The Goggin Name

The origin and history of the Goggin Surname

 

Birth, Death and Marriage

A listing of Goggin births from the UK birth index can be found at the following link. This shows date, forenames, district/ref and Mother's maiden name where available.

Goggin births by year and month

A similar listing for Goggin marriages is at the following page:

Goggin marriages by year and month

Certificates for some Goggin births, deaths and marriages can be accessed at:

Birth, death and marriage certificates


My Family Tree

In tracing my family tree, so far I have worked back to Thomas Goggin born in Southwark in 1812, with a father of Thomas Goggin (possibly from Ireland born in the 1790s).

Many of my Goggin ancestors from London were Watermen and Lightermen, which is a trade that was often passed down the generations.  More details on this with copies of the certificates can be found by following the link to the page on Charles Goggin and lightermen...  Goggin family Lightermen.


The Goggin Name in Famous Trees - Mark Twain

Ancestry of Mark Twain:  Samuel Langhorne Clemens adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain after he spent two years as a steamboat pilot ("mark twain" being the term that means that the river is the minimum depth for safe navigation), and used the name when he joined a Nevada newspaper.

His Grandmother, on his father's side, was a Pamela Goggin (1775-1844).  Her father was a Stephen Goggin (1752-1802), and, in turn, his father was also a Stephen Goggin (b. 1726).  Pamela married Samuel Clemens on 29 October 1797 in Virginia, having a son John Marshall Clemens (1798-1847) - Mark Twain's father.

When Mark Twain's paternal grandfather's family came to America from England is unclear, though probably no later than the mid-eighteenth century.  This Goggin family, whose ancestors were tradespeople in England in the sixteenth century, came to Virginia in the seventeenth century and married into a Quaker family, the Moormans. In 1773, the daughter of Charles Moorman, Rachel Moorman, Twain's great-grandmother, married a non-Quaker, Stephen Goggin, whose father, an Anglican, had emigrated from Queen's County, Ireland. Their daughter, Pamela Goggin, born in 1775, married Samuel B. Clemens in Bedford County in 1797. Of their five children, John Marshall Clemens was the first.

Family Trees and BDM Records

Goggin birth, death and marriage records and the Goggin name in famous family trees