Note:  This is a January 2021 revision to the original post from 2013.

As with earlier depictions of ancestor lineages, I have used a timeline chart below, to show the life spans of each Depew ancestor over the last three centuries. In the chart you can see Walter (Gaultier) Depew on the left who was our ancestor living first in France and then England. He is followed in line by his son, John Walter Depew, who was our immigrant ancestor to America arriving in New Jersey, before the Revolutionary War, and then by his son John W. Depew Jr.,  and then his son Edward and so forth.

Dozens of dedicated researchers tried for many years to identify the parents of Isaac Newton Depew (IND), but without success due to lack of records. Circumstantial evidence of the right time period and the right location in East Tennessee seemed to point to a connection with the John W. Depew line, but without hard proof. Recently, however, I was able to use DNA forensic analysis to develop a very strong case that the connection was  through John W. Depew, Jr., and his son, Edward H. Depew. Although this analysis is still not absolute positive proof, it is still the best currently available identification without records. My DNA forensic analysis was based on the same approach and technology now being used by some law enforcement agencies to solve cold case crimes.

Again to give a better perspective of when our Depew ancestors lived across the three centuries, I’ve added major wars to the timeline. As I continue to describe family stories of this Depew lineage, you might find it useful to refer back to this chart to get a feel for the time period in which they lived.

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