Is there a Doctor in the house...

In the past month or so, I posted a few pictures I found on Ancestry's site that were uploaded by users. They were of Franklin Robinson and his wife Susan Landon, both of Grand Isle, Vermont. Well I have never done any research on Franklin, and I don't have any excuse or reason for that, it just never happened.

So over the holidays, and my lovely two weeks off, I decided to focus on researching Franklin's side of the family. In my records the information I had on Franklin was from over 10 years ago and mostly gleaned from our cousin who put together the Shaw family book. Not much was said about Franklin, just his parents being listed as Abijah Hall and Beulah H. Billings.

My first thought was why on earth is his father listed as HALL when he is a ROBINSON. I have to admit that is was probably just an error in data entry on someone's part and as I was just entering the data mindlessly, I didn't really analyze it at the time.

I do know that Beulah married Abijah in 1796 when Franklin was about 4-5 years of age and he wasn't adopted by Abijah because he went by ROBINSON his whole life. Local histories indicate he was a descendant of the Robinson's of Bennington County, Vermont, but there are, as of yet, no records that tell just which ROBINSON that was. So, for now, his father is still a mystery.

His mother on the other hand was the daughter of a BILLINGS and a FAY, and there was much information on her and her family to be found online and in books. And it is through the FAY line that we run into Richard PALGRAVE (apparently an official descendant of Charlemagne, but that's not important now).

Richard was born about 1593. He arrived in Charletown by 1629, which we know because his signature on a document signed by all the inhabitants of the town at that time is quite clear, it shows up third in the list:

He is the first doctor I have come across in my research on our ancestors and will probably be the only one. The author George A. Moriarty wrote that "[h]e was a quiet man who minded his own business, got into no trouble, and buried himself in his profession." According to his inventory of property after his death in 1651 he was worth £313, which made him well to do. The quality of his signature also indicates a good education.

His daughter Mary married Roger WELLINGTON. Their granddaughter married into the FAY family.

Richard's other claim to fame is also being the ancestor of the Bushes. Our second link as cousins - shudder.