Welcome! This website is designed to facilitate and share a family history project entitled Bygone Days of the Ancestry, Lives and Times of McOmber Patriarchs and their Families that was being compiled by Niki Harrison McOmber and others. The work is a free, non-commercial labor-of-love often referred to as Bygone Days. With the advent of the online genealogy database entitled Family Tree via FamilySearch.org, this Bygone Days project is being transferred to Family Tree as a series of short stories attached to pertinent individuals. Family Tree provides a much better forum to collaborate and present family history information, stories, photos, documentation, etc.. In the meantime, this website is still being maintained and provides valuable information during the transition to Family Tree.
Bygone Days
The main body of Bygone Days focuses on 14 generations of McOmber Patriarchs and 14 ancestral lines of the spouses of these patriarchs who are the ancestors of Niki Harrison McOmber. A brief sketch of each McOmber Patriarch is presented under the tab McOmber Patriarchs. The full biographies are divided into volumes: one volume for each McOmber Patriarch and his immediate family, and subsequent volumes dealing with the ancestries of the spouses of McOmber Patriarchs. The volumes combine genealogical data with local and regional histories that are pertinent to each volume, thus forming a saga of McOmber Patriarchs that span several centuries. As the project advances, Historical Gems are presented on this website. The Historical Gems are archived and available under the Archive tab.
The Saga of McOmber Patriarchs
The saga of McOmber Patriarchs starts with the historical account of two Macomber brothers who, as the story goes, flee a small village outside of Glasgow, Scotland after killing two English tax collectors that molested a young Scottish village girl. The brothers settle near the southern coast of England, as far away from Scotland as possible. The Macomber surname appears in the shire/county of Devon (Devonshire) in the mid 1500s when Anglican Church records begin to be preserved. Macombers subsequently spread into the adjoining shires/counties of Dorset, Cornwall and Hampshire during the late 1500s and 1600s. Four generations of McOmber Patriarchs are identified in Devonshire and Dorsetshire starting in 1560 as preparations are made for English colonization in America.
The saga then shifts to the Americas when in 1638 two McOmber brothers, William and John, along with William’s wife and child, Ursula and Thomas, sail to Plymouth Colony. Five generations of McOmber Patriarchs and their families live in the American colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts. These McOmber Patriarchs marry descendants of Mayflower passengers and other early American colonizers, and participate in the War of Independence. Then in 1781 two McOmber Patriarchs migrate West to the Hudson River Valley where they continue to assist with the new nation of the United States of America being born. From the Hudson Valley, McOmber Patriarchs migrate to the new Western Frontier of the Holland Purchase in upstate New York in the early 1800s, and then to the new Western Frontier in the Rocky Mountains to the Territory of Utah and the Territory of Idaho in 1866 and beyond.
McOmber Bygone Days 
Thank you. Interesting. My mother was a McOmber, daughter of Charles Orange McOmber and Josephine Ellen Hansen. My mother’s name is Zola Berniece and she married Karl Seegmiller Roundy. Although I have not met Niki McOmber, I think he is my cousin, son of Owen Harol (?) McOmber.
Hi C. Owen! Thanks for the comment! I (Nik) am indeed your cousin and the son of Owen Harol. I have a copy of your 1977 work about your mother, Berniece. Great write-up! I am now retired and will be focusing on family history in the years ahead. I have a picture of her as a child. It is posted on the McOmber Family Tree on Ancestry.com. I will send you an email link. It is nice to be in touch with you! – Niki Harrison McOmber
I’d be interested in corresponding with any McOmbers, Macombers, etc, who have had DNA tests done, so we can compare our results. A Macomber relative had one done..
Ken, I had my dna test done by Ancestry.com I would love to compare results.
Lin, I am out of town at the moment but can occasionally access e-mail. So I found your note, and I’m thinking I could create a table to compare DNA samples from different tests. I have already created a table for the various Rockwell samples, and with time a Macomber/McOmber table might grow and become a useful site. Will talk again soon.
—Ken Rockwell
Direct email address: kwrockwell@yahoo.com
My mother was a Macomber, born 1933 and her father and brother put together and published a Macomber Family Geneaology (mom has a copy in her possesion), which I believe goes back to the two brothers arrival in America in the 1600s. There are also various photos and a pamphlet “Reprinted from the Sibley Journal of Engineering Nov. 1912” by Prof. Geo. S. Macomber (her grandfather). We would be the New York branch of the tree. Are you interested in more information? Please email me as I do not get on the internet all that often.
Niki . . . Thanks for the new information. Do you know Rachel Sears’ email address?
C. Owen Roundy
Sorry C. Owen, I do not have an email address for Rachel. I also failed to see her posts until cleaning things up a couple days ago, .
Hi Rachel! Thanks for sharing the information! My cousin, C. Owen Roundy, and certainly others including myself are very interested in Macomber family history. We are stuck in certain regards with the New York branch. Can you send me an email at nikmcomber@gmail.com, and may I share your email address with other cousins? So glad to hear from you!
Sincerely, Niki McOmber
My maternal great grandfather was Capt. William F. Macomber. There are Macombers in Mattapoisett, Mass. where he was originally born descended from other sea captains. Capt. Macomber sailed around the horn to San Francisco and settled in Berkeley, California. He became nationally famous over an incident in Alaska in 1909. His son, William F. Macomber, Jr., was an inventor of early communications and radio.
We have always considered ourselves of Scottish descent. My grandfather had a tad of Scottish accent. The Macombers were early settlers of Mass. they maintained their familial clan connections including traditional foods and being Presbyterians.
Hi Niki — the work that you have done researching the Macomber lineage is truly amazing.
Do you have any documentation available on the lineage of Sarah Macomber Briggs born ~1643 in Plymouth Colony? I believe that she was the daughter of William Macomber born~1610. I’m a Skinner descendant and I believe that I descend from William’s line.
Best regards,
Paul Rieken