© Copyright David Dixon and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
The town of Washington
enjoys an elevated status in the annals of history for obvious and very well known
reasons: its ‘Old Hall’ is the ancestral home of George Washington, a rather
important eighteenth century American. But even the most devoted local would be
forced to admit that their town’s claim to fame is a tenuous one.
The ancestry of America ’s
first president does indeed stretch back to Washington Old Hall – or at least to
the building which formerly occupied the site. But the big ‘clincher’ for most
interested parties – including the many visiting American tourists – is, of
course, the name. There’s no denying, however, that the gap between the last of
the family to bear the name who lived at the hall and the birth of George
himself is a very large one indeed.
It is with one William de Hertburne – a direct forebear of
George – that the story begins. William it was who moved from Hartburn, near
Stockton, to the area then known as ‘Wessyngtonlands’ in the twelfth century
when he rented lands there from the Bishop of Durham. He then changed his name
to William de Wessyngton, which in time came to be spelt ‘Washington ’.
The Washington
family line of the future president seems quite quickly to have angled off
elsewhere. In 1367 they migrated, first, to Lancashire ;
then Sulgrave Manor, Northamptonshire, from 1539. The family subsequently made
its home in Essex , then Yorkshire ,
and finally, in 1656, they emigrated to the American colonies.
So, as far as I can tell, the last direct male
ancestor of George Washington’s to live in the town in Co.Durham that bears his
name did so in the fourteenth century – and George wasn’t born until 1732.
Though other branches of the family hung on in the North-East, the hall/estate
passed through several hands before being sold back to the Bishop of Durham in
1613, and thereafter rebuilt on its original foundations.
Why not come along to...
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment