Richard Gilpin (1752-1835) of Copney

 Hello Kristen,

Not sure if I can help you, but wonder if my family has kinship with yours. We are also Gilpins from Copney. My great great grandparents John Courtney and Sarah Gilpin (who were 'Gilpin' cousins to one another) and their adult children came to Canada (+one to Rhode Island) in the 1840s and 1850s. I hope you can open the document I tried to attach below: it gives the names of their 10 children. Note the overlap of given names with your group. My research experience shows kinship often corroborated by this 'recycling' or honouring of relatives in naming one's own kids... Possibly from Sarah's line of Gilpins come the male names much used down the line, 'Ridgeway' and 'Courtney.'

Lately, I've been approached by two cousins I'd never heard of, descended from other children in the list below. None of us has much info, but one had a partial pedigree for Sarah, the matriarch: she had siblings Thomas, William Ridgeway, John, Martha, Maria and George. The mother of these was Mary Brown and the father, Thomas (a clergyman). Thomas' siblings were: William, George, 'J... ', John Wesley, and Martha. The father of these was another Thomas Gilpin; his wife's name unknown. However, this unknown lady's father was Erasmus Dawson (named thus after a ship on which he was born!) No dates or places of residence provided in this handwritten lineage jotted down by an elder many long decades ago. If Sarah was born in 1798, what year was her great granfather born? Evidently late 1600's?   

One riddle we cannot solve is how long ago did our family settle in N Ireland? Even with the very long generations, and dislocations, we know the family is     English. (Below, I may or may not have succeded in attaching a transcription of a letter my great grandfather wrote in 1915, the year of his death. He seems to be summing up what scant family lore he has for his eldest son: he speaks vaguely of his paternal grandparents being 'put across' by a ferryman on their wedding day... Does he refer to their leaving England, crossing the Irish Sea for Armagh to start a new life?

The other thing I wonder: do you have a kinshhip with the 'famous' Gilpins?  Rev William Gilpin (1724-1804), the Vicar of Boldre is the most notable of that lot whose ancestry is traced back to the 13th C in the Carlisle area of northern England. One of that man's sons, John Bernard Gilpin was the British Consul to Rhode Island ca 1820 ++. He retired to Nova Scotia and a grandson, Edwin Gilpin was Dean of the Anglican Cathedral of Halifax. He and my great grandfather were friends and members of both groups travelled to stay with one another, acknowledged as cousins - but we have not a clue how (or IF) that  was a fact, but simply based on their similar 'lofty'(!) Social position.

Sorry to go on and on, Kristen, but I figured you need a bit of detail.. I'm new to this site and confess it's not too user-friendly to this dinosaur! If you like, you can reach me at my own email address: wcgilpinbeck@gmail.com

I live in Toronto, Ontario, as do so many of the surviving Gilpins (with the exceptiion of numerous ones whose elders settled in the three most westerly provinces of Canada more than 100 years ago... But that's ANOTHER story!)

Best wishes, a possible cousin, William Gilpin-Beck