Last night when I was trying to sort out the Blinkhorn family I remembered that there was a section on the Blinkhorns in Bernard Bailyn's book Voyagers to the West. The reason I'd been working on the Blinkhorn family tree is because they owned the property just to the north of the William Ripley purchase from DesBarres. It turns out that in 1795 Captain John MacDonald, an agent for DesBarres, had made a tour of all of the DesBarres leased lands in Nappan and Maccan and given a full report. He was especially impressed with the farm of William Blinkhorn which he described in great detail, and with Thomas Coates and William Pipes Jr. (both my 4th great grandfathers). I learned that Thomas and William had organized and raised money for a community initiative to build a bridge across the Nappan River and that William had nearly failed as a farmer the first three years but now prospered and had built an especially fine barn. Bailyn quoted extensively from a biography of DesBarres by Geraint Evans entitled The Uncommon Obdurate: the several public carreers of J. F. W. DesBarres. I ordered it for about $10 from Amazon and can't wait to read it as I expect there will also be reports about the farms of William Ripley and possibly Henry Ripley who also leased from DesBarres. DesBarres lived to be 104 and danced on a table to celebrate his 100th birthday. Bailyn, who is 91, is still a history professor at Harvard. Along with my 3 octogenarians in Maccan , it seems I'm getting lots of help from the older generations this week.
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AuthorHi there! My name is Mallory Burton and I started researching the Ripley family in 2011. I'd describe myself as a careful amateur who's more interested in story than names and dates. I hope you enjoy my website and blog. I also have a public Mallory/Ripley tree on Ancestry with over 4,000 names. To contact me, please comment on any one of my blog posts. Archives
May 2024
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