The eldest of the three children of Posco Baggins and Gilly Brownlock, Ponto Baggins was born in the Shire-year 1346 (or III 2946). He had a younger brother, Porto, and a younger sister, Peony. He was not the first member of his family to bear the name Ponto, and was (unusually within the Baggins family) named for an ancestor, specifically his great-grandfather, who was also named Ponto Baggins.
The younger Ponto was a distant cousin of Bilbo Baggins'. He was among the guests at Bilbo's famous Birthday Party, along with his daughter Angelica (who indeed received the gift of a looking glass from Bilbo after the Party). Ponto would have been seventy-three years old at the beginning of the War of the Ring, and so would have seen the takeover of the Shire by 'Sharkey' and its later recovery by the returning Travellers.
Bilbo Baggins had been the head of the Baggins family, by virtue of his descent from Mungo Baggins, the eldest son of the family patriarch Balbo. At the end of the Third Age, however, Bilbo and his heir Frodo both departed across the Great Sea. With this, Mungo's entire line came to an end, and the Baggins headship fell instead on the line of Balbo's third child, Ponto's namesake, the elder Ponto Baggins. That elder Ponto was long dead by this time, and so the 'younger' Ponto (though now in his seventies) became the formal head of the Baggins family.1
Notes
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Strictly speaking, we should say that Ponto probably became the head of the Baggins family. These comments are based on a discussion of the Baggins headship among Tolkien's letters, where he says of these events, 'Presumably the title of "head" then passed to the descendants of Ponto Baggins - probably Ponto (II).' (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, No. 214, dated 1958 or 1959). The reasons behind the qualifying 'presumably' and 'probably' here are not explained. The line of descent to the younger Ponto ('Ponto (II)' as he is described here) seems clear, so perhaps there was more to the inheritance of the headship than we're told. Perhaps, for example, Tolkien was undecided on whether Ponto survived through the troubles in the Shire during the War of the Ring; if he did not, then presumably his daughter Angelica would have inherited the headship in his place.
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- Updated 27 March 2023
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