traced back in an unbroken line to the time of the Conqueror, 1066, to an officer, a standard bearer to the Conqueror, bearing the family name, Hearne. This much-prized little book of genealogy was seen and read by several of my generation of the family, who were much older than I; among them were Mrs. Eveline Allen, a granddaughter of Clement Hearne, and William L. Hearne, a great nephew of Clement Hearne, who then (1836) lived in Delaware and died in Wheeling. West Virginia, in 1895. They were both full grown people when they saw the book, and told me bow Grandfather Clement prized it and how carefully he kept it, and with what pride he showed and explained it to them. I remember quite well myself the two years I lived with him, though only five and six rears old, of his keeping these old treasure books, in a small book case in the wall, always under lock, with the key in his pocket. His wife died in less than two years after that, and he had to go to live in a room built for him in his son Joseph’s yard. In the meantime Joseph bad married his second wife; that rendered both his and his father Clement's life unhappy, and she knew not the value, and perhaps cared not, for these old books of such inestimable worth; hence they were lost or destroyed, except one, which was an invoice book of merchandise carried between London and America, The house which William Hearne built in 1688 was occupied by some of his descendants for nearly two hundred years, and the land has never passed out of the family being owned now, 1907, by the children of Elijah Freney. lineal descendants cf the first settler, William Hearne.
William Hearne named the tract of land on which he lived and his residence "St. Kitts," for the place from which he came. St. Christopher’s in the West Indies.
It seems from history that no title to the land on which William Hearne settled was made till many years after his death, as the following will show:
VERBATIM COPIES OF OLD LAND GRANTS NOW IN
THE POSSESSION OF MR. ELIJAH FRENEY,
DELMAR, DELAWARE.
Copyright (c) 1999, 2007 Brian Cragun.