William Vincent Adkins, Sr. - William's Parents are Unknown

Many online family trees show that William Adkins of Henrico County was the son of John Adkins of Sandy, Bedfordshire, England, and his wife Elizabeth Bromwell.

Unfortunately, this has been proven false. The facts from the Bedfordshire Parish Register are (https://archive.org/details/bedfordshirepari06bedf/page/n5/mode/2up):

John Adkins was baptized on 7 Apr 1639, (found on page A16)
Elizabeth Bromsall (not Bromwell) was baptized on 21 Dec 1642, (page A17)
John married Elizabeth on 4 June 1665, (page A65)
Their son, William, was baptized on 28 Mar 1689, (page A26)
John was buried 17 Dec 1692, (page A107)
Elizabeth, listed as a widow, was buried 27 May 1699, (page A108)
William, listed as an orphan, was buried 9 Sep 1704, (page A109)
Other theories for William's parentage include Thomas Adkins, Jr. of Henrico County, VA and John Adkins of New Kent County although neither can be proven or disproven at the current time.

I've made a new John Adkins and disconnected mid-Atlantic. But I can't clean up the English end because they're all locked up, although of course they aren't interesting any more.

There's a Josiah Adkins who I assume is American, but I can't disconnect his parents.

Thank you so much for the correction.

The John Adkins now shown as his father is also incorrect. There should be no parents shown for William as none have been identified. All other suggestions are lacking documentation for now. The dates I provided are all within the Sandy, Bedfordshire, England register that I provided the link for. All died in Sandy (John, wife Elizabeth and son William).

Just as we don't know who his parents are, we also have nothing to prove any brothers or sisters.

It might help that William's surname is actually Atkinson. That is how he first appears in his marriage record and how he appears whenever he signs his name in land deeds. He is only rarely shown as Adkins but every original document I have seen, where someone has transcribed it as Adkins, often shows it spelled as "Atkin son". At some point with William's grandchildren they shortened the name to Adkins but I can't find any distinct reason for this. There are a few family reports that sometime in the mid to late 1800's there was a family dispute that caused some Adkins to change the spelling to Atkins but the T spelling was used well before this.

I hope some of this helps.

Patricia how do I go about deleting him from my family tree?

I believe Geni has only one tree and the profile manager or curator would need to do that. That's why I left a message to let them know it wasn't correct. I only have a guest account so I am unable to do anything to the profile.

I don’t see a reason to keep William Adkins, Sr. connected as a child of John Adkins, of Henrico so have disconnected the parent / child relationship. If anyone knows otherwise, please advise.

In fact, a Y DNA test note was posted on the profile for

Parker Adkins

By Dorene 12/18/2020: The correct Y DNA of direct male-line descendants of William Adkins, Sr. and his sons, including Parker, is I2a1 as documented by the Adkins family, in the FTDA Adkins Y-DNA project and other Y DNA analysis. It is not R-M269.

—-

Disconnect of William as son of John resolved the discrepancy.

The "Vincent" is probably bogus too. Parker is just within the timeframe that middle names were starting to come in - his father William is just outside it. Somebody, but I forgot who, reported that it wasn't a proper name at all, but sort of a check-mark indicating "this is me". Nowhere, ever, was any full "middle name" found written out, so at sometime some researcher made a bad guess based on the commonest V-name they knew.

(And here we are, right next door to those problematical Justices again....)

That’s my understanding also - it was a W for something in a document, that’s all.

In cleaning up in that area I found dna test results for “the Earl of Oxford” line (Mary Adkins, mother of Patriot David). Seems to be a Stover / Stouffer of Philadelphia match.

Hi, Erica. I came across this thread. I think I can help in passing on a message from Lynda Davis Logan as to the "Earl of Oxford" line (Lynda can't respond herself because she was kicked off Geni).

"She needs to know that the ONLY CHILD of MARY'S FOR SURE that is a STOVER IS Sherrod 'Sherwood. Stover is for sure for Sherrod 'Sherwood' because Ralph has DNA matches with the descendants of Jacob Stover JR. Oxford is for sure for sure Jacob, but we do not know WHO the OXFORD was... we know the OXFORD family line that we match... but Ralph has never been able to pinpoint which OXFORD was in the area at the right time.

Hope that helps :)

Added NN Oxford profile and connected Jacob Adkins as his child.

Thank you for disconnecting John. His poor son is buried in England and had died young. I believe that started with those early computer genealogy programs where you searched for names and it gave results that probably didn't even match the person you were searching for but since it was around the time you were looking for- BINGO! And many researchers have been confused by the misinformation ever since.

The R-M269 Y-DNA is from this ftDNA Adkins/Atkins Group page- https://www.familytreedna.com/public/adkins?iframe=yresults

I have not seen I2a1 so I'd be curious where that is documented? I am seeing I-P37 and R-M269 on the group testing page for those who show William as their oldest ancestor. That's on the Y-DNA 12 but you get more of I-Z45261 if you go to the highest Y-DNA 111, which I understand to be more accurate. But still none show I2a1. I even checked the mtDNA page but that is not there either.

I also really am not familiar with using Geni because I do most of my work over on WikiTree. I have redone the profile for Parker over on Wikitree (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Adkins-431) and had found a tax record that extended his life to after 19 June 1795 when he last appeared on the rolls. We know this is the older Parker and not a younger relative because he is "levy free" due to age. He did not appear on the one after this but I didn't record the date of the next tax list. I attempted to update his death date here but that didn't work. (I'm sure it's because I was in the wrong place to do that!)

@Maven B. Helms, You are correct- Parker never had a middle name.

Regarding the "unknown Oxford" story, there are at least two possibilities.

1) There's no end of ripe scandal surrounding Aubrey de Vere, 20th and last Earl of Oxford, including a fake marriage with an actress, Hester Davenport, that resulted in a son (Aubrey de Vere, 1664-1708). Some time later (1672), the Earl married for real the "beautiful and immoral" Diana Kirke, previously his public mistress. Hester tried to bring a charge of bigamy, but it was dismissed when the Earl counter-claimed that their marriage had been a sham complete with fake clergyman "officiating". Hester's son was never acknowledged as legitimate (and further deponent sayeth not).

2) Edward Harley, 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1689-1741), had no legitimate sons and was succeeded by his first cousin, another Edward. We don't know if he was up to any extracurricular activities.

We can take it as read that the person passing himself off as "son of the Earl of Oxford" in early Virginia had no legal claim to the title - why else would he be in Virginia in the first place? But he wasn't just a random nobody, because he had enough connections to get himself appointed tax collector. So was he a Vere, a Harley, or just somebody with connections and pretensions?

Thank you Erica! A fellow reseacher had found one tax document that had extended Parker's life by a few months and then I got to work searching all of them for that 1795 one.

Maven- To add to the confusion you have two different titles- Early of Oxford and the Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. They are not the same lines. The De Vere's were titled with Earl of Oxford While the Harley's were titled with Earl of Oxford and Mortimer.

The oral family history has always held that it was Jacob Harley that fathered Mary's children which DNA has proven that, at least, a few were not. I have seen no actual reports, other than a casual mention, of the surname Oxford as a link to one of Mary's children. Now, one of the children was DNA matched to the Stover (Stauffer) family and a Jacob Stover did receive a very large land patent of 10,000 acres. He had a son Jacob Stover (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stover-531) who had land directly across the river from William Atkinson and his daughter Mary. I have documents from the West Virginia Culture website that show the bridge that Jacob was commissioned to build across the Pigg River that linked his land to that of William's, which would have given him and Mary access to see/know each other. A first name of "Jacob" as a father can be proven. DNA has proven the surname of "Oxford". Could be possible that the oral tradition got mixed up somewhere along the line?

Also, it's interesting to note that the oral tradition on Mary that uses Jacob Harley had always said they are the "Royal Line" because of the genealogy. My own research indicates that this is correct but not with the Earl of Oxford.

The Stover family descends from a line that came from Switzerland in which they held a position at court and were given the title of Cup Bearers, a "Royal Line". After a falling out with the King, most of the family was banished and went on to Germany and from there a later line ended up in Virginia.

Truth to the story, just not exactly as expected!