OK, so Paul Revere’s horse – which may or may not have been called Brown Beauty – was commandeered by the owner’s son, Deacon John Larkin. So not quite a theft. But … the good deacon apparently did so without his father’s permission, the thought being that his father, Samuel Larkin, would eagerly support the Patriot mission in 1775.
When I discovered a rendition of this intriguing tale in a gigantic Vars family history tome, I thought it would be interesting to figure out the family connection. After all, Deacon John’s last name was Larkin. The 1976 family book, one of only 100 printed at what must have been eye-popping expense, spotlights the Vars clan, which intersects with my own. So how do the Larkins fit?
But as anyone lured into genealogical research knows, these “easy” projects almost always degenerate into tortured sighs, imaginative swearing, vile oaths, and countless hours of lost time, despite the internet’s seductive promises.
The Vars family history book
One might think the 839-page Vars opus would make my quest easy. After all, that’s where I found an excerpt from A.C.M. Azoy’s lively book entitled Paul Revere’s Horse. Here’s a sample: “Revere didn’t stop to ponder the ethics (of taking the Larkin horse) and swung into the saddle. The rising moon was silvering the sable ribbon of road as he headed for Cambridge, and he knew he could no longer count on the aid of darkness to shield his movements from prying loyalist eyes…”
Gripping stuff. But what about the Vars?
Azoy’s story – along with a Larkin crest and a brief Chronicle of the Larkin Family – was sandwiched, without explanation, between a 1738 Vars deed and articles about the Vars homestead in Westerly, R.I. The rest of the book threads the Vars family back to France in 1208, loops it into Rhode Island in 1682, and then zigzags back and forth from there. But it is very heavy on earnest research and light on the connective narratives. (Oh, for an index!)
I will spotlight a couple of Vars’ tales in a separate blog. [Who can resist adventurous travels, mysterious deaths at sea, and gruelling imprisonments?] https://kathrynstorring.wordpress.com/2024/01/13/tales-from-the-vars-adventures-duels-and-jails/
For now, I will just note the boring side of the family – I am related to the Vars through my grandmother, Ruth (Birdsall) Elmhurst (1888-1974). Her grandmother, Catherine, was a Vars before she married John Almus Butterfield of Norwood, Ont.
Connecting the Larkin dots
OK, OK, so why is the tale about Deacon John Larkin and the coveted horse included in a book about the Vars family?
Well, a line or two in one of the articles about the Vars Homestead reveals the basic connection: Isaac Vars, “the only Vars in America,” married Rebecca Larkin in Westerly, R.I., about 1710. After a lot of digging on my part, I thought I had nailed down the bigger picture: Rebecca (Larkin) Vars’ family and that of horse-trader Deacon John Larkin both trace their American roots to Edward Larkin, originally from England.
Easy-peasy, right? I just had to figure out why Rebecca was in Rhode Island while Deacon John was in Charlestown, Mass., a Boston neighbourhood known (dare I say Revered??) for its spot on the historic Freedom Trail.
Cue the screaming and hair-pulling.
After a zillion dead-ends, I have concluded that there were TWO Edward Larkins, both arriving in the U.S. from England in the 1600s, one in Rhode Island and one in Massachusetts. What the heck?
And I can also tell you that the Vars history book is not the only one to tangle up these two family trees.
Soap opera with the wrong ending
One highly detailed, authoritative family tree sent me off-course for several hours. The premise was so neat and tidy: Edward Larkin arrived in Charlestown, Mass., married fellow Brit Joanna Hale in 1639, and had a raft of children. Then about 1653, he moved to Rhode Island, married Lydia Wilcox and fathered more children.
OK, I admit I was also attracted to the soap-opera plot – Lydia was born about 1640, the same year as Edward’s eldest son from his first marriage. But then the math really kicked in:
> By this family tree, Lydia would have been 13 when she and Edward started his second family! I know things were different in the 1600s, but that seemed a bit extreme.
> Oh, and what’s this? Edward’s first wife, Joanna Hale, was still around at the time he married Lydia.
> More searches, more hours, and then…. It seems Joanna also remarried, but she and rope-maker John Pentecost tied the knot (so to speak) before Edward’s second marriage.
So, let’s get this straight: Joanna ran off with John the rope-maker, and Edward took up with a 13-year-old? Whoa!
Maybe this will help (or not…)
More searches, more hours, and then…. A will, probated in 1652, popped up in which Edward Larkin (“being weake in body but having perfitt memory”) gives a third of his estate to his “beloved” wife Jone/Joanna.
In other words, my endless excavations in this Massachusetts rabbit hole had crushed all hopes for an easy connection between the two families. The detailed family tree I had relied on was incorrect.
Here’s the biggest clue: Based on the Charlestown will, Edward would have been dead before he married Lydia Wilcox and moved to Rhode Island in 1653!
Confused? Oh, my heavens, me too! There’s also this:
- In that 1652 will, Edward Larkin left money to his daughter Hannah who was apparently given to his neighbour John Pentecost and his first wife, “my sister”, for adoption because they were childless. Huh?
- And have I mentioned that both Larkin family trees criss-cross with inter-generational Edwards, Johns, Thomases, Sarahs, Samuels, Elizabeths, etc? So easy to get lost.
- And how could there possibly be two Joanna Hales, both married to Larkins? It took some sleuthing to unravel that one – the younger Joanna was named after her father Robert Hale’s half-sister.
- To add to the confusion, both of these women remarried, so depending on the whims of the cyber genealogists, they might be identified as Joanna Dodge or Joanna Pentecost, even though both were Joanna Hales – married to Larkins.
- And then there were the Mehitables, one the daughter of the Rhode Island Edward Larkin and the other the mother of the Charlestown Edward Larkin. Surely this is a substantial clue? Well, no…
The truth, even if it hurts
OK, so here’s my final word on the whole mess (I think…)
>> The Rhode Island Larkin clan: Based on information presented for a 1671 court case in Connecticut, this Edward Larkin was born in England about 1616. His first known link to Rhode Island was on the 1655 Newport Freeman’s list.
He and his wife Lydia Wilcox link into my distant family tree as Rebecca (Larkin) Vars’ grandparents. [For those who take note of such things, Rebecca’s parents were Edward Larkin Jr. and Elizabeth Hall.] Rebecca married Isaac Vars about 1710 and they settled in Westerly, RI.
Very early records for this branch of the Larkins are hit and miss. One tidbit that has clearly confused family history buffs is that Edward Larkin Sr. did have two marriages, but the name of his first wife is unknown. (What I can underline is that his first wife was NOT JOANNA HALE.)
>> Meanwhile, in Charlestown, Mass.: Most sources say this Edward Larkin was born in England about 1615. His first official record in Charlestown, Mass., was when he was admitted to the church in 1639.
He and his wife Joanna Hale were great-great grandparents to that horse-snatching deacon, John Larkin (about 1735-1807). [The deacon’s great-grandparents were Edward and Joanne’s son John who married the other Joanna Hale, the original’s niece. The deacon’s grandparents were Edward (yes! another Edward!) and Mary Walker. The deacon’s parents were Samuel Larkin and Mary Hicks.]
Run, Brown Beauty, run!
OK, now for that darned horse….
In the stories about Paul Revere, Deacon John Larkin gets the horsey credit, rather than his father, Samuel, the mare’s owner. And that’s probably because Deacon John was a well-known, wealthy man and a friend of the Patriot cause. (One account says he was a merchant who concealed his chests of tea to avoid England’s Stamp Tax.)
The website for the Paul Revere House in Boston www.paulreverehouse.org confirms that John Larkin provided the horse for the Midnight Ride in April 1775. Revere’s own accounts describe his mount as a “very good horse,” but he took no notice of its name (perhaps he had other matters on his mind).
The website draws other details from a 1930 Larkin family history that says Deacon John’s father Samuel Larkin (1701-1784) was a chairmaker and then a fisherman. His horse, Brown Beauty, was never returned after Revere’s famous ride.
Irresistible side note: Apparently, Deacon John’s brother Ebenezer Larkin had his own dealings with the British troops. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, he fired a musket at the Brits as they marched through Charlestown and the troops responded by burning the Larkin homes to the ground.
So much for Edward Larkin Sr. and Joanna Hale’s British roots! And so much for the Vars family’s claim to horsey fame.
As my witty friend Frank Etherington quipped, it probably would have been easier to create a family tree for the horse.
Moving Forward 
Oh, yes, the joys of genealogical sleuthing on the internet! I had similar experiences when trying to sort out my Mennonite ancestral lines back to Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, when there were only a couple handfuls of already deeply intermarried Mennonite families with only a half dozen surnames and maybe a dozen given names (Peter, Menno, Christian, Elizabeth, and Maria the most frequent). I found several cases of 60-year-old men marrying 12-year-old girls, who supposedly bore children before they themselves were born. These were simple god-fearing people, mind you.
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It is like a huge (endless) puzzle, isn’t it? I was so grateful when I stumbled upon the Massachusetts Edward’s will. I really thought my search was over at that point and I was already framing up a cheeky summary of this man’s two marriages. Yikes! Another error for cyberspace!
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What astonishes me every time is that nobody else—before me—seems to have noticed the age and date anomalies, the impossibilities of the genealogies they’ve recorded and repeated: Children older than their parents? Whatever!
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It is shocking. And once the errors are out there, they are picked up by other family history buffs looking for quick answers. Then the next layer of amateur researchers comes along and sees the same info in a variety of places, so this must be true, right? Aargh!
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