Notes for: Richard Skinner

In about 1971 a Mrs. Charles G. Rummell of Kenilworth, Illinois and a Mrs. Gordon A. Wahl of Niagara Falls, New York were planning to write a book called The Skinner Kinsmen. Robert P. Moore of Lexington, Kentucky wrote to Mrs. Rummell in the 1980s but received no answer. Lester Granville Holcombe of 48 Hanson Dr., Bourbonnais, Illinois 60914 (currency of address not known) compiled an unpublished typed manuscript entitled Descendants of Richard Alexander Skinner of Loudoun County, Virginia, said to have come out in the early or middle 1970s. It should first be noted that the Richard to whom Mr. Holcombe assigned the middle name Alexander probably did not have a middle name.

As was shown above in Charles Pullen's will, his daughter Margaret m. a Skinner. According to Mary Elizabeth Green Baird in her Kentucky Families, this was Isaac Skinner, b. ca. 1759-60, Va., d. 1841, Bullitt Co., Ky., son of Richard Skinner, d. 1811, and Addah Van Deventer. This was based on the research of Lee Irvine Parks of Cincinnati, Ohio. The following is based almost exclusively on Mrs. Baird's book and has in only a few cases been verified by Robert P. Moore, except for isolated census and cemetery records. (Some information is added from the manuscript history of the Skinners by Lester Granville Holcombe, which does not, however, give a great deal on the branches that lived in the Ky. counties of Nelson and Bullitt.) Most of these Skinners are said to have lived in Bullitt Co., Ky., although Elizabeth Skinner Foster and her family lived in Nelson Co., Ky.

L.G. Holcombe says that the Richard Skinner who m. Adda/Adaline Van Deventer was probably the son of Cornelius Skinner, who came with several of his sons to Loudoun Co., Va. ca. 1772-73. He suggests that this Cornelius was the son of a Francis Skinner, himself the son of a Richard Skinner and Susanna Poulaine, who were married 1 May 1666 at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. He says that Susanna was listed among a group of French girls who came as indentured servants to Lady Elizabeth Cartaret in August 1665. (One wonders if Poulaine is the original form of the name Pullen.)

Irving Parks, in his book "The Skinner Family," says Richard Skinner, who married Mary Bodine, lived on his farm at Big Spring, and he and his wife were buried there. "Big Spring Church, between Bloomfield and Taylorsville, Kentucky was first built across the road from where it is, on the land of Richard Skinner and Mollie Bodine."

There is more information on this family in the book "Skinner," by L. G. Holcombe, in the Thomas Balch Library in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Mary Elizabeth "Lizzie" Green Baird, in "Kentucky Families," (1986), traced descendants of Leven Green, Richard Milton, William Foster, Isaac Skinner and Henry Duncan III. Some of this may be incorrect. Lizzie (1868-1956), also has Isaac Skinner born in 1759 and married Hattie Middleton, but she has Hattie as mother of Elizabeth, who married Francis Foster. Then she has Richard marrying Mary "Mollie" Bodine on March 27, 1799. She was born on April 14, 1773 and died January 20, 1855(?) - the questionmark is hers. Lizzie says Richard and Mollie are buried on the farm formerly owned by John Cheatham at Chaplin, Nelson County; tombstones are on the McMakin family lot on the farm. She only lists Amos, who married Addah Skinner, his cousin, and Isaac, who married Hettie (sic) Middleton as their children.