Q. George and Ralph Wallis are both mentioned in History of the Town of Rye, p 563, but some genealogies differ on which is the father and which is the son. Which is it?
A. It is likely that neither is related to the Wallis family of Rye. A recent, well-researched article “George Wallis of Little Harbor in Portsmouth” (New Hampshire Genealogical Record, Winter 2021) makes a case that neither of the men by these names who arrived in Portsmouth in 1635 were likely to be related to “our” Wallis family. But there was a George Wallis living in Sandy Beach in 1680, and a marriage of George and Ann Shortbridge in 1686 (NEHGR, 1853, p 129).
The first Wallis generation given in History of the Town of Rye appears to be a combination of longstanding conjecture linking the arrivals from 1635 and a list of children that appears to span two generations. This is the hazard of town histories which typically relied on oral histories. (Nonetheless, it appears that Langdon Parsons did consult Rye town records in the family histories, which would have been useful for dates after 1726.) On the same page, 2 Samuel Wallis and 3 George Wallis were actually brothers, and subsequent generations appear to be correct.
