Many years ago John2 Scudder received the designation John (J) by the Scudder Association for being the immigrant ancestor of an extensive line of Scudder descendants in America referred to as the Scudder (J) line. He has a great posterity but until the 1990s his true English origins were obscured.
John2 Scudder (J) was the first of the family to arrive in the western hemisphere. The early life story of John2 Scudder (J) of Barnstable would be incomplete without mentioning the extraordinary times in which he lived and his extended family relationships of historical interest.
When someone does something out of the ordinary, especially when they engage in a cause bigger than themselves for which they know they may give up their lives, curiosity begs to explore their motivations and what influences formed their decisions.
The year 2019 is also the bicentennial year of the first of the four Lathrop/Scudder missionaries to enter service to Ceylon. We honor them and their exceptional family with several articles in this December 2019 issue of the Scudder Family Historical & Biographical Journal.
The Lathrop sisters’ parents’ heritage begins with Rev. John1 Lothrop who fled from England’s persecutors and from his incarceration for his religion, arriving in Massachusetts in 1634. (In order to promote the accurate biographical data for Rev. John Lothrop and his family,