Why am I writing about a person that is definitely not in my family line? Well, along with thousands of other Americans, I'm directly descended from John Clifford, early resident of Hampton, NH and Salisbury MA, and I'm incredulous that there are now multiple thousands of family trees posted online that for some crazy reason list him as the progenitor of the Cliffords of New England. Granted, the names are right, even the era is right, but there is no chance that the Earls of Cumberland were the ancestors of John of Hampton and his probable father, George Clifford of Boston. For the record, there are a number of "lines" in the history of the Cliffords of England, where the name began. The Earls of Cumberland are, well, of the Cumberland line, of course. The current Lord Clifford of Chudleigh is - you guessed it - of the Chudleigh line. The prestigious Clifford Association has identified my John Clifford of Hampton as being of the Bobbing line, Bobbing being a charming village in Kent. Intensive search for any Clifford births, deaths, taxes, legal proceedings, in the village of Arnold, Nottinghamshire, around the time our Cliffords would have been preparing to emigrate, 1639-ish and before, supposedly where the Cliffords of New England lived before coming to the New World, according to 18th century US historians) by expert genealogists has come up empty. However, for reasons that are outlined in archived Clifford Association newsletters, all of which I decided to verify with my own research, I can say that I'm ALMOST 100% certain that my Cliffords are of the Bobbing Line. To know much more about what I have discovered and want to share, browse my 2 other journals on the early Cliffords of Hampton, Salisbury, and Boston - just click my user name, YankeeRoots, near the top of the Journal, and all my posts will pop up, and just scroll through them to find the Clifford journals.