Talk:Basil Hayden's

Review link is broken; consider replacing it
As the title says. I'll leave it to someone non-anonymous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.57.49.25 (talk) 00:23, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

wtf on the spoiler from Deadwood tho. I had no idea Joanie was gonna do that. that's what brought me here and now i'm pissed lol — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.57.51 (talk) 04:21, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

No evidence that his full name was "Meredith Basil Hayden, Sr."
I've deleted the claim that his full name was "Meredith Basil Hayden Sr." Exactly zero records associated with Basil Hayden (1744-1804), including multiple property records in north-central Kentucky, and his will, give him a first name Meredith. Further, if he was "Meredith Basil Hayden Sr.", then his son Basil Hayden Jr. (1774-1833) would have to have born the Meredith name as well, and there is likewise absolutely no evidence that he did. Middle names are in fact vanishingly rare in America before the early 19th century, and alleging a first and middle name for someone born before then is often a red flag for unsourced historical and genealogical research.

Finally, although it is flawed in several ways, it's notably that the most comprehensive work on the history of the Maryland and Kentucky Hayden family, Hayden/Rapier and Allied Families by Mary Louise Donnelly (1991), lists literally hundreds of Hayden descendants of the original Maryland immigrant Frances Heydon (d. 1694), Basil Hayden's great-grandfather, and none of them have "Meredith" as a first name. Nor does she give Basil Hayden (1744-1804) any name other than "Basil Hayden." pnh (talk) 13:41, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Much of the "History of the Haydens" section of this article is unproven nonsense
Much of the "History of the Haydens" section of this article is based on unproven family lore and "name's-the-same" genealogy. The first paragraph is correct, and I have provided a citation verifying everything asserted in it. (The online version of the Catholic Encyclopedia, in its entry on the state of Kentucky, also reports the same basic facts.) It is also true that Basil Hayden was a great-grandson of the original Virginia and Maryland immigrant Francis Heydon, who died in 1694, and that the Heydon/Hayden family were Roman Catholics. It is possible that Basil Hayden "supplied provisions" to the Continental Army (here given, confusedly, as the "Colonial Army"), but I know of no proof of this beyond Hayden family lore. And it is, of course, simply silly to state that the 1660s were "when much of Britain became inhospitable to Catholics", since this actually happened many decades before then.

Most importantly, though, the entire third paragraph, aside from being irrelevant to the whiskey that is this article's actual subject, is based on a chain of unproved assumptions: that the immigrant Francis Heydon who died in Maryland in 1694 was the Francis Heydon who was baptized in Watford, Hertfordshire in 1628, and that the man baptized in 1628 was a member of the Heydon family that lived for several generations at "The Grove" in Watford. All of this has been claimed by various Hayden family researchers since the late 19th century, but in fact there is not a shred of proof that any of it is the case. There were at least three different Heydon/Hayden families in 17th-century England, and Irish Heydons/Haydens as well; we have absolutely no knowledge of the immigrant's origins.

What we do know is that Francis Heydon-the-immigrant was, like many generations of his descendants in Maryland and Kentucky, a devout and committed Roman Catholic. Whereas what we know of the Watford family was that they were in conformity with the religious requirements of their time and place. A major figure in that family, the armigerous Francis Heydon (1540-1606) who has been (without proof) often claimed as a great-grandfather of the immigrant, was granted a market in Watford in the 1690s by none other than Elizabeth I -- who as the determined leader of a militantly-enforced Protestant theocracy was very much not in the habit of granting favors to any family that had the slightest whiff of pro-Catholic sentiment.

I am not editing the article to reflect any of the above, because the best source I know of for demonstrating that the claimed Watford ancestry for the Maryland-and-Kentucky Haydens rests on zero proof is...a web page written by me, at http://nielsenhayden.com/genealogy-tng/getperson.php?personID=I4236&tree=nh1. So I leave this talk page entry for someone else to consider the merits. At the very least, this supposed medieval ancestry for Basil Hayden is of dubious relevance to a premium bourbon whiskey introduced in 1992. pnh (talk) 14:23, 8 July 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm not totally sure this really belongs in an article about whiskey...maybe spin it off to a new article and see if it stands on its own? -MJ (talk) 05:09, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Indeed it doesn’t, but for reasons spelled out above I’m not going to be the person who does that. pnh (talk) 11:29, 6 October 2023 (UTC)