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• Stout 
•  Somers 
•  Mathis 
•  Cranmer 
•  Rockhill 
•  Lippincott 
•  Robbins 
•  Gregson 
•  Rossi 

 

The ancestry of my Robbins line can be traced to John Robbins of Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York in Colonial America and joins with the Falkenburg family through my paternal grandmother Juliet Provoost (Robbins) Falkenburg. Juliet was the daughter of George Washington Robbins and Emma Van Voorhis. Like the Falkenburgs, the Robbins family has a long history in America, reaching into the colonial era.

It is believed that the Robbins family came to England with William the Conqueror and the Norman conquest of 1066. We so often think of the nations of Europe in modern terms without remembering that European states are an amalgam of many cultures, often formed through bloody conflict. Before 1066 the Anglo Saxons, descendants of Teutonic invaders, dominated the island nation. In 1066 William the Conqueror swept into the English countryside with his knights. One of those is believed to have been named Ro-Baynes, the progenitor of the Robbins family. {ROB.1} There are genealogical records beginning in the latter part of the fourteenth century into the first third of the sixteenth century in which the spelling of the family name is Robyns, then Robins or Robbins. The Normans lived in northwest France, the region we now call Normandy. They were a culture formed by the mixing of invading Vikings and the natives of the region—Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock. The invasion from France changed english language and culture. The Robbins Coat of Arms displays the fleur-de-lis (hinting at the roots of the family) on the sides of an escutcheon, topped by a talbot's head {ROB.2}. How is this historic English family connected to our ancestor John Robbins of Oyster Bay? At this point in time we simply do not know.

Most of the settlers in colonial Oyster Bay migrated from the Hartford, New Haven and Plymouth Colonies, as well as from other regions of New England. There are records showing sons of John Robbins of Leicestershire, England who emigrated to America about a decade after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Nicholas and his brother Thomas Robbins settled in Duxbury. Brother Samuel settled in Salisbury, Massachusetts. Richard Robbins came to Cambridge, later moving to Boston in 1630. The time of the Robbins’ departure for America was a era of upheaval in England’s history. When Charles I. ascended the throne of England, he moved to dismiss Parliament and for a period of eleven years, Charles ruled the country as a tyrannical despot. He favored a High Anglican form of worship, which Puritans who embraced a Protestant reformation in the Anglican Church, regarded as dangerously close to Roman Catholicism. Evidently, Richard was in a position of some power, and opposed King Charles. Because of this, he fled the country for America under an assumed name and in the guise of a servant. {ROB.3} Was John of Oyster Bay related to the family of John of Leicestershire? While I at first thought that John of Oyster Bay could be related to this New England Robbins family, the data we have simply does not support this point.

Notes
{ROB.1}	Robins [Ro-Bynes] Robbins Clan
{ROB.2}	From a tracing made at the British Museum (see ROB.1 pg. 866 ). The Talbot Hound is an extinct snow white hunting dog originating in Normandy and used and developed in Great Britain
{ROB.3}	Jordan, John W., ed., Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania, Vol 2, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Lewis Publishing Co. (New York, 1911) p. 1041 Ancestry.com.