Waller Ancestors
of
Dr. Andrew Jocelyn Waller
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County Tipperary
Our Waller family is a little different from the usual ancestry demonstrated elsewhere on this website. We very likely do not descend at all from Sir Richard Waller of Groombridge. Our origins go back to Newport, co. Tipperary in Ireland. Lieutenant Richard Warren Waller was a soldier in Cromwell’s army who obtained land in the Newport area after the war. His descendants included a barrister, Samuel Waller, who married a descendant of the ancient Norman family of Jocelyn/Josselin/Joslin, Anne Jocelyn. Her father was a baron and their son became the Earl of Roden. She has noble and royal ancestry being descended through the Hungerfords to Edmund Crouchback and thus Louis IX of France and Henry III of England. Their son Robert was made a Baronet of Ireland; we descend from Robert and Anne’s fourth son Jocelyn Macartney Waller who moved to Canada. His son from whom we descend relocated to India; the next two generations likewise lived there. My great grandfather Alfred Jocelyn Waller was a Methodist minister who moved to America in the 1800s to settle in the gold rush area of Cripple Creek, Colorado, near Colorado Springs.
Richard Warren Waller was born in England in Bassingbourn, a small town in Cambridgeshire. He had relatives in Kneesworth, Hertfordshire. The Waller family in this area was called, for unclear reasons, “Warren alias Waller.” Their name appears this way in the herald’s visitation of Herts in 1634 as recorded in the Harleian manuscripts. In the 1500s this family was awarded arms with the claim of descent from William Warren, a grandson of Sir Lawrence Warren of the Warrens of Poynton. It is not known whether anyone but the heralds called them by this alias, and there is no record of the descent other than the heraldic records. We don’t really know if it was true, or how the herald was influenced to accept that tradition if not. This Warren family is descended from Sir Edward Warren, a knight, the illegitimate son of the eighth Earl of Warren through his mistress Maud de Nerford. With the allegation of Poynton descent, the coat of arms designed for our family is very different from the usual Waller arms, being checked blue and gold with a gold lion on a red field in the right upper corner of the shield. It was properly differenced from the Poynton arms but the later arms awarded to Robert the first baronet were simplified to resemble the Warren arms more closely. We do not know if we are really descended from the Warrens of Poynton, in all fairness it seems dubious, but perhaps one day we shall find more evidence.
Richard Warren Waller’s wife Dorothy has been problematic to Waller genealogists. Her parentage is unknown. A legend has arisen that she may be identical with Dorothy the daughter of General Sir William Waller of the English Civil War. Richard was a lieutenant in William’s army, so perhaps they met and married. There are as yet no records to prove this, but it would be very exciting to find this link. Otherwise nothing much is known about either the daughter of Sir William or the wife of Lt. Richard. If any reader is a student of the Roundhead General, we would greatly appreciate any information.
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Andrew Waller
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