I’ve had some requests to fully explain the direct line of descent from the recently recovered ancestry of Phillip Babb (1) of the Isles of Shoals.

In this post, I’ll identify the exact connection, but I will not discuss the siblings that were not pertinent to this exact journey. I will cover them at a later date.

Thus far, I’ve not been able to connect any of those lines to a modern-day active tree. That isn’t to say they don’t exist. But sometimes a surname continues to exist due to the luck of the draw. The number of males born to the line and the extent of their prodigy play heavily into the calculus.

There is a limitation in our current research, which is due to a lack of English Babbs conducting Y-DNA tests. It isn’t the biggest category of testing these days, but it is the ONLY opportunity for us to unlock the secrets that are many centuries old. This simply can’t happen with the tests that Ancestry and 23&me sell.

That type of DNA becomes relatively useless beyond a 2nd-3rd Great Grandparent. Whereas Y-DNA, which tracks the father to son connections, can last for a millennium, or two!

Hopefully, we will be able to gain some formal Y-DNA test candidates from England that will corroborate the story I believe in my heart to be true. I have no doubt that they will occur, I just don’t know if it will be in my lifetime. I leave this here as a breadcrumb for the researchers that come after me. Please pronounce your discovery very loudly so that I may hear it in my afterlife.

…but I digress.

Phillip’s Ancestry

Phillip’s ancestry from the point of origin as we understand it at this precise exact very specific moment is:

DNA-01: The Lions of the Sea (Isles of Shoals-Stepney-Newton Abbot)
Devon Pedigree (Newton Abbot 1544)
John Babbe (bef. 1475-aft. 13 Jul 1548)
Thomas Babb (bef. 1547-Bet. 21 Oct 1584–28 Aug 1592) & Johanna Coyell (b. Bet. 1550-1555-Aft. 28 Dec 1608)
Thomas Babb (Abt. 31 Aug 1577-15 Sep 1620) – aka. Thomas Babb, Mariner
Phillip Babb (1) (Abt. 1603-Abt. 24 Apr 1671) – aka. Phillip of the Isles of Shoals

I should be noted that records before this date are exceedingly uncommon. The odds of us making exact further connections are virtually nil.

That being said, we have two snippets of life before this time in the county:

First, there is the 1322 Lay Subsidy of Devon, which brings a father, son duo into perspective. They are, of course, both named Thomas. #gofigure

They would certainly be ancestors of John Babbe. There is a significant gap between them of more than 100 years. So, the exact connection is unlikely to be discovered. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Billions of records are being scanned every year and one of them might unlock these secrets. At this point, we just don’t have the info to make the connection.

The earliest known record of a Babb in Devon is that of John de Babb who married into the Cogan line in approximately the year of 1150. John was located in Exeter, in close proximity to the church grounds at the time of the marriage.

This is the sum of the connections that are known as of June 2023. Where we go from here is anyone’s guess!

Cheers!