Along The Way

What’s in a Name…and How Did Your Family Get to Tipton, Indiana?

I’ve got to admit that I had no great desire to take up genealogy until a couple of years ago.  But when the desire hit I also got very lucky…someone in the family had gone to a lot of trouble tracing our “roots” back to the reign of Henry III 1216-1262 near Yorkshire, England.  That’s a long way from Tipton!

The journey was long and I won’t bother with all of the details, but just try to hit the pertinent points along the way.  The name of Walker was derived from the occupation of “Walker” or “cloth filler,” where raw cloth was thickened by beating it in water.  This process was known as “walking” because it was originally done by men trampling on the cloth in a trough or stream.  In the north of England today a fulling mill is still called a “walk mill.”

English families bearing this name were numerous and were found all over Scotland, Ireland, and all parts of England.  Jumping ahead a few hundred years, the first Walker in America was probably Captain Richard Walker, a native of Wimbledon, England, who arrived in Lynn, Massachusetts in about 1630.  Later his descendents founded Taunton, Massachusetts, and then later the village of Seekonk, before spreading into Rhode Island (where a Walker home still stands in Providence).

Many of the Walker family members served in the Revolutionary War.  Just after the war, my great-great-great grandfather, Hillery B. Walker, was born in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.  He became a farmer in southern Pennsylvania, just across the line from