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Here is what I found from records available on Ancestry.com.

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The earliest Samantha I can find in their records is a Samantha Purdy who was born in Greenwich, Connecticut on July 20, 1749.

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The earliest Samantha record in the South is of the marriage of Susan Samantha Griffin to James Mattison Bannister in Abbeville, South Carolina, in October of 1774.

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Before 1850 the United States Census only listed heads of household, so most women were not listed by name unless they were widows or single women living alone or with small children, which was of course rare. There are no Samanthas in the 1790 census (the first), and just one in the 1800 census: Samantha Blackman, age between 26 and 44, living in Fairfield, Connecticut.

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In the 1850 census, there were 34 Samanthas born in 1790 or before listed in Ancestry.com. The oldest two were Samantha Fox, born in New York, and Samantha Parkinson, born in Ohio, both around 1771. The states where these 34 women were born:

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12 in New York
9 in Connecticut
6 in Vermont
3 in Ohio
2 in Massachusetts
1 in Pennsylvania
1 in Rhode Island

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So it certainly looks to me like Samantha was first used in what's now the USA around the middle of the 18th century, and it probably originated in Connecticut.

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The only Southern example is from a marriage record which does NOT give the birthplace of the bride, and which only exists in Ancestry.com as a transcript, so I can't look and see if it's possible that the person who made the transcript misread the handwriting on the original record.

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So unless more evidence turns up, it looks to me like Withycombe is more correct than Tanet and Hordé.

This message was edited 7/30/2008, 1:52 PM