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[4qd-bannvalley] Another early Torrens?? Possible Dungiven line ancestor??



I have been looking at a transcription of the Hearthmoney Rolls for
Derry city, and I wonder aboutRobert Toxone in Silver Street, now
Shipquay Street, Derry, in the HMR of the 1660s. The HMR only exist
as 19th century copies; the originals are gone, so there is no way
of knowing whether this really should be Robert Torrone or Torrones?
I think it wouldn't be hard to misread  "rr" as "x", in handwritten
records.

Here  is a section of a website on early handwriting; note especially
the form of X given here; it looks like the form of "r" used in
American handwriting today.

Examples of letters of the seventeenth century found in parish
registers collected by The Society of Genealogists.

Letters
Toxone is not a surname I have ever heard, but of course it could have died out. The occurrence of the name Robert is of interest; it is strongly associated with various Torrens lines, including the Dungiven gentry. Their earliest ancestor is said to have come to Ireland with William III, and to have been Swedish; however, the name Robert, which is much more Scots than Swedish! occurs early in that family. Could it possibly be that the Torrens who came to Ireland with William was coming to rejoin relatives who had been in Ireland since at least the 1660s? there was a John who signed a document just after = the siege of Derry, and it is possible that he was ancestor (grandfather??) of Robert Torrens who was rector of Kilrea in the 1770s and thus an ancestor of the famous Robert Torrens the economist. Food for thought Linde Lunney