Locative surnames in cities before census and BMD eras.

[coombs]

I guess this comes under ancestors who moved around before census eras, but you still have to find the documents to show they did move around. And often if you cannot find the evidence, it can be hard to determine, even if they had a locative surname such as the Norfolk name Cattermole in Birmingham in the late 1700s for example.

As was customary, lots of cities had the strays, the ones who moved there looking for work, especially London. For instance looking through St Margaret Westminster records for the 1700s I found surnames like Horsfall (a Northern surname) among several other locative surnames.

And interestingly my ancestor was a William Inkpen who wed in Oxford in 1765. He was a college servant, and later a publican before dying in 1769. His wife Jane (Nee Gater, later Coles before becoming Inkpen in 1765) was from Burford, a large Oxfordshire village near the Oxon/Gloucs border. They wed by licence, and the original licence says William Inkpen was a servant, bachelor, aged over 21, sponsor was Richard Baylis. His marital status not given in actual marriage register for St Peter In The East, Oxford. Witnesses to actual marriage was Richard and Mary Baylis. Now the surname Inkpen may have very ancient origins in Inkpen, Berkshire but by the 1700s Inkpen was a Sussex, Kent or Dorset surname. No known Inkpen baptisms, marriages or burials in Oxfordshire prior to 1765. William died in 1769, no age given at death. They had 2 children, James and William. James seems to be from Jane's side as her father was James Gater.

The above example is food for thought, that William Inkpen was probably from Kent, Sussex or Dorset. I have looked for any further info on him and his origins but to no avail. No poor law records for Oxford mention any Inkpen's.

I know Oxford was a city that also had a lot of people move there to study, but probably also to work in the colleges.

Also In have a weaver ancestor called Dennis Helsdon who wed in London in 1784. It did not take me long to find out he was the same Dennis Helsdon born in 1756 in Norwich, Norfolk. And his wife was Susan Helsdon, nee Fradine, a Huguenot.

 

[Pennines]

Coombs - I am probably wrong, but I was under the impression that 'location' surnames started way back when someone moved from one settlement to another.

For instance - if their name was John and they moved from Lancaster to Preston - in their new settlement they would be named John o' Lancaster, to differentiate him from the other Johns already living in Preston.

Hence a lot of centuries elapsed between being given a location surname before census records began. have you looked at the surname database?

https://www.surnamedb.com/

[coombs]

Coombs - I am probably wrong, but I was under the impression that 'location' surnames started way back when someone moved from one settlement to another.

For instance - if their name was John and they moved from Lancaster to Preston - in their new settlement they would be named John o' Lancaster, to differentiate him from the other Johns already living in Preston.

Hence a lot of centuries elapsed between being given a location surname before census records began. have you looked at the surname database?

https://www.surnamedb.com/

Thanks for the link. The Inkpen surname is said to be locational from either Inkpen in Berks or Inkpen in Devon. It does say such locational surnames names were generally given either to inhabitants who moved voluntarily or otherwise from their village to some other place usually in search of work.

I am not sure how old William Inkpen was in 1765, just he was over 21 according to his marriage license. His wife Jane was born in 1737 but William may have been around the same age, or even much older if he was a college servant then a publican before he died in 1769. His origins may always remain a mystery to me, or I may one day find what I am looking for.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  We had a postman named Inkpen when I was a child - it seemed very appropriate!

[jbml]

My understanding (and it may be wrong) is that the locational surnames generally came into being in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Some were of purely local significance (Hill, Athill, Wood, Dale, Ford etc.) as they helped to distinguish from others of the same name in the same parish; whilst others might identify the parish they were from when they moved to a different parish. A good example of the latter is Haradine, quite common in Bedfordshire and referring to the Bedfordshire village of Harrowden.

Society was much more mobile than many of us realise prior to the 17th century ... because the system of returning vagrants to their "home" parish only arose under the various Poor Law acts from 1601 onwards. So that gives a good two to three hundred years for these "local" names to spread and become established in distant parts.

[Pennines]

Top of the Hill -- you are so right about the appropriate name for your Postman. I have an ancestor named Leadbeatter - he was a Tinman and Brazier. That always amused me.

Of course other surnames came into place FROM occupations as well as ex-locations. Also from nicknames - Long, Short, White, Black (colour of hair I imagine).

I actually did wonder if Coombs' ancestor's name of Inkpen could have been an occupational name - for a scribe in that very early settlement where the family originated. However as there are locations named Inkpen, it is more likely to be a very ancient, locational name.

[jbml]

I suspect Coombs is more likely to have originated as an occupational name for a woolcomber ...

[coombs]

My Coombs like originates in Bincombe, Dorset and before that, the West Compton Abbas area and Askerswell.

As for William Inkpen born c1710-1740. I doubt he was from Oxfordshire due to the surname being from Kent, Sussex or Dorset. But whether I will ever find info on his origins is another matter.

Luckily I was able to get the origins of Dennis Helsdon quite quickly. He was a weaver, originally of Norwich then moved to Bethnal Green, London, for work I say. His wife's father Francis Fradin was a French immigrant weaver, one of the last Huguenots to come to the UK in 1752, so the Helsdon and Fradin family probably met through weaving in Bethnal Green.

[andrewalston]

I once traced someone's ancestry back to a place in Derbyshire which had their surname.

The place gets described in Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler, and I understand that they intended to make a pilgrimage to Charles Cotton's Fishing House, though the ancestor involved was from the century after Isaak, and happened to be the mother of an illegitimate child.