Origins of John

While working in Ancestry.com I find Many family trees which list John and Family. However there is a conflict with respect to johns Birth date. 1725 > This is also the Year He arrived in the US. And By one account he met his wife on board the ship when they came over. I see this arrival date is supported in your Corrections, so my Question is when was he born and where. and who where his parents/
Kevin

Boy the one who has the documentation to support this answer wins the cigar. There are multiple versions of "The" John Caperton's early life. You can check out my thoughts on this in the Origins section under "Caperton’s in Wells Cuthbert, England 1695 - 1734" which can be found when you click on the Caperton Research Tab on the menu. There are also several other "Theories" that can be found there as well. So far though, no one really knows. I believe there must be some documentation in Ireland that will give us the right answer. Until then we keep digging. Like you I have seen numerous "Caperton Family Trees" where they have just run with the first Origin Legend they came across. I am a little less convinced however that we have actually found substantial documentation for any of these legends.

Donald,
I have a couple of questions.
1.Has there been any fresh information or documentation regarding the origins of John?
2.I see a lot of references to the parents of John named Richard and Mary Devorille. Although there is documentation of a marriage between the two - is there any evidence at all that Richard is John's father? If Richard was born in 1690 (as the marriage record shows) and married in 1712, that changes John's birthdate once again to sometime after 1712 instead of 1705. I think it is odd that there are no Richard's among the names in the first generations of the US Capertons.

Hi,
With regards to the first question. I know of only a few people that are working to uncover fresh information on our origins. Marcia has done some work attempting to contact Caperton's in England. She had provided me with some documentation that I am in the process of putting online. We also just had a new member sign up from England! If you click on the members link on the sign-in page you can get the individuals name and then from your profile you can attempt to contact them.

As for #2, as yet I have seen no evidence that links our John Caperton to Richard. I did quite a bit of digging in this area a few years back and have posted my research in the Collections area under Wells England 1695, but to date, no one has been able to convince me that there is proof for this connection. As for your thoughts on the name Richard, I share your puzzlement on that one. A name as significant as that one should have shown up repeatedly!

Hi Donald,
Well I am back to Caperton research for awhile.
I think I might possibly have solved a longtime mystery. You know how John disappears from Virginia records from 1760 when John sold all his property and then reappears in 1774 in Botencourt County?

I read that many times immigrants returned to their homelands if things weren't working out too well. If John came here maybe to grow tobacco and the Indians kept ruining his work I thought maybe he went back to Ireland or Scotland. Also he could have been needed by the family he left behind.

I found him tonight in Ireland on a register that recently came on Ancestry. It is called "Ireland, Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Ireland, membership registers, 1733 to 1923." He is in the Dragoons from 1760, when he first joined until 1768 in Dublin. It totally fits the missing years. Let me know if you agree!

If you don't have ancestry, I will see if I can send the pages to you on another email. There are 4 pages with his name and the date. Here is one and I will get the other 3 on here.

So now I am reading about the history of Ireland at that time period. First, I found the name of Caperton in Carrickfergus area of Ireland. It was the name of a Townland near an impounding reservoir. It is mentioned in the Belfast newspaper and it said the date was 1639. I can't figure out how to make a copy of the article to put up here. It made me think they were possibly landed gentry. So before 1760, 3,100 of their best Irishmen left for the Americas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina because of the bad conditions in the country. The French were getting ready to attack Carrickfergus so I think John sold his land in Virginia and went back to protect his property that the family had near Carrickfergus. He stayed until he felt he had helped get the job done and returned to Virginia to fight in the War of Revolution against the British.

The name of the book is "the history of Ulster from the earliest times to the present day" and it is a free e book. So I could not copy the link so just google it so you can read it. This tells the history of what was happening in Ireland during the time before John left Ireland and what was going on when he returned for a time. Page 103 talks about the attacks of the French on Carrickfergus.