My great-great-grandfather, Josiah Hoskinson, was born in 1759 in Virginia. He served in the US.Revolutionary War in a company known as George Washington's Bodyguards.

He is NOT to be confused with others of the same name who variously died in Ohio and/or were paupers or in an asylum of any sort.

"Our" Josiah married Isabell Evans in 1795 in what is now Monongalia, West Virginia. They had 6 children, and migrated to central Kentucky. She died in Floyd Co., Ky in 1814.

There is a very small town named Hoskinston in eastern Ky. near the No.Carolina border. NO connection has ever been made with it.

Josiah was again married in 1815 in Washington Co., Ky., to Alcy Brent, the widow of Jacob Cutsinger (with whom she had had 3 children); Josiah and Alcy had 6 children -- the second of whom was my great-grandfather, Hugh Abel Hoskinson.

They moved in the Washington, Nelson, Hardin Counties area of Ky. and eventually settled in the Edinburgh, Indiana, area where Josiah died in 1836. He was buried in a small private cemetery on the J.A.Amos farm; in the last half of the 1900s the gravestones were moved about 30 feet to the south to build a house. Some are readable; some have been vandalized; Josiah's is not obvious, but it was noted in an earlier published reading of the stones.

Hugh Abel Hoskinson, was born in 1824 in Ky. In time he shortened his name to Hoskins. As far as we know, none of his siblings did the same. He died in the area of Edinburg, Indiana, and is buried in what at this time is the St.George Luthern Churchyard east of Edinburg.

Hugh Abel Hoskins and his wife Elizabeth Snepp had 12 children; the family name was carried by blood only thru his sons John (known very affectionately to my dad as "Uncle John") and David Julius Hoskins, my grandfather. Another son, Josiah (known as Joe) adopted a boy who he named William or Billy, who was last seen by the family to have passed thru Columbus, In., in the 1980s.

There is a Bible which belonged to John's son Grover which was passed to his son James and thence to his daughter Sharon. Have not yet seen or confirmed the contents; it may have belonged to John; not sure yet.

The general consensus is that the name Hoskins originated as Roger, which morphed to Rodge, Hodge, and on to Hodgkins, and Hoskins, and Hoskinson (with the Haskins and Huskins somewhat related, too) -- likely mostly in England (or the British Isles, anyway) -- before coming to the Western Hemisphere where is was again shortened to Hoskins. There are still a swarm of them in Floyd, Washington, Nelson, and Hardin Counties area of KY; some of which are likely more closely related than others, but we have NO firm connection.