HATTON

 

The Wexford HATTON Family

The HATTON'S of County Wexford, Ireland were shipbuilders, involved with the East India Company, (hereafter Ref. E.I.C.) who operated out of the port at Wexford. Henry GIRD SR., was said to have been the captain of his own sailing vessel, and was of the land owning Gentry class in Wexford, a business man of some importance and wealth. Could he have been a Privateer for the E.I.C. (East India Company). The FRANKLAND Family, of his son-in-law, Thomas FRANKLAND, had been involved with the the East India Company, since the 1600s, living in India, no doubt involved with the Tea trade. Family heirlooms in the Frankland family included many items brought back from India and the Orient. Are these clues to an E. I. C. connection ?  Little is known or can be found about the land-owning Gentry in Wexford at that time. All records including marriage, baptism, death, etc, pertaining to this time period, Abt 1700-1775,  were destroyed in the Civil War in 1920 when the Archives were bombed and burned. The HATTON family of Wexford, Ireland had been shipbuilders and had connections with the East India Company.  In 1725 - Henry Hatton was the Mayor of Wexford, Ireland 

Were there Family Ties to the HATTONS in Virginia ?

The Hattons of Washington County, Maryland
 There were other Irish HATTON  families living in the Alexandria, Fairfax county, Virginia,  and Washington county, Maryland areas and elsewhere in these two states, who had originally come from Wexford, Ireland, emigrating to Maryland in the early 1700s, and may have been the reason for our GIRD family's going to that city.
  1. Henry & Mary GIRD purportedly had "ties" in the D.C. (Maryland) area. 
  2. Obviously...his middle name of HATTON.
  3. Henry Hatton GIRD (I) owned at least one ship and perhaps more, and was a business man in Wexford. 
  4. There were several HATTON men listed with Henry Gird SR. on the Boards of Directors for the Wexford Bridge project in Ireland (see story), and perhaps they had business ties as well as family ties in Wexford and in America.
  5. The Hattons were ship builders in Wexford, Ireland, connected with the East India Company of London
  6. The East India Company was well established in Virginia
     
Several years back, I received some documents from Rose Guertin, DC GenWeb Coordinator (7/21/99), whom I had became acquainted with on an Irish Mailing List. She had privy to some Family Documents and felt they might be relatives of my IRISH GIRD family. One family was named HATTON.  This  HATTON family came to the Americas in the 17th century and part of that Massachusetts family of Hatton removed to Maryland and Virginia.
The other family name I found in the record was that of HINES.  Rose told me that the HINES family had been quite prominent in the early families of the Alexandria area. At the time, I did not believe this HINES family was related - I thought this HINES family was probably of German origin. 
More research has revealed recently, however,  that HINES was IRISH and that many Irish peoples had come to live here. Recently I learned that the surname forms of HIND, HINDS,  & HINES were used interchangeably within the HINES families found throughout Maryland & Virginia.  These families were of  Wexford, Ireland heritage too.
I  kept the records I got from Rose Guertin because of the possible HATTON (HATTAN) connection. Not too long afterward, I found a posting on the Ohio Web by a Susan Ratcliff, who was inquiring about the GIRDS of Virginia.   I sent her the info I got from Rose Guertin, which were court records pertaining to the HATTON  family.   She told me that she was actually researching the KELLAR family of Alexandria, VA, gathering all the descendants, so the GIRD name has been a mystery for some time. She even wondered if she had it wrong and it was supposed to be GURD. She had been wondering how the HATTON and GIRD name came to be combined! "Two HATTON brothers married two of our KELLAR daughters"
Boling HATTON had a daughter, Margaret Hatton, who married James GIRD in Morgan Co., OH in 1848. Boling and his family and the Kellars had moved from Strasburg, VA  (the parents lived and died in Alexandria and the children spread out from there)  The Hatton family left Shenandoah county, Virginia, in the mid-1820's.  She asked me if the Hattons and Girds (inter-related) came from Ireland together moving down to Alexandria, VA?
 
AND then that old question arose again...echoing from the Gird Biographies: Susan wondered if James GIRD was the one who married the servant and went west, the continuing Hatton-Gird relationship?
 
Another interesting thing about this is that Stoney Creek is located in Shenandoah County, and  Strasburg is "near Winchester". Stoney Creek is where the Girds supposedly bought land to grow wheat,  as told in two Gird Biographies.
 
 Is all this just coincidence as far as the names go and the places where these two families lived? Is this James GIRD somehow related to my GIRD family? Is this HATTON family of Alexandria, also related to our family back in Ireland? Or were the two families just former business associates and/or even personal family friends with ties in Wexford, Ireland?  Susan added: "And the Hattons were also newspaper people(!)."
This was wonderful new information and enlightening info about the NEWSPAPER business.  Henry Hatton Gird II's  parents had "made arrangements for him" to work for a newspaper in Alexandria, Virginia. In those days, CONNECTIONS meant FAMILY.
From the documents I had received from Rose Guertin, I learned that this HATTON family came from Wexford, Ireland and settled in Washington county, Maryland and afterward in Alexandria, Virginia, just across the river.  I began to gather everything I could find on the web that had the SURNAME of GIRD. A membership with ANCESTRY.COM landed me many CENSUS records and bios about many GIRDS, some I recognized as my family and many seemingly unrelated and scattered all across America. I found others searching for GIRD families, who did not know their origins.
I later discovered more about
JAMES GIRD who is said to have been born in Pennsylvania & later lived  in Ohio - who had married  MARGARET HATTAN or HATTON
of Alexandria, Virginia. 

 THE HATTONS OF WEXFORD and IRELAND - records from a Canadian Hatton

You will also notice in this Hatton genealogy, the years of missing IRISH records, except perhaps pertaining to those who were killed in the 1798 massacres and historically are noted.
                 
See Hatton Coat of Arms 

 

Pennsylvania GIRDS

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