Below is a biography of the ENGLISH family submitted by Philip Voorhees English.
Thank you Phil!
Any questions or comments please direct to him. Please read the note concerning his research and sources below.
The biography documents the arrival of the family to the Rising Sun area in Ohio county Indiana. This was prior to 1844, the date of which Ohio county was formed from Dearborn county. Because of this I have included the information on the Dearborn county site as well as the Ohio county. Records from this time period would be located in Dearborn county.
GENEALOGY: HOW THE ENGLISH FAMILY CAME TO RISING SUN, INDIANA IN 1812, AND EVENTUALLY LEFT IN 1822. ON EACH OF THE SPOUSAL FAMILIES NAMED THE AUTHOR HAS EXTENSIVE HISTORY GOING BACK TO THE COUNTRY OF ORIGIN, AND USUALLY INTO THE 1650’S OR BEFORE.
ENGLISH: In the 1600's and the 1700's
* In England, about 1610, John English1 was born in Essex County. In 1635, same county, Richard English2 was born, and it was he who author Hodge has as married to Freedom Strong. A son, David English3 was born to Freedom and Richard in 1661.
On May 27, 1688, David3, aged 27 years, married Elizabeth Arnold. David and Elizabeth had five children. Their son, Richard4, born June 6, 1690, was the first of this family named English to emigrate to North America. He certainly was not the first English to come to the New World, for there was a Joseph English aboard the Mayflower in 1620, but he bore no heirs and died the first winter in Plymouth.
Richard4 English, born in Essex, came ashore in May 1710, from the brig, "Swallow". We believe he arrived at Newport, Rhode Island, for it was there he first settled. Richard was married February 17, 1712 to Mary Hinksman, daughter of John Hinksman of Charlestown, Rhode Island. From their first home in Newport, R.I., they moved to Bristol, R.I., and by 1717 had made their home in Lebanon, Connecticut. There they were members of the first Presbyterian Church in America. Richard died in March 1776, aged 86 years, in Rhode Island, although why he was there at that time we do not know.
Richard and Mary, by one chronicler had only one son, John5. Another says that they had at least four children, John5, Sarah, Hannah, and Abigail English. My research also shows Mary, and Phoebe as his daughters. John5 English, was born August 8, 1713, and he is believed to have been born in Newport, R.I. The rest of the children were born in Lebanon, CT. You can see that some of his sisters married into well known 'first' colonial families, such as the Newcombs and the Bradfords.
November 9, 1738, John5 English married Abigail Newcomb born Nov. 16, 1715, daughter of Deacon John Newcomb. John died on the 18th day of October, 1758, in Lebanon, CT. Abigail lived until January 28, 1785, and is buried in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada.
ENGLISH:NEWCOMB union, and the late 1700's and 1800's:
John5 English and Abigail Newcomb English had ten children, and it is the younger John born in Connecticut on March 22, 1745 that is our forefather. With the rest of the English family, he sailed north in 1760. In Nova Scotia he married Christianna Cogswell on October 31, 1771. Christianna was born in 1755 and died April 3, 1796. John remarried, this time to Hannah Longfellow, by whom twins were born. John died in 1826. If, as it is recorded in one reference, he fought in the American Revolutionary War, it is probable that he was a Tory, fighting on the side of the King.
September 9, 1786, Charles6 English was born in Cornwallis, Kings County, N.S., Canada, the first of the English clan to be born there. Twenty three years later, Charles English married Nancy Ann Wright on the 29th day of January, 1809 in New Haven, Connecticut. Charles had left Nova Scotia, determined to set up a new life in the new United States of America. Others of the family had returned earlier to settle in Connecticut and Vermont. Still other members of the family remained in Nova Scotia for many years. Nancy Wright had been born in 1787, probably in England.
* It was from the Bible of Charles6 English that the family links between the modern day English's were made to the Nova Scotia branch. With Louise, David and Laurel, I was visiting Williamsburg, Virginia and conversing about the family with my Father's younger sister, Anne. She and her husband, Col. Charles Friend Jr., had lived, surrounded by the colonial restoration project since its inception. Our visit was heightened when she mentioned that she and Charlie had been married in St. Paul, and had their reception at 'Cousin Irv's' home on the lake. She casually remarked, that a cousin, Dr. Bob Carter, had the English family Bible. Where he lived in Minnesota, she did not know, but in trying to trace his location for over 2 weeks, via numerous phone calls throughout the Twin Cities, I finally reached a previously unknown cousin, Irving H. English. He lived just ten miles away, west along the Interstate 694.
Irv shares my interest in genealogy. He had copies of the Bible, left with him when Dr. Carter, of Duluth, had retired to Corrales, New Mexico. These copies correlated to the Mormon Church records I had acquired from a Tracy English in Arizona (no relative), but which were incomplete to some extent. Matching the entries we were able to verify that our ancestral tree did, in fact, extend to the Nova Scotian settlers. In the Spring of 1992, Dr. Bob Carter entrusted the Charles English Bible to my care and keeping, and it is an honor and pleasure to preserve that valuable research volume for the family.
Charles, with his young bride, visited Philadelphia in 1812, and later Pittsburgh, and proceeded down the Ohio River valley in his search for a new home. They settled in Rising Sun, Indiana, on the banks of the Ohio, where he established the first iron rolling mill and works west of the Alleghenies. Ten years later they continued their western move, first along the Ohio, and then northward up the Wabash River valley.
In 1829, the family arrived in Perrysville, Indiana, where Charles established a travelers inn. This town was soon to be the southern terminus for the Wabash and Erie Canal, which was built during the 1830s and 40s. By 1850, son George7 Washington English, born in Perrysville April 16, 1831, was helping his father as clerk in the hotel. Charles English passed in 1856, and George remained another nine years, serving as Police Magistrate, Treasurer and Auditor of Vermillion County, Indiana.
In the Spring of 1854, just a half dozen miles up the now active canal in Covington, Indiana, George Washington English strolled the dusty streets seeking the local merchant saddler, Jeremiah Ludlow, to take on a leather-working project.
The story has it that Jeremiah's daughter, Sarah Jane, while hanging laundry, saw this 23 year old coming up the lane, and made certain that she met him. (In fact, we have that in her own words, as you will read elsewhere in this narrative.) They were married June 15, of that year. But how did the Ludlows get to Covington? Remember, we left them in Piscataway, New Jersey.
The LUDLOW family in the East in the 1750's:
We left Jeremy Ludlam in the Piscataway New Jersey area in the mid 1700s as he married Elizabeth Doty. Of their six children, Deborah was born October 1750, John in 1752, Joseph in 1784(?), Mercy, ("Massie"), about 1758, and a daughter, who's name is not recorded in the will and who married Samuel Muchmore. Finally, in 1766, Jeremiah Ludlow3 was born.
NOTE: Phil writes concerning his research, "I attach narrrative information which I consider to be accurate, verified by three sources, i.e., original records, Bible notations and or cemetery records, letters, or verbal histories taken by me. In the past 30+ years I have referenced over 900 volumes, and written three, of which this extract was taken from the last volumn, "Crossing the Pond" 1998.
In almost every case, including Rising Sun, I have visited the sites, sketched or photographed buildings when possible, etc. I have here extracted the English family narrative, without charts, illustrations, etc. I would respond to the best of my ability to further inquiry on spousal families shown, as my 200+ pages book covers most families to the mid 1600's and country of origin.
The full book is also available, (some 8 copies left of my first printing). Phil"
