It isn’t often that one is able to document a line back to and ancestor born in the 1400s. However, thanks to terrific Massachusetts records and the survival of records from Essex and Hertfordshire in England, it appears I am able to do just that.
Thanks to an article by William Wyman Fiske, FASG, published in The Genealogist (the journal of The American Society of Genealogists) in Fall 2006 (Volume 20, No. 2) by Picton Press, significant research has been done into early English records.
Those records lead directly to the Whipple family who left Old England for New England in the 1630s.
Last month, I wrote about Matthew Whipple, a 12X great grandfather who died in Bocking, Essex, England not long before 16 January 1617/18.
Dr. Fiske’s research into the ancestry of Matthew Whipple appears to identify both the father and grandfather of Matthew. I use the word “appears” because Dr. Fiske himself describes his work as a “proposed ancestral origin” of the family.
Matthew Whipple is now thought to be the son of Thomas Whipple born c1510, and his wife, Margaret (MNU). Margaret was buried in Bocking, Essex, England on 13 June 1577.
Thomas and Margaret were the parents of three known children:
1. Matthew, born c1557; died before 16 January 1617/18, Bocking, Essex, England and who married Joan (MNU), c1582. Joan was born in 1561 and died in 1619.
2. Margaret, born c1565; she was buried 19 January 1627/28, Bocking, Essex, England. Margaret married Richard Rathbone.
3. Robert? – A Robert Whapple, a clothier of London, has ties to the Whipples and Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, England, home to Matthew Whipple’s proposed grandfather, another Thomas Whipple.
The earliest Whipple found in the Essex and Hertfordshire records is the proposed father of Thomas, who was born c1510.
Thomas Whipple, a clothier, was born c1475 and died between 1535 and 1537. He married (1) Unknown, who was buried in 1506 at the church in Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, England and (2) Isabel/Elizabeth, who survived him and was buried in 1557.
It appears that Thomas’s son, John, was a children by his unknown wife. John married Winifred Pylston and died after 1545.
It appears that Thomas’s namesake, Thomas, was born c1510 and was a child of Isabel/Elizabeth. He is the man who married Margaret (MNU), described above.
Because there are no extant birth or baptismal records for John or Thomas, it can’t be said with any real certainty which wife was the mother of which of Thomas’s children.
The article is a lengthy 26 pages long with a huge amount of documented history about the family up to the time when they began to leave for a new life in Massachusetts.
Because this article is relatively recent and back issues of the magazine are readily available, I will leave it up to those interested to track down a copy of this issue of The Genealogist. (It is in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.)
Although Picton Press closed with the death of its owner, back issues of The Genealogist can be ordered on The American Society of Genealogists website. The $15 I paid for the issue is worth its weight in gold!