5695. Chaplin

Outline

1. John Chaplin m. ____; Monks Eliegh, Suffolk, Eng.
2. Susan Chaplin (d. aft. 1624) m. Rev. James Wolfenden (ca. 1563–1624); Little Whelnetham, Suffolk, Eng.

Sources

This placement is suggested tentatively by Leslie Mahler and Robert Charles Anderson, The English Ancestry of Susan Wolfenden, Wife of Thomas¹ Marrett of Cambridge, Massachusetts, American Genealogist 81 (2006): 99-104. It is based on two documents: James Wolfenden’s will, which names Abraham Chaplyn as brother-in-law and supervisor; and the will of Katherine Catlin of Culford, Suffolk, dated 6 July 1631 and proved 9 August 1631, which names Abraham Chaplyn as a brother and Susan Wolfenden as a sister, together with several of Susan’s children. Mahler and Anderson were also able to establish that Katherine’s surname was also Chaplin prior to her first marriage. Although there is no direct documentation of Susan’s maiden name, that she was the sister of two Chaplins should elicit more confidence in her hypothesized birth-name than that her husband was the brother-in-law of one Chaplin.

Mahler and Anderson also cite Joseph J. Muskett, Suffolk Manorial Families, vol. 3 (1914), which states that John Chaplin of Monks Eleigh, Suffolk, had a daughter Susanna who married James Wolfenden. John’s residence was the same parish in which Katherine Chaplin had been married for the first time. Apparently Muskett’s pedigree is based on fragmentary evidence and credits John only with children named Susan and John; the baptismal registers of Monks Eleigh begin too late to fill in the composition and chronology of the family. Finally, there is no will for John (pp. 103-4). It nevertheless seems clear that the Chaplin pedigree, short as it is, should not be accepted unless it also accommodates Abraham and Katherine.

Related surnames

2847. Wolfenden