Plumpton History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms

Origins Available:
England

Plumpton is a name of ancient Anglo-Saxon origin and comes from the family once having lived in one of the many places named Plumpton in England including the township of Plumpton in Lancashire, the parish in Northumberland and the parish in Sussex. 1 2

The place name literally means "place where plum-trees grow," from the Old English word "plume" + "tun." 3

The oldest parishes are found in East Sussex and Lancashire which are both listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Pluntune and Pluntun, respectively. 4

Early Origins of the Plumpton family

The surname Plumpton was first found in Cheshire where William de Plumton was listed in the Pipe Rolls of 1174. A few years later, Nigel de Plumpton was found in the Feet of Fines for Oxfordshire in 1247 and John de Plumpton in the Yorkshire Poll Tax Rolls of 1379. 5

Interestingly, the Hundredorum Rolls of 1273 had two listings for the family, both in Northamptonshire: William de Plumton and Robert de Plumpton. 2

In Devon, "in all probability Plympton takes name from its ancient position at the head of the estuary of what is now known as the Plym, or, as these estuarine creeks are commonly called in the locality, lake pen lin in the Western Keltic tongue, contracted, as in other instances in Cornwall, into plin, the form which the first syllable takes in its earliest occurrence in ' Domesday ' Plintona." 6

Early History of the Plumpton family

This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Plumpton research. Another 111 words (8 lines of text) covering the years 1383, 1404, 1421, 1427, 1430, 1453, 1480, 1482, 1503, 1523, 1570, 1582 and 1619 are included under the topic Early Plumpton History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.

Plumpton Spelling Variations

Sound was what guided spelling in the essentially pre-literate Middle Ages, so one person's name was often recorded under several variations during a single lifetime. Also, before the advent of the printing press and the first dictionaries, the English language was not standardized. Therefore, spelling variations were common, even among the names of the most literate people. Known variations of the Plumpton family name include Plumpton, Plumton, Plompton, Plympton and others.

Early Notables of the Plumpton family

Notables of the family at this time include

Sir William Plumpton (1404-1480), English soldier, eldest son of Sir Robert Plumpton (1383-1421) of Plumpton, Yorkshire. His family had been settled at Plumpton from the twelfth century, and held of t...

Plumpton migration to the United States +

For political, religious, and economic reasons, thousands of English families boarded ships for Ireland, Canada, the America colonies, and many of smaller tropical colonies in the hope of finding better lives abroad. Although the passage on the cramped, dank ships caused many to arrive in the New World diseased and starving, those families that survived the trip often went on to make valuable contributions to those new societies to which they arrived. Early immigrants bearing the Plumpton surname or a spelling variation of the name include:

Plumpton Settlers in United States in the 17th Century

Henry Plumpton who settled in Virginia in 1632
Henry Plumpton, who landed in Virginia in 1649 7
William Plumpton, who arrived in Virginia in 1665 7

Plumpton migration to West Indies +

The British first settled the British West Indies around 1604. They made many attempts but failed in some to establish settlements on the Islands including Saint Lucia and Grenada. By 1627 they had managed to establish settlements on St. Kitts (St. Christopher) and Barbados, but by 1641 the Spanish had moved in and destroyed some of these including those at Providence Island. The British continued to expand the settlements including setting the First Federation in the British West Indies by 1674; some of the islands include Barbados, Bermuda, Cayman Island, Turks and Caicos, Jamaica and Belize then known as British Honduras. By the 1960's many of the islands became independent after the West Indies Federation which existed from 1958 to 1962 failed due to internal political conflicts. After this a number of Eastern Caribbean islands formed a free association. 8

Plumpton Settlers in West Indies in the 17th Century

John Plumpton, who settled in Jamaica in 1684

Contemporary Notables of the name Plumpton (post 1700) +

Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1903-1930), British mathematician, philosopher, and economist

Citations +

Lower, Mark Anthony, Patronymica Britannica, A Dictionary of Family Names of the United Kingdom. London: John Russel Smith, 1860. Print.
Bardsley, C.W, A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames: With Special American Instances. Wiltshire: Heraldry Today, 1901. Print. (ISBN 0-900455-44-6)
Mills, A.D., Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Print. (ISBN 0-19-869156-4)
Williams, Dr Ann. And G.H. Martin, Eds., Domesday Book A Complete Translation. London: Penguin, 1992. Print. (ISBN 0-141-00523-8)
Reaney, P.H and R.M. Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames. London: Routledge, 1991. Print. (ISBN 0-415-05737-X)
Worth, R.N., A History of Devonshire London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, E.G., 1895. Digital
Filby, P. William, Meyer, Mary K., Passenger and immigration lists index : a guide to published arrival records of about 500,000 passengers who came to the United States and Canada in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. 1982-1985 Cumulated Supplements in Four Volumes Detroit, Mich. : Gale Research Co., 1985, Print (ISBN 0-8103-1795-8)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_West_Indies