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An eminent settler, merchant, and statesman of Boston, born in London, England, he was a nephew and heir of Sir Thomas Temple, Governor of Acadia (Nova Scotia) and allegedly a brother of my great9-grandmother, Margaret Nelson Teackle, who settled in Accomack Co., VA. Nelson was a leading proponent of his time for the expulsion of the French from North America, and his conflicts with the French once resulted in his imprisonment in the Bastille. His and Margaret's ancestry has been traced back to royalty several ways through their mother's Temple lineage, and many prominent families of New England and Long Island descend from John Nelson and his wife Elizabeth Tailer, including those of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Senator John Forbes Kerry. One of my genealogy challenges has been locating primary source materials proving that Rev. Thomas Teackle married John Nelson's sister Margaret, which has long been stated in genealogies of the Eastern Shore of Virginia and never disputed. The main circumstantial evidence is the fact that a Teackle descendant named a son Temple Nelson Robins (1797-1843), and Temple and Nelson have been used several other times in the Robins-Teackle family. Thomas Teackle Upshur (1844-1910), the leading Eastern Shore genealogist a century ago, stated his ancestor Thomas Teackle's second marriage to Margaret, daughter of Robert and Mary Temple Nelson of London, and more than likely it had been passed down through the family but the primary source records have disappeared. I am convinced the connection is valid, but Gary Boyd Roberts, a leading American genealogist and expert on royal descents, has stated that he'd like to see a monograph proving the Nelson-Teackle marriage. Even if, by some unlikely chance, it is invalid, I can still claim a collateral connection to Nelson's wife, Elizabeth Tailer, through her mother's Stoughton line, one of my mother's prominent New England lineages.
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