Saturday, June 25, 2011

June 26, 1776

New Hampshire Delegates William Whipple and Josiah Bartlett wrote to the President (Governor) of New Hampshire Meshech Weare. Whipple and Bartlett explained that Congress requested a regiment from New Hampshire, to help strengthen collapsing Continental forces in Quebec: “The repeated Misfortunes our army in Canada have met with, make it necessary that a Strong reinforcement should be sent there as Speedily as possible.”

The Delegates added, “Sickness and other disasters have much dispirited our men, unless they are speedily supported by a strong reinforcement it[’]s un-certain what will be the consequence.”
Posted by at

2 comments:

Jess said...

Interesting. I have a few Whipples in one of my family tree lines, but they were from Rhode Island.

June 26, 2011 at 5:21 AM
Brian Patrick O'Malley said...

Jess,

It is a small world. There was a good deal of movement within New England. Many of the families later associated with Rhode Island and Connecticut, for instance, trace back to settlers in Massachusetts. It is possible that your Whipples have some connection to this signer of the Declaration of Independence.

In his 1912 book, Surnames of the United Kingdom: A Concise Etymological Dictionary , Henry Harrison explained that Whipple (also believed to be Whiphill) dates back to the 1300s in Somerset County (England's West Country, on the edge of Wales) as Whiphulle or Whyphull and to the 1200s as Wiphulle in Wilshire (also part of the West Country, just West and inland of Somerset). Harrison believe it means "Whippa's Hill," Whippa being an Anglo-Saxon name related to Germanic words for swinging, see-sawing or bob.

It is a Germanic name in origin, but it comes from a region with some Celtic history. Some of Wiltshire's history long predates the Celts: Wiltshire is home to Salisbury Plains & Stonehendge. It is possible that the Whipples in your family tree branches along with William Whipple's antecedents (they be the same), came from the area of Stonehendge.

The heartland of Puritan New England is usually said to be eastern England. Historians, like David Grayson Allen (author of In English Ways ), say Puritans from East Anglia liked their compact towns centered around a town commons; those from the West Country liked their homes spread far apart--typical of the West Country settlers who moved to coastal Virginia, for instance. If I recall correctly, there is an article about Hingham, Mass. that makes this point (you can tell which part of England they came from based on how far apart their homes are), but I cannot immediately locate it.

The Whipples may have come from an interesting counterculture within Puritanism.

June 26, 2011 at 5:09 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)