Misc. Notes
Douglas Richardson
34 conjectures that Thomas Lakin, the earliest known ancestor of the Lakin family of Massachusetts, had a daughter who married Richard Blood, and that this couple may have been the parents of the four Bloods (Robert, John, Richard, and James) who emigrated to Massachusetts in the 1640s. “Concrete proof of this dau.’s existence is lacking. However, there evidently was a close kinship between the Blood and Lakin families. In his will transcribed below, William Lakin requested that if his children died young, their inheritance should revert to the children of Richard Blood, Sr., then minors. This reversion clause strongly suggests that William Lakin and Richard Blood were brothers-in-law. This could either mean Richard Blood was married to Lakin’s sister, or vice versa.
“No children for Richard Blood were found in the available Bishops’ Transcripts for Ruddington. The Transcripts revealed only that a Richard Blood served as churchwarden at Ruddington in 1636 (FHL film #503, 813).
“Richard Blood and his wife were quite likely parents of Robert, John, Richard and James Blood, who immigrated to New England in the 1640s. Of these immigrants, Robert Blood originated from Ruddington, co. Nottingham, as did the Lakin family. This fact is established by a deed executed by Robert Blood in New England in 1649, whereby Blood sold to William Crafts of Lynn, Mass., his interest in the moiety of one tenement and in half an oxgang at Ruddington, co. Nottingham (Essex Co., Mass., Deeds 1: 24).
“Equally significant, in the 1650s and 1660s the immigrants, Robert and Richard Blood, along with William Martin [2d husband of Mary, widow of William Lakin, No. 2 below], and William and John Lakin [Nos. 3 and 4 below], settled together at Groton, Mass. This pattern of settlement is typical of New World immigrants who, being related by blood in old England, came to New England and settled in the same towns. While such common settlement does not prove kinship between the Bloods and Lakins, taken together with the reversion clause of William Lakin’s will, it provides strong evidence that the Bloods and Lakins were kin to each other in England. A discussion of the origin of the Blood immigrants is planned for a later article.”
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