The Shoemaker's Children
Eight Generations of the May Family
1567 - 1813

Fred T. May
ftmay@jumpnet.com

A book about the first eight generations of the May family that entered the Big Sandy Valley in 1800 has been published by the Gateway Press, Inc. of Baltimore, MD and is available from the author. The book provides extensive information about the lives and times of the family, extending over a period of almost three hundred years from their early roots in a remote village in the greater Rhine Valley in Western Europe to the homestead of John May (1760-1813) on Shelby Creek in present-day Pike County, Kentucky. Facsimiles from original church registers that chronicle the births, baptisms, confirmations, marriages and deaths of family members document their history. The family name in their homeland, a region of present-day Germany along the middle Rhine, was spelled Meÿ. Dating from the time of the Protestant Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, most of the men in the direct line of the Meÿ immigrants had traditionally supported their families by working as "Schuhmachers." Hence, the author refers to all of the descendants of the first known member of the family, Hans Peter Meÿ, as "The Shoemaker's Children." Prior to revelations in this book, the descendants of John and Sarah May, early settlers in Floyd County, Kentucky, had only vague traditions telling of their immigrant ancestors and their early years in America. We now know that on September 5, 1748, in the port of Philadelphia, a family of seven weary immigrants from the Rheinland Palatinate disembarked from the ship Edinburgh and the history of the May family in America began. Frantz Peter, later to become the father of John (Johannes) May, along with his mother, two of his brothers and three of his sisters, were in the group.

One of the brothers, Johann Daniel, had no children, but the other brother, Johann Leonhardt (Leonard) had a large family, and many of them remained in the Virginia and Pennsylvania area for a number of generations. Since John was the only son of Frantz Peter, his May line moved west with John’s migration to present-day Tennessee (1789) and Kentucky (1800).

TO ORDER A COPY OF "THE SHOEMAKER’S CHILDREN"
Send a check or money order for $38.50, postage paid, to:

Fred T. May

4553 Golf Vista Dr.

Austin, TX 78730