THE following account of the Early History and Genealogy of the Families of Hore and Hoare has engaged my attention for a large number of years. in consequence of a considerable number of very early deeds and documents if the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. with other relics of the families, having come into lily possession, and which have been the means of assisting me greatly in my investigations and researches, and guiding me into the proper paths for procuring much which otherwise might have been unnoticed and unknown.

I have during that period, I may say almost unassisted, amassed an immense amount of valuable and interesting information, at great labour, and much expense to myself, and which may prove also hereafter useful to future members of the families as well as to those now existing. I have therefore thought it a pity that all this information, obtained at so great care and labour, should be lost, as would most probably be the case. if unrecorded, when I shall have passed away a genealogist seldom arising in a family, perhaps not even once throughout a century. I have therefore resolved on printing a limited number of copies, giving not only very full and copious pedigrees of all the various families and their different branches, but also interspersing it throughout, as far as space permitted me to do so, with anecdotes and incidents in the lives of many of the principal persons, and my authorities also for many of the transactions here recorded, thereby reviving the remembrance and the almost now forgotten memories of the past.

The volume is not published through any ancestral vanity or silly ideas, neither is it brought forth in hopes of profit or gain. Truth, and truth alone, has been my only object, my guiding star throughout, and in seeking if, I have gone to the fountainhead for every information regardless of time, expense, or trouble. Nearly all such has been obtained from Legal sources and evidences, Public Records. Wills, Heraldic and Funeral Visitations, Family Deeds and Documents, Broadsides. Parish Registers, old Pedigrees, Manuscripts, Family Letters, and most of the best Periodicals, Journals, Magazines, and Papers of the times. I have discarded all hearsay tales, old women's gossip, and foolish fables. and sifted every thing with care, whilst quietly following my pursuits. and silently but thoughtfully "Wending on my way. I now submit it to the various members of the different families herein interested, and to the public, and in so doing, with the hope that like its collector and compiler, they may also find -

THE name and family of Hore and Hoare is one of very great antiquity. The name is of Eastern origin, and signifies a boundary or mark. It is derived from the Armoric "Men-har," whence the Celtic "Mein-heir," a boundary stone, whence the Greek "opos," and the Latin "hora," an hour being merely a subdivision, a mark, and a boundary of time. All this will be more fully seen on referring to Mr. William Hamper's" Essay on Hoar-stones," memorial marks and boundary stones, published in the "Archaeologia," volume xxv., and also separately (Birmingham, 4to, 1820). The word "hore" and "hoar" has also been used to designate the colour white. and has thus been used by Chaucer in his "Canterbury Tales," such signification having been derived from those ancient pillars and monuments of memorial and boundary-the Hoar-stones, they being universally hoary-headed, and white with age and antiquity.

When the word "hore" (for this is its earliest spelling) was first assumed as a surname it is now impossible to decide. Some are inclined to suppose it was first so used during the Crusades, when surnames became general; but this is not so, as the name has been found in much earlier times. Others have ascribed it to Mount Horeb, the tribe of the Horites, the territory of La Hore, and even to the Egyptian Deity Horus ; but all this is merely imaginary, and dealing too far back with the distance and darkness of long past ages. De Burgho derives the name from the town of Hore, and the Hore Abbey, situated near the rock of Cashel, in the county of Tipperary, founded about the year 1260. In the time of King William the Conqueror, there was also a town of the name Hore in Hampshire, as mentioned in "Domesday Book" for that county; and at the same period there were lands, meadows, woods, etc., named Tiara and Horam in the county of Suffolk, belonging to Robertus Malet, as may be seen by reference to the " Domesday Book " for that county.

Families of the name Hore have been found in very early times, and in records in England, Wales, and Ireland, the adjective "1e" being very generally affixed thereto, as "le Hore;" they have also been found with the words "de la Hore," but not frequently, and in a few instances as "de la Hora."

I will now mention some of the earliest instances of families and persons of this name which have come under my immediate observation and researches, and also the various forms in which the name had been spelt, as Hore, Hora, Hoor, Hoore, Horre, Horey, Horrie, Horam, Horem, Hoar, and Hoare.

1. Alardus le Hore paid fines to King John, in A.D. 1208, for lands in Muriel in "Com. Buckingham." ("Cap. dom. Westmin.")

2. Walterus le Hore held lands, in the year 1235, of King Henry III., in Leatherhead, in the county of Surrey, for the service of keeping a house in which to contain prisoners. (Manning's "History of Surrey," and "Placita Coronae," 19th year of King Henry HI.)

3. Robertus le Hore was living in London in 1331.

4. Walterus le Hore accompanied the Earl of Northampton, with a large number of nobles, knights, and other gentlemen of qualitie," into parts beyond the sea, on the King's service, and bad letters of protection and attorney from King Edward III., in the year 1337.

5. John Hoor had also similar letters from King Henry IV., in 1405, to accompany the King's son, the Duke of Lancaster. (Rymer's "Faedera.")

6. The heiress of Hore of ~oucestershire married Henry de Clifford, Lord of Frampton, temp. King Henry IV.

7. John Hore was at the siege of Ronen, in the train of King Henry V.

8. Thomas Hoore, or Hore, was a Justice of the Peace for Southwark, in the year 1496.

9. The heiress of Hore of Marston, in Oxfordshire, married Unton Croke, son of Sir John Croke, the father of Sir Richard Croke. (See Burke's Commoners," volume i., page 357.)

10. Another family of the name Hore was distinguished in the same county and also in Cambridgeshire, and possessed the Lordship of Elsefield, in the county of Oxford, and the Manors of Childerley magna and parva, Luworth, Boxworth, and Magna Ravele, in Cambridgeshire; Wysshawe and Langley, in Warwickshire; and Barlee, or Hore's land, in Hertfordshire; and left Editha Hore its heiress, who married Thomas Fuithorpe, Esquire, of Barnard Castle; of this same house was Sir Nicholas Hore, Knight, who, about 1470, married Katherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Cotton, of Landwade, in Cambridgeshire, Knight. (See Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire," Dugdale's "Warwickshire," and Burke's "Commoners," volume iv., page 712, and various other works.)

11. In Devonshire and Cornwall two ancient families of the name Hore flourished. From the former are descended the families of the two baronets of the name Hoare, which are given in the following pages, and which are supposed, with every probability of reason and truth, and by an early and well-supported tradition, to be descended from the very ancient family of Hore, of Pole Hore, in the county of Wexford, in Ireland, and previously from Pembroke, in Wales, as will be seen treated of here in an abridged form. The families of the name in Cornwall, in Hertfordshire, and Warwickshire, were not connected with the Devonshire or Wexford families, their armorial bearings being totally different. The pedigree and arms of the Cornwall family of Hore of Trenouth, in that county, will be found in the Heraldic Visitation for the county of Cornwall, taken in 1620, and among the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum. Their armorial bearings were, Azure, on a bend argent, three torteaux gules. It is a carious fact that though the word Hore is thus used throughout the entire pedigree, the last male member of the family, in 1620, signed the Visitation, spelling his name John Hoare, to which form it would appear he had then changed it.

The Warwickshire family of Hore, of Elmedon, and elsewhere, ended early in co-heirs, married to Boteler, Hanslap, Pudsey, and others, as may be seen in Dugdale's "Warwickshire" (volume i., page 348, and volume Ii., page 1001). Their armorial bearings were, Argent, a chevron gules, between three stags' heads cabossed of the last.

In Wales the family was of high distinction, as well as in England, where, says Verstegan, "I find many of this surname of good note and special regard, in many places of this kingdom." They held lands in the twelfth century in South Wales, after its conquest by the Normans, and acquired considerable estates in the adjoining shires and counties, holding high martial offices in the Marches of Wales, and serving as Sheriffs and representatives in Parliament for their counties and boroughs.

In the church of Digswell, in Hertfordshire. there is a very fine sepulchral brass to a Thomas Hoore (thus spelt), a member of the Mercers' Company of London, with his wife Alicia, his four sons and eight daughters, all represented on the brass. It is dated March 20th, 1495, the period of his death. It was formerly over the grave in the nave of the church, but was removed, at the restoration of the building in the year 1814, within the rails of the Communion table. where it is now to be seen, with several other brasses. A description of it, with the inscriptions, will be found in Clutterbuck's History of Hertfordshire." Volume ii., page 325. A Thomas Hore, supposed to be one of his sons, was rector of Digswell. at the time of the decease of the mein her of the Mercers' Company, but which he resigned in the year 1497, June 1st, having been appointed thereto 13th of August, 1494, and no mention is made of any person of the name in after times, in the parish records.

In the books of the Mercers' Company of London there is only the date of the admission of Thomas Hore as a member of the Company, in 1457, and the name of the mercer, John Artone, to whom be served his apprenticeship. On the brass the armorial bearings, impaled with those of his wife, are the same as those of the Devonshire family. In the church of Hayes, near Bromley, in the county of Kent, there is another brass over the grave of John Hoare, who was rector of the parish of Hayes, in Orpington, and who deceased in the year 1584, February 11th, aged 83 years, having been rector over 18 years. It is in rhyme, and in 01(1 English black- letter characters. I give it here in full, as it is very quaint and curious

This John Hoare was a member of the Devonshire family of Risford, near Chagford, but I am at present unable to say exactly to which particular branch of the family he belonged, as at this very period I find many of the name John Hoare scattered among different parts of England. There was formerly the figure of a priest in canonicals, a likeness and representing the deceased, over the inscription, but this was cut off and stolen for the sake of the old brass by some workmen, during the latter part of the last century when the church was undergoing repairs. In the "Journal of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland," for the year 1881, will be found a full description of this interesting brass, communicated by me to that Society, at their meeting, March 3rd, 1581, volume xxxvlll., pages 229, 230, and 231.

There are many early Wills of members and persons of the names Hore and Hoare in the Prerogative Office of Doctors' Commons, in Somerset House, London, a large number of which I have examined, and whence I have obtained much information. I here give the dates and names of those from the middle part of the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century.

Many of the name Hore sat as Members of Parliament in various Counties and Boroughs in England. I give the names of from the writs, now preserved in the Hanaper Office, London.

29th Year of King Edward I., 1300-130L Radulphus le Hore, for Milborne Port Borough, Somersetshire.

8th Year of King Edward III., 1333A. Thomas le Hore, for the County of Kent.

12th Year of King Edward III., 1337-8. Stephanus le Hore, for Dorchester Borough, Dorsetshire.

22nd Year of King Edward III., 1348. Stephanus le Hore, for Dorchester Borough, Dorsetshire.

8th Year of King Richard II., 1384. Willielmus Hore, for the County of Rutland.

8th Year of King Henry V., 1420. Willielmus Hore, for the City of Chichester, County of Sussex.

9th Year of King Henry V., 1421, 31st of March. Johannes Hore, for Bridport Borough, Dorsetshire.

9th Year of King Henry V., 1421, 10th of November. Johannes Horey, for the County of Dorset.

3rd Year of King Henry VI., 1425, 29th of March. Johannes Hore, for the County of Cambridge.

9th Year of King Henry VI., ~30. Willielmus Hore, for the City of Chichester, County of Sussex.

15th Year of King Henry VI., 1436-7, 22nd of November, 1436. Gilbertus Hore, for the County of Cambridge.

7th Year of King William Ill., 1695, 23r(l of October. Roger Hoar, merchant, for Bridgwater Borough, County of Somerset.

10th Year of King William III., 1698, 25th of July. Roger Hoare, Esquire, for Bridgwater Borough, County of Somerset. A new election took place, 29th of November, 1699, for Bridgwater Borough vice Roger Hoare, Esquire, deceased.

Having given these particulars so far, which, indeed, I might have increased very largely, respecting early members of the name and various families, I now proceed to give the pedigrees of the different families of the names Hore and Hoare, with their branches, with which I am myself connected, and from which I am directly descended.

EDWARD HOARE

The family name in the first form of which we have any authentic record was "le hore". One of the followers of William in his conquest of England in 1066 bore that name and was probably, like William, of Norman blood. When William the conqueror had partially subjected the Welsh, many of his Narman followers were given lands or the command of fortified stations in Wales. The town of Pembroke was thus subjected in 1093 and William's follower named "le Hore" was there stationed. He and his male descendants undoubtedly took an active part in the border wars which raged in Wales from that time until the end of the twelfth century. According to ancient traditions in England which are consistent with historical facts and which are considered by students of the subject to be well founded, one Sir William le Hore was stationed at or near Pembroke in 1169, as an immediate subordinate of Richard de Clare, first Earl of Pembroke, called "Strongbow".

In that year Diarmit mac Murchadha (Dermond Macmorrough), claimant to the Irish kingdom of Leinster, obtained the consent of the English king, Henry II, to solicit the aid of his subjects in efforts to secure the disputed kingdom. His first act was to recruit a band of about one hundred Norman knights from Pembroke and the neighborhood, who sailed from Pembroke under the leadership of Robert Fitzstephen and Maurice Fitzgerald, minor barons of the Welsh marches. They besieged and captured the Irish twon of Wexford in May, 1169. Sir William le Hore was the standard bearer of that expedition and upon his standard was one of the Norman designs of an eagle, double-headed. By this capture King Dermod was restored to the control of the surrounding territory and he made extensive grants of land to the knights who had helped him to conquer it. His sovereignty was transferred to Henry II of England on King Dermod's death in 1172, and by King Henry to Strongbow in 1174, on Strongbow's succession to the throne of King Dermod whose daughter he married.

According to the tradition, King Dermod granted to Sir William le Hore at this time, in recognition of his services, the estate of Pole Hore in the barony of Forth, county of Wexford; together with the right to use as his armorial bearings "an eagle with expanded wings". The castle and estate of Pole Hore has ever since remained the property of lineal descendants of Sir William; and is today owned by Philip Herbert Hore, Esq.

The first record of these armorial bearings describes them in the language of heraldry as "an eagle with expanded wings, with two necks, within an engrailed bordure."

Other branches of the family of le Hore existed in England at an early date; many of them having served in early Parliaments. One of the descendants of Sir William of Wexford, according to the same tradition, went over to Devonshire in England to seek his forturne and married the heiress of Fforde of the twon of Chagford in 1330. He settled at Chagford and founded the Devon family which was at first known as "Hore" and later as "Hoar" or "Hoare." The family seat was at what is now called Rushford Mill in what was formerly Risford, now known as Rushford, Chagford, Devon. Other branches of the family were settled in the South east quarter of Devonshire. This family has its armorial insignia described in the record of the earliest visitation of Devonshire as "Sable an eagle displayed with two necks within a bordure engrailed argent." Its crest was "on a wreath of the colors, a deer's head and neck proper erased argent." Its earliest motto was "Datur Hora Amori," a pun like many of the ancient mottoes. Branches of the family from time to time assumed other mottoes, "Constanter" being now used by the Irish branch.

At Rushford the family in possession of the estate traced its descent from Robertus 1, through Robert 2, Robert 3, William 4 (living 1381), Robert 5 (living 1397), William 6 (living 1459), Robert 7 (living 1470), William 8 (living 1507), William 9 (living 1525), William 10 (living 1560), John 11 (died 1644), William 12 (died 1656), and William 13 (born 1602), who sold the estate to the ancestor of the Earl of Portsmouth about 1630 and removed to London.

One Charles Hoare, of this family, perhaps a younger son of William 10, settled at Frampton-on-Severn, about ten miles from the city of Gloucester, in the sixteenth century, where he acquired a considerable estate. He and his sons, who removed to the city of Gloucester and became very prominent merchants and office-holders, continued to use the crest and coat-of-arms above described.

The town of Taunton, Mass., was settled by emigrants from the town of Taunton in the county of Somerset, England. Taunton, England, was a large market town about half way between Gloucester and Chagford, and just south of Chagford was the port of Plymouth from which the early, and many of the later, Puritans sailed for the colonies. Taunton was almost the center of puritanism at that time.

Hezekiah Hoar was one of the original purchasers of the site of the town of Taunton, Mass., in 1637, and probably arrived in the colony about that time. There were several families in Eastern Devonshire in 1620 who spelled the name "Hore," and Hezekiah was first referred tot by others in this country as "Hore" but he himself used the form "Hoar" which indicates relationship to the Chagford family. William 13 of Chagford and his son founded and conducted a banking house in London. Early tradition in America seems to have connected the Massachusetts Hoars generally with the banker, as early local historians state that the progenitor of the family was a wealthy London banker, whose sons emigrated to this country. This statement we now know to have been erroneous, but it lends strength to the probability that the American Hoars were collaterally related to the London bankers, and were all of the Chagford family. The circumstance that the long cherished names Robert and William were freely used among Hezekiah"s descendants adds to the probability of a Chagford origin. Hezekiah may speculatively be considered as a direct descendant in the twelfth generation of Robert (Robertus) Hore 1 of Chagford; in the eighteenth generation of Sir William le Hore of Wexford, Ireland, and in the twenty first generation of the first Norman follower of William the Conqueror.

Lexicographers have two opinions as to the meaning of the family name. Like most other family names its origin is traced to some common word of the language of the time. According to the theory adopted by the genealogists of the family in England, the name came through the Norman French, from the ancient French and Latin and was derived from a root common to the Latin word "hora," meaning originally a boundary or mark. As an "hora" or "hour" was a boundary mark on the sun dials formerly exclusively used to measure time, so was "hoar-stone" a designation anciently of memorial marks and boundary stones. Because such boundary stones became in the time gray-headed with antiquity, the word acquired a secondary meaning of white or gray.

The better lexicographers say that the word "hoar" as used in the expressions "hoary head" and "hoar frost" is derived from the Anglo-Saxon and early Scandinavian root "hor," meaning white or gray. Inasmuch as the name in its present application certainly came to England from Normandy, and as the Norman fighting men of that time were, themselves, Northmen or of Scandinavian or northern descent, it would seem probable that the lexicographers have the better of the argument, although it may well be true and is consistent with both theories that the Latin word and the Scandinavian, or northern word, are both derived from an older Amoric or Aryan root having the same basic meaning and perhaps the same genesis.

There is a tradition in several branches of the descent from Hexekiah Hoar that the founders of the American family were three brothers who came at an early date to Plymouth colony from England, and that all trace has been lost of two of them. The compiler believes that this tradition is based upon fact, and that the three brothers were our Hezekiah, William and Richard. One Richard Hoar appears by the record of the Plymouth Colony to have settled at Yarmouth before 1643, but nothing further is known about him. One William Hoar, a baker, settled in Bristol and died there in 1697. He probably left no male issue, as his family was listed in 1689 as consisting of a wife, Hannah, and three daughters, one of whm married between 1689 and 1697, Isaac Gorham, and another Isaac Waldron.

Besides the Hoar family now under consideration, there are many of the name in this country who are of different descent.

The descendants of Charles, of Gloucester, and his wife, Joane, are considered by the late Senator George Frisbie Hoar in his monograph in Volume 53 of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register. See also, account of one branch by Alfred W. Hoar of Monticello, Minn.

A considerable family of the name of Horr descends from one Abijah who was born in Scotland in 1626 and emigrated to Massachusetts in 1667. Another family, largely of Rhode Island, descends from a William Hoar who is said to have been born in England before 1710 and to have emigrated to Bristol, R.I., shortly before 1743.

One William Hoar was in Salem in 1659. Removed to Boston where he married in 1669 Hannah, daughter of Robert Wright. They are known to have had there, Samuel, b. May 6, 1673; Joseph, b. March 15,1675; Benjamin, b. Sept. 5, 1680; Paul, b. Dec. 23,1682; William, b. March 1, 1685; and Hannah, b. March 5, 1687.

This may be the William above mentioned as being in Bristol later, as there seems to be no further trace of him or his sons in Boston.

There are some German citizens in this country named Horr or Hor who descended from Westphalians; and others notably in Baltimore and Philadelphia whose emigrating ancestors came from Budingen, and Niederroden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, in the middle of the nineteenth century. The family of Hezekiah exemplifies the history of all early New England families.