Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/250

 198 THE HISTORY OF BARKIKGTON. Other names which have been transplanted to American soil. Sometimes to distinguish the new town from the mother town, the prefix New was given it, as New York, New Bed- ford. In the case of smaller towns, where no confusion would be likely to arise, the name was transferred as a souvenir of the earlier home which they still loved, the more because separated from it by a broad ocean which they never expected to recross. Whatever the New World had in store for them and their children, these pioneers could not forget the dear old hearth-stones and the village scenes, and they clung to the household names which street, parish, and town bore as a part of the wealth which could be brought with them. In Somersetshire, thirteen miles from Taunton, four from Ilminster and ten from Ilchester, all of which places are mentioned in the Myles Church records, is the little parish of Barrington. As Parson Hull's Company of 1635 contained many family names of New Barrington, we may safely assume that some of these, — the Humphreys, the Pecks, the Chaffees, the Tiffanys, the Adams, the Mar- tins, the Vialls, the Bicknells, or the Bosworths came from old Barrington in England, near which this Colony was re- cruited and that they selected this name in honorable remembrance of their old home in the mother country. The word Barrington is of Saxon origin and is made of the two Saxon words Boerings and tun, the town of the Boerings or Boerington, changed to the present spelling, Barrington.