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Category Archives: US genealogy

the draper’s apprentice: Arthur Mackworth

I’ve been working for some time now, albeit sporadically, on an article on the Shropshire Mackworths. Lately I’ve been in correspondence with an English Mackworth descendant, in Shropshire, who was introduced to me in correspondence by a mutual friend. Liz Roberts, who descends from the Betton Strange Mackworths, is a keen genealogist and actually volunteers […]

four wills, four generations, four courts: the Allins of Barrington

I’ve begun to poke around in the history of the Allin family to see about the land and house. The attributed builder of our house is Thomas4 Allin (Matthew3, Thomas2, William1), who lived from 1742 to 1800. His great-grandfather, William1 Allin, had bought a portion of the original land purchased from the family of the […]

she grew up here too: Elizabeth (Allin) Bicknell

Turns out Amy Allin’s sister has a picture in Bicknell’s Barrington too, Elizabeth Waldron Allin: And well she should, since Elizabeth went on to marry her cousin (at least two different ways), Allin Bicknell; they were parents of Thomas W. Bicknell, the author. No wonder he seems to have felt a special attachment to our […]

eighteenth-century trigonometry homework

That’s what we found this morning, among the miscellanous recycled papers — accounts, one page of a letter, and some odd scraps of letterpress printing — all pasted over some of the remaining vertical boards which made up a dividing wall of the original attic room in our new house. There’s a much newer door […]

two beehive ovens

This weekend I was riveted by Anne ‘Pete’ Baker’s book, Collecting Houses: 17th-century Houses — 20th-century Adventure, recommended to me by aunt Amy, who knows Pete slightly. It’s a chronicle of how Pete taught herself to evaluate and restore the oldest houses of Southeastern New England, especially the detective work of discerning and dating the […]

Simon Taylor’s marriage bond, 1641

Well, the second half of my article on the possible English origin of my Taylor family has come to my mailbox in the latest issue of The American Genealogist, so having duly waited I’m happy to trot out the speculation that lies at the heart of it. My earliest known male ancestor, Richard1 Taylor (d. […]

she grew up here: Amy (Allin) Horn

Bicknell’s History of Barrington has another great tidbit, a portrait of Amy Allin: Thomas Allin’s oldest daughter, Amy, was born in 1773, and married John Horn in 1796 (per some hits on Worldconnect). She would have seen this house built (or enlarged) in 1783, and grown up in it. Our oldest will be moving in […]

Thomas Allin and us: the house

This has been a busy spring with little time for posting here. But one non-genealogical component of our family life has recently taken on a genealogical and historical dimension. We have just bought a new house — new to us, but built in the 1780s by a Revolutionary officer, Lieut. Col. (later Brig. Gen’l.) Thomas […]

Taylor DNA: 67 markers for Simon2

In March, our patience in tracking down yet another distant Taylor cousin for DNA testing paid off. We now have a complete 67-marker Y–DNA profile for the earliest testable genetic ancestor of this family, Simon2 Taylor of Old Rappahannock County, Virginia, who died in 1729. Five test subjects with known descent paths from Simon’s three […]

William, Jennings & Bryan Taylor, notorious triplets

I notice that at least one web-search that led to my site this month was a search for my sixth cousins twice removed, the triplets William, Jennings & Bryan Taylor, named after the great turn-of-the-century populist orator. They were sons of Frank L.8 Taylor (Joseph W.7, Tarpley6, John Clark5, Tarpley4, George3, Simon2, Richard). Duplicating the […]