Re: Robert "Captain Justice" Killen, Kent County, Delaware

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    Surnames: KILLEN
    Classification: Query

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    http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/gAn.2ACIB/45.47

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    I'm interested, too, in finding out about this Robert Killen. Like Valda, I do not know where the "Captain Justice" comes from, though I have seen this nickname in a Rootsweb entry or maybe a couple. He was, according to various family history records posted here and there, the father of William Killen (b. 1722), the first Chancellor of the State of Delaware. It seems that Robert and William, father and son, emigrated to the American colonies in the first half of the 18th century: by 1759 William was teaching law in Delaware, and his father died in that Colony. All that I have seen about William Killen's background is that he was a Presbyterian and that  that he was born in Ireland. I don't have any documentation for this, but on the basis of what I have learnt about my Presbyterian Killen ancestors I am developing a strong theory that Chancellor William Killen was born in the Cavehill/Carnmoney area of Co. Antrim, and that he was the brother or first cousin of my ancestor James Killen (born around 1730 or earlier). I think that Robert's father was probably Thomas O'Killen, a wealthy lessor of land from Lord Donegal. From information obtained from the Carnmoney Presbyterian Church I have learnt that "the site for the first little Presbyterian Church or meeting house built by the Carnmoney congregation about 1670, was very close to the site of the present Church, and that the site was given to the congregation by a Thomas O'Killen who at that time rented the whole townland of Ballyduff, 667 acres, as well as the nearby townland of Ballybought, with 379 acres, from Lord Donegal ... this would indicate that Thomas O'Killen was a wealthy man as he would have have sub-let the lands he leased from Lord Donegal. At that time the typical farm would not have been more than 15 to 20 acres, many even less, so he would have brought in considerable rents. No records of the Carnmoney Pres. Church survive from the foundation of the Church in 1657 up to about 1708 so we are unable to tell if Thomas O'Killen was actually a member of the congregation ... He could indeed have been an entrepreneur from nearby Belfast. In the Carnmoney records there are no Killen or O'Killen entries until the baptism of William Killing, son of James Killing in 1768". As members of a wealthy family (and especially a Presbyterian family), the edcation would have been available to allow William to be a lawyer so young in his life. I think it likely (from this and other information) that James Killen (whom we know to have been a farmer on the face of the Cave Hill) was a member of the family of Thomas O'Killen, probably his grandson. Thomas can be presumed to have originated with the (Catholic) Killens (or O'Killens) of the Lecale area in Co. Down and to have lived somewhere in the area between Carnmoney and Belfast. James Killen (like William) was probably Thomas's grandson, and the first known member of the family to have been formally a member of the Carnmoney Presbyterian congregation, perhaps having become so after he married Blanche Brice (great great granddaughter of Revd Edward Brice, the first Presbyterian minister to come to Ireland). At this time the majority of known Killens were Roman Catholic and resident in Co. Down, and therefore very unlikely to have been educated. We know that the Carnmoney (and later Ballymena) Killens were a Presbyterian offshoot of this old Irish Co. Down family, William Killen is quite likely therefore to have been a brother or a a cousin of James, and to have been from this same (Cavehill/Carnmoney) area.