The History Of The Pinckney Family

There is an unpublished book called "The History Of The Pinckney Family". It was written by Miss Euphemia Smith between 1920 and 1954 (34 years) and I have now scanned it (all 275+ pages) and it is available here.

The book has a history all of it's own and I'd like to recount it for you.

The main thanks for making this book available today must go to Mr Earle Smith who is a retired United States Air Force pilot. He is related to Philip Pinckney (b1618 - d1689) who emigrated to America, hence his interest in the Pinckney family.

Earle knew that Philip was in Fairfield, Connecticut in around 1649. He therefore wrote to the Fairfield Historical Society in 1987. They responded with a lineage of Philip's ancestors that had been gathered by an Elizabeth M Drury. Mrs Drury indicated that the lineage was supplied by Miss Frances Jean Helena Pinckney of "Duckmead" near Bradford-On-Avon in Wiltshire. He tried to contact both Miss Pinckney and Mrs Drury but by this time both had passed away.

Earle next contacted the Wiltshire Family History Society who sent him a copy of the family lineage going back to 1066. He has kindly provided me with a copy of this lineage. It was the same lineage used by Mrs Drury. The society also gave him the name of Elizabeth (Betty) Mary McCubbin (nee Pinckney) of Hungerford, Berkshire and they suggested that he contact her. He did so on 2nd of November 1988.

Betty and Earle corresponded and in early 1989 Earle and his wife went to visit Betty to see the family "treasures". Betty could only recall six copies of the book as follows -

Betty was not keen to have her copy reproduced in case of damage and Colin's was a carbon copy so would not have reproduced well. Therefore Earle contacted John and Roger. John suggested that Earle travel to him to borrow his copy but Roger's wife said that he could have the stencils that Roger had used to make his copy. We do not know who made the stencils. The stencils were received in November 1989 and they were in a dreadful condition. Earle found a shop which would let him use their machine to make copies from the stencils. Five copies were made before the stencils became unusable and they were destroyed. The job was completed by January 1990. Roger had been very ill and sadly died in 1991.

Earle's five copies went as follows -

  • He has his own copy
  • Kenneth Pinkney, Berkshire
  • Dianna Pinckeney, Tyne and Wear
  • Robert and Catherine Williams, North Carolina, USA
  • Myself, my copy has now been bound

I'd just like to add my own post script to this story. I have recently seen another copy of the book. It is either the one owned by Betty McCubbin or her son Colin. It does not have a front page referencing the author Miss Smith. Also, although the content is obviously the same someone has re-typed it. The original has footnotes for each page but the copy I have has all the footnotes together at the end of each chapter. My guess is that this was done at the same time that the stencils were made. It is possible that Roger made the stencils himself, we'll never know.

Earle and I have discussed the book and we both feel that we shouldn't keep it to ourselves. So far as we know it has never been officially published and all the people concerned have long since passed away. We therefore agreed that it was right to make it available to everyone here on my web-site.

So after many a long hour with my scanner, here it is. Enjoy reading the book, there is a lot of it and a lot of work has gone into it. Just click on the Next / Previous buttons to work your way through. Alternatively you can enter a page number and press Go to get back to where you were on a previous visit or finally you can use one of the section links. Hovering over a link will provide a description at the bottom of the screen. Lastly, clicking on any of the pages opens the page full size if you need to. I am very proud to have my copy of The History Of The Pinckney Family I hope you enjoy it.