warn you. Do not expect too much.
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