It’s time to meet the new progenitor of the Lions of the Sea, John Babbe. Let’s talk more about him. History does not appear to have recorded the name of the mother of John’s children, which was common in that timeframe.

Let me start by saying that the documentary evidence is scant this far back. We are back in Devon where, as you may recall, a direct hit was made on their Public Records Office by Nazi Germany in WWII. The entire repository was destroyed and along with it much of the data we would need to reconstruct our lines from Devon. Records from this time period are scant to begin with, but this makes our job more difficult/intriguing.

Why is Devon Research so hard?

I’ve taken a couple of unusual steps with John’s children. He is one of the founders of Newton Abbot and Bovey Tracey, having served as a witness on the Town’s Charter. He is the only Babb that appears in this timeframe, and we currently have him listed as the father of a number of children for whom there is no official Baptism record.

Part of the reason for this is that the parish church of Wolborough’s records only date back to 1558. The parish of Wolborough now consists of southern and western Newton Abbot which was formed as a market town by Royal Charter in 1269¹. The church is situated about a mile from Newton-Abbott and has an inscription on the outside of the south aisle bearing date 1516². The other portions of the structure are considered to be much more ancient³.

As no one else is around, it is assumed that John is the father of them. In reality he may be an uncle or cousin as well. Such as is the case with Thomas Babb, who is the grandfather of Phillip Babb (1) of the Isles of Shoals. A number of the children have placed with John as all families in Newton Abbot appear to have come through him. Notes have been added to each person who is in this situation. This is the oldest tree of Newton Abbot. When surveying the names of the grandchildren and great grandchildren from the various branches the connection is obvious. Rare names such as Wilmot(a) and Johanna keep appearing at the same generation level. This demonstrates a connection, if only by inference.

There is one tree that is older in Highweek a neighboring community, but it is a mere fragment and is 145 years older. That is a topic for another post, though.

The Big Picture

All of this is extremely difficult to visualize, even for me. I’m constantly looking back and forth checking to make sure I’m on the right Thomas and trying to pull everything together in a clear and concise way. To help push this out in a way that is easier to understand I’ve updated the tree with everything we currently know under the umbrella of The Lions of the Sea. These are the first 6 generations of the tree that in its entirety encompasses more than 10,000 descendants to date.

I’ve still got another 25 pages of Elizabeth Babb’s work to comb through, so some lower-level information may continue to evolve as I complete that work.