Our Early Ancestors
Although
many of our earlier ancestors are quite widely documented in both original,
documents and transcripts, quite often there is not enough evidence to be able
to allocate them a place on a family tree. In
the past some accounts regarding the family, can I believe be a little
misleading.
These accounts , were some times based on
circumstantial evidence, or be based on other details published in yet earlier
accounts. one of these being
"hutchins history Of
Dorset" which was largely used as a source of reference by historians. This
publication is a large and quite comprehensive work produced in 1898 and was compiled by a Dorset clergyman , who
over a number of years, with the aid of students and assistants managed to
assemble this magnificent Magnum Opus
of reference.
.
In respect of our family however it is a
little misleading, as I discovered
early on in my researches The discrepancies became apparent to me, after
I had consulted a number of original documents and transcriptions, I will be
going into more detail regarding this later on in this account
It not surprising that given the enormous
amount of research that the rev
Hutchins and his assistants had to carry out , and having to consult original
documents without the aid of modern indexes and transcriptions and at that the material he had to research
would have been dotted about in various parts of the country, that there should
be a few discrepancies in such a magnificent
work
Ignoring the above and only taking them into account when reading the text, the rest
of the chapter dealing with our family is of great interest particularly in
respect to details of the amount
of properties and land they owned. Much
of this account however does not deal with our line of ancestry the
branch of the family to which he is largely referring became extinct by aprox 1650 the reasons being that their were a
great number of female heirs in the family in these earlier days to whom these
holdings passed and from thence, to their descendants bearing their husbands family name, many of these
families were quite wealthy in their own right, since the earlier bearers of
our family name, appeared to be very adept at, marrying off their daughters to wealthy and well
connected families.
But by the time that the last male heir to
that branch of the family had died their actual fortunes had dwindled
drastically by reason of that a great
deal of both the estates and properties
had been mortgaged to enable the mortgagee to maintain his life style has a gentleman.
of In our family line however things appear
to have been a little different although our own early ancestors were often
referred to as gentlemen they did take an active interest in their estates
and performed more the role of squire, rather than that of Gentlemen independent means.
As you will see later on in this
history although the Dorset branch of the family continued to farm for several
centuries in the Buckland Newton, Hilton and Mappowder area, as the years
passed the families got larger and there were more descendants after each death
to take their share of the legacies.
In my
researches I have never been able to find out when the Hilton properties an disappeared
from the families holdings I rather think it was just after the civil war,
which is not surprising since they were only held under grant from the Crown.