♀Joan Kippinge

Joan Kippinge was the wife of John Glover, a mercer^W of Smarden, in Kent, England, and the grandmother of Richard Borden, who crossed to New England and was among the first planters of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in 1638. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Joan Glover.

Marriage

Joan’s parents are not known. John Glover and Joan Kippinge married at Headcorn, in Kent, on 16 June 1567. The couple had two known daughters: Amy, christened at Smarden on 2 February 1568/9, and Joan, probably the child christened there on 1 January 1570/1. Amy married William Glover at Ashford, in Kent, on 5 September 1592.

By April 1593 the younger daughter was married too: her father’s will calls her “Joane Borden my daughter”, and she was almost certainly the second wife of Matthew Borden, a yeoman of Headcorn, and the mother of his son Richard, christened at Headcorn on 22 February 1595/6.

Widowhood

John was “sicke in bodie” when he made his will on 14 April 1593, and he died before it was proved on 11 April 1595. He made Joan his sole executrix and left her the lease of the house he was living in and the profits of all his lands and tenements in Smarden for the rest of her life, with an equal share, alongside her daughters, of the rest of his goods. After her death the lands were to pass to Amy and Joan.

Late in 1595 Joan married again. A marriage license issued in the diocese of Canterbury on 8 December 1595 names Thomas Nokes “of the city of London, vintner”, and “Joan Glover of Smarden”, a widow, and the two married at Smarden that December. What became of her afterward is not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Joan Glover, Joan’s son Richard Borden (1595–1671) and Richard’s daughter Mary Borden, who married John Cook. They divide in later generations and meet again in Salena Sherman (1806–1842), whose parents Waite Allen (1766–1850) and Batchelder Sherman (1761–1828) both descend from Joan Kippinge.

Notes

Sources

Joan’s marriages and her husband’s will are from Clifford L. Stott, “Joan Glover, Mother of Richard Borden of Headcorn, Kent and Portsmouth, Rhode Island”, in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register 177 (2023): 155–157, which prints the excerpts of the will quoted here. Stott spells her surname Kippinge in his summary and “Kipplinge” in his introduction; a FamilySearch index of the Headcorn register gives the marriage of 16 June 1567 as “John Glover” and “Johane ?Ippinge”, with the first letter unread. The license of 1595 is printed in Joseph Meadows Cowper’s Canterbury Marriage Licences, first series, 1568–1618 (1892), page 304, under “Nooks, Thomas”. Stott notes that a shadow on the Smarden entry hides the full date of the second marriage.

Identification

The christening of her daughter Joan at Smarden in 1570/1 names no parents. The link to the Borden family rests on John Glover’s will, which names “Joane Borden my daughter”; Stott calls her “undoubtedly” Matthew Borden’s second wife and the mother of Richard Borden.

Later life

Stott calls the later history of Joan and Thomas Nokes uncertain. A Joane Nokes was buried at Headcorn on 3 February 1613/4, but Stott does not identify it as hers, and it is not taken as hers here.

Dates

The January and February years are Old Style^W, when the year began on 25 March.