This site is intended (eventually) to give as complete a picture of the Kingsman - and related - families as possible. This is far from being a "one-man" effort. At present, I have been working on the Kingsman tree for three years, and other contributors for much longer. In particular, I am indebted to Frank Kingsman and Jean Watts for the many years work that they each put in before the advent of web based information systems. Their records and views made putting this together much easier and a lot more fun.
This is not the only, nor the first, website to contain a history of parts of the Kingsman family. In places, our work has led us to disagree with some of the conclusions made about some of the earlier links, the major one being just which of the many Robert Kinsmans in the 17th century was "Robert the emigrant (or immigrant depending on your point of view)". I do not claim to have the absolute truth, but I have endeavoured to remove the inconsistencies from the earliest piece of work on which most other Kinsman researchers have based their trees. Consequently you will not find Robert the emigrant coming from Northamptonshire, nor being descended from Robert of Overton, Wiltshire as is the most commonly published research. The most up-to-date evidence suggests that he was instead the son of a tailor from Highworth in Wiltshire.
On this, and on all the content of this site, I keep an open mind. I welcome comment, contributions, questions and especially dialogue, with anyone who has an interest on this fascinating family. My e-mail address is at the bottom of the main pages of this site, and I really do look forward to hearing from you.
It may be useful to note the convention that I have adopted for dating major events, especially births. Where I give an actual date, then I have very good evidence for it, such as a birth certicate or diary entry. If only a year is given, then there is still evidence to support it, but it may be less definite, such as a census return. If a year is given as "About" followed by a round number, then it is an educated guess. Most often this will be based on an assumed age of 25 on the birth of a first child, or marriage, or 50 years prior to a known death date - normally rounded to the nearest five years. This is obviously inaccurate, but places people in "about" the right timeframe. If a birth year is given as "About" followed by a number that has not been rounded, like 1751, then it is like that to get the ordering of children in a family right - most often this being taken from a will, assuming the convention of naming children in order of their age. Again, this is not always true, but it gives a base to work from.
I hope you enjoy using this site. I've had a lot of fun in putting the pieces together, and get much more fun from working with others on linking their information with ours.
Please contact me with any queries or comments.
Derrick Watson
January 2008