In 1640, Hugh Calkin(s), an English Puritan, left England via Wales with his wife Ann and their children, Sarah, Mary, Rebecca, John, and David, in search of religious freedom. They first landed in the Colony of Massachusetts, living in Gloucester, MA for 9 years where daughter Deborah, their last child was born. The family then moved with other early settlers in 1650 to Pequot Harbor in the Connecticut Colony.
There, they established New London, and in 1660, Hugh founded the town of Norwich, where he remained for the rest of his life. Hugh and his wife Ann came to the New World and raised a large family that, over the next nearly 400 years, generated a diaspora that shaped and was shaped by the history of America.
The Calkins Family Association (CFA) began in June 1993 when twenty distant cousins gathered socially in Eagle, Wisconsin, and decided to explore the establishment of a family association and a quarterly newsletter.