Could my Sellers/Eyres family from DERBYSHIRE have Jewish ancestry?

[sendraguy]

My 2 x Gt-Grandmother was Charlotte Eyre (1808 -1888) who along with many others moved from Derbyshire to Manchester. I find that she had siblings called Isaac, Jacob, Benjamin, Hannah, and Rachel. I realise that during the C18-19th there was a fashion for Old Testament names ( especially amongst Nonconformists) but when I researched back further I find not only that these first names persist but that I have a 4 x Gt-grandmother called Hannah Fox, and a 7x called Judith Mabel Franks.
There are many Eyres living in Hope, Bradwell, Castleton who seem to share these first names so am I reading too much into? I know scarcely anything about the history of the Jewish people in England between 1300 - 1900. Presumably they had to some extent to fit in and adopt Christian baptism, marriage and burial.
I have an eclectic genealogy, being Irish, Scottish and Northumbrian, but I should be delighted to think that I had a Jewish element too.

[Annie65115]

What part of Derbyshire was the family from? There are indeed many Eyres around Hathersage - Charlotte Bronte called her heroine Jane Eyre after a stay in Hathersage.

Have you found the family in the local PRs? If so, at least back into the 1700s, I’d think this would suggest that they were not Jewish.

[sendraguy]

Thank you for your reply.
Jacob was born at ''Woodlands'' (Hope Woodland, about 5 miles north of Hope) and he was baptised at St Peters, Hope. His baptism, banns, marriage are all recorded in the PRs. But I feel even if he were Jewish this would have been usual. Even Britain's first Jewish Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was a Christian convert.
I just wondered if others had taken the same interest in these local first names as I. After all, when you can call your daughters Jane, Mary, Ann, Margaret, Eliza & etc, why call them Rachel and Rebecca? However, I do see from the registers that many others in the locality used these essentially Jewish names so perhaps it was just local practice.

[Annie65115]

I have ancestors from the same area; Hmm, let’s see, Nicholas’s sibs were Thomas, Matthew, Martha, Ruth, Susanna, George; Matthew seems to have been a common name amongst my lot too.

It’s worth mentioning that Padley Hall is local to here, and in 1588, the family who owned the Hall were found to be sheltering catholic priests; you can read about this here:

http://www.derbyshireheritage.co.uk/Menu/Buildings/misc/Padley-chapel.php

My ancestors were close to this area only a hundred years later; I’m sure that everyone knew what had happened at the “big house”.

There was no church at Padley or grindleford and the population seemed on the whole to have used the churches at hope, hathersage and Baslow. I’ve been through the baslow registers page by page and found reference to the burials of “recusants” - ie. people were still practising Catholicism secretly despite the local history. I couldn’t see any baptism or marriage for these folk, only a burial.

So I feel that if local catholics still baptised and married away from the established church, other denominations might do the same. I’m not aware of any synagogue at all in the area!

You might also be interested in this, which mentions the Eyres, but can’t give dates etc. Did you know there are also brasses to some of the Eyre family in hathersage Church?
https://ancientmonuments.uk/118370-north-lees-chapel-hathersage#.WyLmwcrTWhA

[sendraguy]

Thanks for the info. You're talking me into a trip to the area, which would always be worthwhile anyway as it's so lovely.
I rather blundered into the question of Jewish ancestry which - now I've read up on it - is a huge subject. In identifying Jewishness are we talking nationality, race, religion, observance, ethnicity, genetics? Like the Catholics of the C16 -C18th Jews would have striven often to hide, not advertise, their identities and so I wouldn't know where to start record-wise.
I have a Judith Franks (1685 - 1745) m. Kenneth Brammall (1670 - 1728) in King's Lynn. This was an important port at the time and access to immigration. Their daughter Alice married Thomas Fox from Bradwell, Derbyshire and so took the family to that location.
But I am making assumptions that names like 'Franks', 'Fox'' & etc are Jewish. Names that seem so may have become just that as Jewish people adapted their own names to fit.
My own Eyre connection is my 2 x Gt grandmother Nancy Hanson (nee Eyre) 1841 - 1888 who, with her husband Amarias Sellers left her native Manchester and sought work in Barnsley, then Murton and finally Gateshead where, at 47 her harsh life terminated with pneumonia and gangrene of the heart, a ghastly end.

[andrewalston]

Franks is hardly a "jewish" surname. "Franks" were the tribes of people living in the lower Rhine area in the roman period, and the epithet presumably continued into more modern times. So possibly a family who immigrated from modern-day Germany, Netherlands or France (whose name comes from the same source).

Fox is a common English surname. George Fox founded the Quaker in the 17th century, and John Foxe is famous for his 1563 book "Actes and Monuments", popularly known as "Foxe's Book of Martyrs".

One of my ggg grandmothers was a Rebecca; her siblings included Reuben, Simon, Aaron, Noah and Moses, but I'm sure this was just a fashion rather than a statement of their religion.