Ancestors of Silas Tinker in America, From 1637 e-bog

About the ancestors of Silas Tinker comparatively nothing was known by his descendants one year ago. This was not due to obscurity of facts, for within a small territory of New England four generations lived and died between 1662 and 1802. It is a little remarkable that the grandchildren of Silas Tinker, many of whom are now living, did not know their great grandfather's name, nor any of the facts of his life. The causes for this ignorance of ancestry are mainly found, no doubt, in the want of wealth among our ancestors, in the wilderness which separated them from their Buckeye children, and in that independence which is born of hardship. It is possible, also, that we are lacking in that family pride and love of ancestral tradition which bind some families together through good and evil alike. Whatever the causes may have been, it is time that we awake to something like chivalry of race. No one is great who easily forgets the virtues of his father. Our grand republic owes half its strength to the veneration in which it holds the revolutionary and constitutional fathers by whom its foundations were laid. Let us hope that our great-grandchildren will not forget us so easily as those of Amos Tinker (the father of Silas) forgot him.<br><br>The Name.<br><br>The name Tinker undoubtedly comes from the old English craftsman who mended kettles, pans and other ware, now-a-days more commonly called tinner. Probably the name in its origin was Tinkler, so called from the fact that this mender of kettles traveled from one neighborhood to another searching employment, and he heralded his coming by drumming or tinkling on a kettle. History furnishes us with the name of Alice Tynkler as far back as the 14th century. This occupation of our long-ago ancestors was indeed a humble one, and had the disadvantage of being rambling. Everyone knows that worldly respect is not for the rambler, else might the gypsies fare