All Things Sanborn and and Sanbornton!

In this New Hampshire room installment we’ll look at special items related to the Sanborns and Sanbornton.

We have two excellent genealogies of the Samborne, or Sanborn, family – our town’s founders:

Sanborn, Elmer Corliss. A Collection of Sanborn Family Genealogies 1600-1993. Baltimore: Gateway Press Inc., 1994.

Sanborn, V. C. Genealogy of the family of Samborne or Sanborn in England and America. 1194-1898. Concord, NH: The Rumford Press, 1899. (2 copies)

The Samborne family coat of arms

Together these two resources provide more than either could alone. The first is quite recent and covers about a hundred years further toward the present date. The more modern writing still may also be more accessible for current readers. The second book, however, is remarkable in scope – going much further back than many other American genealogies to extensively trace English history.

For those looking to stay to more local, there’s the 1882 Runnels History of Sanbornton – still the go-to source for historical information about the town. This two-book masterpiece contains one volume of history and a second volume of genealogies for prominent town families. The History‘s author, Moses Thornton Runnels, Reverend of the Congregational Church at the time, did other writing – albeit lesser known – than his history.

Moses Thornton Runnels

For those interested in more of his works and more about the man behind Sanbornton’s chronicle, there’s A Genealogy of Runnels and Reynolds Families in America; Record and Brief Memorials of the Earliest Ancestors, so far as known, and of many of their descendants, bearing the same and other names. This was written in 1873, almost ten years before Runnels’ magnum opus.