So you think you're a Hamilton? Well if you were born bearing the surname Hamilton, then you certainly are. But you're much more than that. If you're one of my Hamiltons then you're also a Clarke, a Cooper, a Jolly, a Waddington, a Critchley, a Smith, an Alston, a Gibson, a Gabbott.....plus many more, and a few un-named mishaps along the way. Ah yes, our staunch, God-fearing, church-going, strictly decent and morally rigid Victorian ancestors weren't quite as prim and proper as they would have had us believe!
The surname "Hamilton" is just one strand of the complex fabric that forms our family's heritage, and while most of us wear our surnames with a certain amount of pride, its importance shouldn't be exaggerated. Equally, it is just one fragment of a massive array of genetic factors which contribute to our personalities, our strengths, and our weaknesses. Many of the names in our family tree tell us not only who we are, but they also tell us a lot about our deeper history, from times earlier than the available records. Surnames are predominantly based on paternal lineage, and maternal history tends to be lost, or at best, poorly recognised. Up to the 12th century in England few ordinary people had surnames. In the 12th and 13th centuries, surnames began to be used more commonly as a means of identifying people of the same name who lived close together, and as people migrated from the country into towns and cities, to identify one from another. Surnames thus developed from three main roots: habitational, occupational and descriptive (there are others, but I'll leave them to the experts!). Hamilton is the habitational name of people from an ancient and now deserted medieval village in the parish of Barkby, Leicestershire, which was named from Old English 'Hamel' (crooked) and 'dun' (hill). Hamilton near Glasgow in Scotland was founded by Hamiltons and named after them in the 15th century, but it is unclear whether or not these Hamiltons descended from the original inhabitants of 'Hameldun'. It is, however, generally believed that all Hamiltons descended from one or both of the two. Hamiltons subsequently migrated over the ensuing centuries to many parts of the world, including Ireland and the British Colonies.
The surname "Hamilton" is just one strand of the complex fabric that forms our family's heritage, and while most of us wear our surnames with a certain amount of pride, its importance shouldn't be exaggerated. Equally, it is just one fragment of a massive array of genetic factors which contribute to our personalities, our strengths, and our weaknesses. Many of the names in our family tree tell us not only who we are, but they also tell us a lot about our deeper history, from times earlier than the available records. Surnames are predominantly based on paternal lineage, and maternal history tends to be lost, or at best, poorly recognised. Up to the 12th century in England few ordinary people had surnames. In the 12th and 13th centuries, surnames began to be used more commonly as a means of identifying people of the same name who lived close together, and as people migrated from the country into towns and cities, to identify one from another. Surnames thus developed from three main roots: habitational, occupational and descriptive (there are others, but I'll leave them to the experts!). Hamilton is the habitational name of people from an ancient and now deserted medieval village in the parish of Barkby, Leicestershire, which was named from Old English 'Hamel' (crooked) and 'dun' (hill). Hamilton near Glasgow in Scotland was founded by Hamiltons and named after them in the 15th century, but it is unclear whether or not these Hamiltons descended from the original inhabitants of 'Hameldun'. It is, however, generally believed that all Hamiltons descended from one or both of the two. Hamiltons subsequently migrated over the ensuing centuries to many parts of the world, including Ireland and the British Colonies.
Cooper, on the other hand, is an occupational name. A cooper was a person who made or repaired barrels and other containers, a fairly common trade and thus a fairly common name.
The surname Jolly originated in England, Scotland and France as a descriptive surname (or nickname) given, believe it or not, to people of a cheerful or attractive disposition.
Family history really has no beginning, and what we call our origins depends on how far back we are able to look. Ancestry's massive task of compiling hand-written records into digitally searchable databases is an on-going work, and sometimes records can't be found on-line. That can mean they never existed, have been lost or destroyed, or could mean they simply haven't been digitised yet. Many organisations, such as the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk Project, are also progressively digitising their ancient records, and Ancestry draws on these organisations as sources for some of its data. Year by year, more and more records going further back in time are becoming available to family researchers like me, and the task will become easier and the picture more complete.
Census records are very useful as far back as the 1851 Census. The 1841 Census, while still useful, contain less information and can be more confusing. Birth, Marriage and Death records go back a long way towards 1800 and beyond, especially church records of baptisms, which may not always give the date of birth, but the baptism date is usually pretty close and a good find. Baptism records also usually give the names of both parents (if both were known), which is also helpful. A Birth Registry Index is a starting point, but usually not very conclusive. These are simply lists of births sorted into quarterly periods, showing the surname, given name, and the registration district of all children born in a particular quarter of a given year. Some indices also give the mother's maiden name, which helps a bit more.
Beyond the early 1800's it becomes quite difficult to establish accurate information. Families were quite large, and parents were not very imaginative with their choices of names for their children. Consequently there can be multiple incidences of any name within the same town in the same year. For example, William Waddington, born 1775 in Blackburn, had six sons. At least two of those sons had boys they named John and Joseph, in and around Chorley, all within a couple of years. Throw in a couple of unrelated Waddingtons with equal lack of imagination on naming, and there can be many John, Joseph, James, William or Thomas Waddingtons in the area of the same age group, some related and some not. It gets tricky!
When the records run out, we can still tell a little about our origins from the names of those people we have managed to trace. Robert Jolly married Rachel Critchley in 1844. Robert appears to have been the illegitimate son of a Nancy Jolly, from Heath Charnock, and the Jolly trail ends there for now. But the Critchleys were a big family in the Chorley/Heath Charncock area. Rachel Critchley (my Great Great Grandmother) was one of eleven children, all born in Heath Charnock, as were their parents Thomas and Ann. Heath Charnock is also where I was born, and it is a picturesque region just outside Chorley heading for the hills of Rivington and Anglezarke. I've discovered that Critchley is a derivation of Critchlow, a habitational name from Critchlow in Lancashire, named from Celtic cr{u: _}g ‘hill’ + Old English hlaw ‘mound’. According to houseofnames.com, "...the roots of the Anglo-Saxon name Critchlow come from when the family resided in or near some small settlement called either Critchlow or Chritchlow; experts theorise that this was probably near Chorley in the County of Lancashire...." This suggests that the Critchleys, one group of our ancestors, had lived in the Chorley/Heath Charnock area for centuries, as far back as the Saxons and possibly as far back as the pre-Roman Celts. ***see updates and amendments
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