How to Get Whipples from Angells

Alice Whipple was the fifth daughter and seventh child of Capt. Job and Silence (Pray) Whipple. Genealogists have spent days and hours uncovering the genealogical and unhappy story that Alice Whipple endured during her short life. We have to go to the Vital Records of Glocester, Providence County RI. in Chepachet to uncover the facts. The records reveal that at the age of eighteen, as reported by Alice, she got involved with Abraham Angell, a young man and cousin of hers, under the age of twenty-one. The result was an illegitimate male child born to her, as an unwed mother. The birth date of the son is not given in the vital statistics of Smithfield-Glocester, but we found it was recorded in the Archives of the R.I. State House, being July 17th, 1733. The date is correct according to later research.

The deed having been done, Alice's father, Capt. Job Whipple, quickly took action by filing a Law Suit against Abraham Angell as the father of the newborn child. The Warrant called for his Arrest and Judgement as the Parent of Alice's newborn child. The court papers are dated 8 Sept. 1733, 20 Nov. 1733, and Dec. 1733. The documents filed are found in Vital Rec. Vol. 4 1734 in the State House of RI. When they got Angell into court the charge of Paternity was denied by Abraham Angell and he convinced the Judge that he was not a resident of Smithfield and thus the charge was invalid. In the confusion, the case was thrown out of Court and the Paternity case was lost.

Alice having lost the Paternity case, she now named her son "Job Whipple". Capt. Job and Silence, however, reared the boy after he was 2 or 3 years old, when his mother died in 1736. Capt. Job in his will in 1750 nevertheless refers to the son of Alice by the name, "Abraham Angell", using this name as an irate grandfather expressing his righteous indignation of the whole affair.

So this explains how, "Job Whipple", a blood relative, became our Whipple ancestor.

(Submitted by Clark Edwards [clarkedw@cpcug.org], December 2, 1998.)