Does the story hold up?
SHORT VERSION
- We’ve known since the 1800s that the Richard Perkins who appeared in Baltimore County in 1683 was our ancestor.
- We have overwhelming evidence that he was transported to Maryland by Charles County merchants in 1674 as an indentured servant, finished his indenture, and lived among those merchants until the previous year, 1682. He and two of the other transportees, Richard Askew and Christopher Foster, subsequently moved to Baltimore County.
- We have overwhelming evidence that everyone transported with Richard Perkins in 1674 and some of the merchants involved in the transportation deal were from Halifax Parish, West Riding of Yorkshire.
- A Richard Parkin who was baptized in Halifax Parish in 1654 perfectly matches our Richard Perkins I, and no one else does.
- Therefore, our ancestor Richard Perkins I was Richard Parkin, son of John Parkin, baptized in 1654 in Halifax Parish, West Riding of Yorkshire.
LONGER VERSION:
The Maryland Provincial Court recorded that Richard Ambrose proved to their satisfaction that he had transported Richard Parkins, Richard Askew, Christopher Foster, and four others, over the main to Maryland in 1674. People “transported” into Maryland instead of “immigrating” were indentured servants in their late teens to early twenties coming from far enough to justify the indenture. Most came from England.
Since people who were transported became indentured servants for about four years (if they were 18 or older), the transported Richard would have ended his indenture in about 1678 and needed paid work. In 1680 and 1682, records show Charles County merchants who were business associates of Richard Ambrose owed Richard Perkins money, which probably meant he was working for them. They were involved with a business, now called Allen’s Mill, that provided several types of milling, blacksmithing, and probably other services to Charles County farmers living inland to get their crops loaded on ships bound for Europe. It was an important enough service center that the provincial court ordered both Charles and St. Mary’s Counties to improve the roads around it to keep it accessible in all weather. All tobacco had to be packaged in wooden hogshead barrels for transport, so someone was making the barrels, possibly at the Allen’s Mill complex.
The last record of the transported Richard Perkins with the Charles County merchants was in 1682, and the following year the man we know was our Richard Perkins appeared in Baltimore County with the money to buy his first land. The land office referred to him as a “cooper”, a barrel maker. Until 1682, the only Richard Perkins in Maryland was the transported one in Charles County. Beginning in 1683, the only one was our Richard Perkins I.
Richard Askew, and Christopher Foster, both of whom had been transported to Maryland with the transported Richard Parkins, ended up with land in Baltimore County, not far from our Richard Perkins. All three died within a decade or so of the year 1700. Their lives apparently followed parallel courses.
All government and church records of the transported Richard Parkins and our Richard Perkins prove that they were the same person.
The timing of events in Richard’s life combined with historical statistics on the age profile of indentured servants and the rules governing length of indenture can be used to work backward from the 1674 date of Richard’s transportation to an estimate of his birthdate: 1650-1656, with 1653 or 1654 most likely.
In 1676, Richard Ambrose and a mariner, John Harrison, were sued over something that happened in 1674 by two merchants in England, George Ramsden and John Parkins. The facts that Richard Ambrose and a mariner were being sued over something from the same year that Richard Ambrose and a mariner transported seven people over the ocean and that one of the plaintiffs suing had the same surname as one of the people transported make it clear that this lawsuit was about that transportation deal.
That means that Richard Ambrose, John Harrison, George Ramsden, John Parkins, Richard Askew, Christopher Foster, Isaac Maude, Dorothy Parkinson, Ann Watterworth, and Elizabeth Brafitt were all involved in the transportation deal that brought our ancestor, Richard Perkins I, to America.
Statistical studies of census data for each surname and searches for any other records showing partners George Ramsden and John Parkins together all point us to the same small place and the right time: the West Riding of Yorkshire in the mid-1600s. Everyone except the Maryland merchant, Richard Ambrose, appears to have been from there.
All of them being from the same area strongly suggests that the shared surname Parkins was not a coincidence, and that John Parkins was probably the father or an older relative of our ancestor, Richard Parkins.
Casting a very wide net over the calculated place and time of origin for anyone named some version of Richard Parkins only yields half-a-dozen candidates. That was not a very common name in Yorkshire, fortunately.
Matching all candidates against what we know about our Richard and the other people involved in his transportation produces one outstanding match and no others that are even acceptible: Richard Parkin, born in 1654 to father John Parkin in Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire, and surrounded by the people and families of people who were involved in the transportation.
And to some extent, the ends justify the means, though not in the usual sense. If you have a map to a pirate treasure, and you follow the clues, interpreting things like “the old hangin’ tree” and “half a league” the best you can, and you end up holding the treasure in your hands, it tells you that your assumptions along the way, even if not all correct, were close enough. You not only find the treasure, but you get some validation that the clues really were part of the true story.
When we look at who was in Halifax, it is obvious that these are the people who took part in the 1674 transportation that brought our Perkins family to America. It is inconceivable that Halifax just happened to have had a George Ramsden and John Parkin of the same generation as those in the Maryland lawsuit, that John Parkin had a son named Richard Parkin, who was twenty years old at the time of the transportation, that Halifax had not just the rare western Yorkshire surname Ramsden but specifically George Ramsden, not just the rare western Yorkshire surname Maude but specifically Isaac Maude, the rare western Yorkshire surname Watterworth, a Richard Askew, two Brefitt families, a Foster family—all of whom were of the right ages—and a John Harrison with the same name and of the same generation as the one who took a group of people with these same names and ages to Maryland—but that all of these were just coincidences, and our people were actually from some other place.
More records may turn up elsewhere in England, but there is no chance that were two parishes with all the same rare names, exact ages, and relationships. This was the treasure we were looking for. The path leading to it may have been a little off, but it turned out to be close enough.
This was the place. There could be no other like it. We were definitely the Parkin family of Halifax Parish, Yorkshire.
If so, then what about...?
Richard Perkins I named his first son Richard and his second son William. When Richard I died in about 1705, not long after his 50th birthday, someone joined his widow, Mary, to help her with the administration of his estate: William Perkins. She had just gotten remarried and posted an administrative bond, which sounds like money but was just a formal, written promise to the court that she would fairly apportion Richard’s assets to his heirs as administratrix. As mentioned earlier, the system was designed to make sure a man’s property went to his own children rather than being taken by his widow’s new husband. The court appointed this William Perkins to be a security for Richard’s children. A security was typically a family member or close friend who was not himself an heir but was considered by the court to be close enough to the heirs (Richard’s children) to be allowed to legally vouch for, in this case, the actions of the administratrix. They appointed people who they believed had the kind of relationship that made them natural defenders of the deceased man and his children.
Richard’s second son, William, would only have been about twelve or thirteen, too young to legally serve as a security and, as an heir, he would not have been eligible anyway. So who was this adult William Perkins standing with Mary after Richard’s death, considered by the court to be the right man to safeguard the interests of Richard and Richard’s children?
Our family has long speculated that he may have been a brother of Richard’s, someone so dear to Richard that he named his own sons Richard and William Perkins.
So...by any chance, did Richard Parkin of Halifax, Yorkshire have a brother named William Parkin?
Yes! William Parkin, son of John Parkin, was baptized in Halifax on May 26th, 1650, in the same beautiful church where our ancestor Richard, son of John Parkin, would be baptized four years later.
Of course it’s possible that William Parkin in Halifax was Richard Parkin’s cousin, not his brother, but it isn’t likely. Both were sons of John Parkin, so their fathers couldn’t have been brothers. Either Richard and William were brothers themselves or they were, at best, second cousins. The family relationship Richard and William Perkins had in Maryland seems a lot closer than, at best, second cousins.
When William was baptized in 1650, the record said that his father, John Parkin, was living in the Northowram neighborhood of Halifax. Two years later, in 1652, John, Jr. was born to a John Parkin, who was living in the Hipperholme neighborhood. Two years after that, when our Richard was born in 1654, his father, John Parkin, was living in the Southowram neighborhood. And again, two years after that, Sarah (who died as a baby) was born to a John Parkin, still living in the Southowram neighborhood. These three neighborhoods form a small triangle on the east side of the Halifax church, each one on a different hill in Halifax Parish.
This sequence of births looks like one father named John Parkin and his wife having four of their children, each with a different name, like clockwork on the 2-year birth rhythm so common in that era and having to frequently change lodging. It’s not likely to be multiple fathers all named John Parkin, arranged in a small triangle, taking turns having one child each (except the last, who had two) without repeating names and then disappearing.
When they were newly married, they were probably like the rest of us: poor renters. So they moved a couple of times within Halifax while having four children in a quick succession. The third and fourth, Richard and Sarah, were both born in Southowram (1654 and 1656), so they seem to have settled there. After Sarah died, they had another girl in 1662. As was common when so many children died, the parents reused the name. Like her sister, the second Sarah Parkin was born in Southowram.
UPDATE: What I didn’t know when I first wrote this was that there was a hearth tax (tax on homeowners according to how many hearths the house has) in 1664, two years after the second Sarah was born. John Parkin was still in Southowram and had two hearths. He was the only John Parkin shown in any Halifax neighborhood. His future partner, George Ramsden, was also in Southowram, also with two hearths.
And despite begin born in different neighborhoods, these children all grew up in Southowram, which the parish register abbreviated as “Southow”. After baptism, there was no record of them in the other neighborhoods. But John’s son William had a child in “Southow” in 1682. His sister, Sarah of “Southow”, got married in 1685. John Jr. had a child in “Southow” in 1689. Unlike the other three, Richard disappeared from Southowram, because he was our ancestor and had gone to Maryland where he had his first child in 1689.
Richard’s father, John Parkin, was still alive in 1676 and suing the Maryland merchants. Seven years later, in 1683, the only John Parkin of that generation to die in Halifax Parish died: John Parkin of “Southow”.
So there was one John Parkin. He was our Richard’s father, and William and the others were Richard’s siblings.
So the answer to the question of where the Perkinses came from is this:
1654 October Baptist
8 [...]
Richard [son of] John Parkin [of] South[owram]
(Parish Register, Halifax Parish, Yorkshire)
Our ancestor Richard Perkins I was baptized Richard Parkin on October 8, 1654 in the Halifax Parish Church of St. John the Baptist, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. His father was John Parkin, a resident (at least officially at the time of Richard’s baptism) of Southowram Township, a small hamlet on the top of Beacon Hill overlooking the church and the town of Halifax. His mother is not yet known.
When Richard Parkin was about 20 years old, his father, John Parkin, and another resident of Halifax Parish named George Ramsden put together a deal with a mariner named John Harrison, who was probably also from Halifax, and his partner, a merchant in Maryland named Richard Ambrose, to “transport” Richard and six others to the Chesapeake colony of Maryland as indentured servants. Most or all of the six were young people from Halifax Parish like Richard Parkin.
They arrived in 1674 and began their period of indentured servitude. About two years later, in 1676, Richard’s father and George Ramsden sued Ambrose and Harrison, claiming that they were owed quite a bit of money, but Ambrose died that year, and the lawsuit probably did, too. There seems to be no record of a settlement.
Richard’s indenture ended in about 1678, at which time he became a free man, albeit poor and single. He emerged into a Chesapeake society still in turmoil from Bacon’s Rebellion needing to work for pay. In 1680, Samuel Raspin, who was running Allen’s Mill in Charles County, owed Richard money, suggesting he worked for Raspin. In 1682, Benjamin Rozier, who was also involved with Allen’s Mill owed Richard money. Richard may have continued working at or near Allen’s Mill. And the following year, in 1683, Richard finally obtained his first land, 100 acres near the head of Mosquito Creek. It was his first property in Spesutia Hundred, Baltimore County, Maryland, where he would spend the rest of his life.
Five years after that, in about 1688, Richard found a wife, known to us only as “Mary”, and together they began a family whose descendants today may number more than a hundred thousand.
