Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 289, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1910 — A Comer in Ancestors [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Comer in Ancestors

By ELEANOR LEXINGTON

Tilden Family (Copyright by McClure Syndicate)

Tilden is one of those names taken "from the face of nature,” as the derivation books says, and originally signified a tiller of the soil. There are several forms of name—Tilden, Tildan, Tilding, Tlldren, Tilden and Tillidon; Telton is also found once In a whiles •, The English family from which the American family branched spelled the name Tylden. .It Is of great antiquity and has been noble for generations. Away back in the times of Henry H., the first king of the Plantagenet line, who came to the throne of England in 1154, there are records of a Sir Richard Tylden. Henry’s son, Richard Coeur de Lion, with Philip n„ of France, led the third crusade to the

holy land in 1190, and one of his companions was either Sir Richard Tylden himself or Sir Richard’s son. The first Tilden In this country came to Plymouth by the America In

1628. He had a wife and children with him. But four years later when a division of cattle was made and all the colonists were mentioned in a list, his name is lacking. As no deaths had occurred in the meantime, it is supposed that he and his family returned to England. Nathaniel Tilden, Sir Richard’s descendant, was in New England before 1628. The family from which he came had lived for several centuries in Tenterden, County Kerit; about the time he came it separated into three distinct branches. One branch went to Sussex, one settled at Ifleld, and one came to America. It is not known just when' Nathaniel came over. But he is mentioned as a property holder at Scituate, Mass., in the first official records of the place, dated-1628; the record is a sale by Henry Merritt to Nathaniel Tilden “of all that "land which Ijmd of Goodman Byrd lying within the fence at the north end of the third cliffe, unto the land of Nathaniel Tilden.” He was among the earliest settlers there, called the “men of Kent,” because of their birthplace; some of the others were Thomas Bird, Edward Foster, Henry Rowler, Anthony Annable and William Gillson. Nathaniel’s youngest son, Stephen, married, in 1662, Hannah, granddaughter of Richard Little, who had come to America in the “Mayflower.” They had 12 children. Throughout its history the Tilden family has married into other historic families. The late William Smith Tilden, member of the Massachusetts legislature ip 1879, married Olive, a descendant of Robert-Babcock, one of the first settlers of Dorchester, Mass. His father and grandfather had married, respectively, Catherine Smith and Hannah Perry, both descended from men of importance in ante-revo-lutionary days. The late Samuel J. Elam was a son of John, who came from Lebanon, Conn., tn New Lebanon, Tilden, governor of New York 1875-6, and unsuccessful candidate for the presidency in 1876, was the son of Elam Tilden and Polly Y. Jones, a married a sister of Oliver Cromwell, the French war. His father was Isaac, son of Stephen and Hannah, whose grandfather, as mentioned above, came over In the “Mayflower.” The arms Illustrated, which’are the only arms borne by the Tildens of this family, are blazoned: Azure, a salture, ermine, between four pheons, or. Crest: A battle-axe, erect, entwined with a snake; all proper. Motto: Truth and Liberty.