The identifications used for the ancient KNOWLES families  (those with progenitors arriving in the U.S. before the Revolutionary War)  has been adopted based on their country of departure and/or the original geographical area where they arrived and lived in the 'New World'.   In the U.S., the major KNOWLES lines are loosely described as the 'New England' KNOWLES and the 'Southern' KNOWLES.   Of course, after the Revolutionary War, many additional Knowles progenitors arrived in the U.S. in many different locations.  The KKNFA and the Knowles Database is open to ALL Knowles, all spellings.

The major New England KNOWLES lines can be further subdivided into the Rhode Island, the New Hampshire (Rockingham County, New Hampshire)  the Massachusetts (Barnstable County - Cape Cod) and the Pennsylvania (Bucks County, Pennsylvania) KNOWLES.  The progenitors for all of  aforementioned New England KNOWLES lines are apparently from England.

The 'Southern' Knowles can be divided into three or four sub categories as well; i.e., the Delaware/Maryland KNOWLES (commonly called the "Old Silverhead" line from England), the Southeast North Carolina KNOWLES (probably from Scotland) and the old Bute County, North Carolina KNOWLES/NOLES, plus a few others that are much smaller families (as far as is currently known).  In addition, there is the so-called White County, Tennessee, KNOWLES whose progenitor immigrated originally to Pennsylvania from Ireland, but migrated south to Virginia and ultimately to Tennessee after the Revolutionary War.

All of the KNOWLES families mentioned above are the product of progenitors who arrived in the New World before 1750 (most before 1700, some as early as 1630).  Obviously, there are many other KNOWLES patriarchs who arrived in America (and Canada) from Great Britain in more recent times.  However, the main focus of my effort to date has been the identification of the  descendants from the 'older' major KNOWLES lines listed above (but certainly not to the exclusion of the more recent arrivals).

The primary KNOWLES immigration into Canada via the U.S.  was by the 'New England' KNOWLES.  Many descendants of the original 'New England' KNOWLES progenitors migrated to Nova Scotia and the other nearby Canadian provinces before during and after the Revolutionary War.  There are were also several KNOWLES lines from Scotland and Ireland that immigrated directly to Canada.  Documentation of the information on these KNOWLES lines is still very limited.

A computerized database is underdevelopment that contains all the KNOWLES (all spellings) that can be identify, either as the result of  the research by Robert B. Noles or via the research and the resulting publications by others.  Of course, this database will probably always be a work in progress, but it can be accessed currently via an inquiry to the KKNFA at any time to look for KNOWLES (and other allied families) that have been documented so far.  There are already over 50,000 KNOWLES and perhaps 100,000 KNOWLES descendants in this database that contains over 300,000 total individuals.

Having provided the above information as a way of introducing the subject, the KKNFA would be happy to explore the KNOWLES database for KNOWLES lines that might be of interest to you.  Your inquiry should provide some specifics concerning what KNOWLES family you are looking for.  The more specifics the better, but as a minimum a few names, approximate dates, and possible locations could be enough to get a search underway.

I should warn you that there are still many thousands of KNOWLES that I know about from various publications and official documents who have NOT as yet been entered in the database;  therefore, the search for specific persons outside of the computerized KNOWLES families would currently be very cumbersome.  In addition, there are no doubt thousands more KNOWLES that I don't know about as yet!  Therefore, even if you have some good information on a specific KNOWLES family that you are interested in, there is no guarantee that I have uncovered their identity and connection to one of the known KNOWLES families as yet.

As a member of the KKNFA, you can keep up with the latest Knowles research.

Robert B. Noles
Director, KKNFA