Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 301, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1910 — Hamlin Family [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Hamlin Family

Hamlin, at the time of its birth as "a surname, was perhaps handicapped as Haemhlynna. All along the ages it has taken on a variety of forms, and in records of the Hamlins we find that Hamelinus (the Latin form) was one of its variants. And there were others: Ilammelin, Hamelfti, Hameline, Hamline, Hameln, Haemlyn, Hamlyn, Hamlen, Hamblin, and Hamblen. Hamblen and Hamlin are the more usual forms of the present day. Hammeline is a name found in Domesday Book. One of William the Conqueror’s followers was called Hamelinus, also Hameline and Hamelin. It was a custom, after the Conquest, for persons who had come over with William to be called by the name of the places they had come from, either in France or other countries, and to bestow these names upon the estates William so lavishly dealt out to them Hamelinus may have been a native of France or Germany. Hamm is a town in Prussia, and was thus called in the eleventh century. Hamme is a place in Belgium. Hameln, or Hamelin, in Hanover, is famed as the scene of the myth of the “Pied Piper of Hameln.” Although a myth, for a considerable time the town dated its public documents from that “event.” In the seventeenth century some one writing of this myth, or “fact,” aa he calls it, says: “No music is ever allowed to be played in this particular street” —i. e., the street through which the pied piper piped the children. Hameln or Hamelin is also called Hameola and Hamelowe. Hamburg, founded by Charlemagne in the ninth century, is a name having the same derivation, that is, bam, hama, hamma, or hame, a word sheaning house, or dwelling, or home.\ From the word also comes hamlet, a collection of houses. Lin, linn, linne or llyn means a pool, pond or lake. Hlynna is a similar Saxon word meaning a torrent Hammellyn, and its variations, therefore, meant originally “ a home by the pooh” If Hamelinus, the follower of the Conqueror, was a Frenchman born, his native place was undoubtedly H«nj, a small town and fortress on the river Somme. This town was in existence as early as the ninth century. Among seats of the family, dating from that indefinite period known as time immemorial, may be named Leicester; Exeter; Hamlinßton; Clovelly Court, Devonshire; also Leawopd, Bridestowe, Paschoe and Colebrook of the same county. One name we And in the records is that or Thomas Hamline, alderman of Drogheda.

In colonial times the more usual orthography of the name was Hamblen, and many of those who now bear this name, as well as many who are called Hamlin, descend from James Hamblen, who was one of the founders of Cape Cod or Barnstable. Mass., where