N - Norman

Were the Normans Normans ?

Certainly their surname suggests they could be. A bit unoriginal though. Perhaps they were Anglo-Saxon serfs, who took their name from the landowner to whom they were tied.

I like to think that my Norman ancestors did have roots in Normandy. They lived in Huish Champflower and the surrounding parishes which sounds a bit French but is actually Old English. Huish referring to a household or hide of land and Champflower apparently refers to the family who owned it in the 12^th century. If that is so then why is it called such in the Domesday Book completed in the 11^th century ?

In the Domesday book the parish is part of the land held by Roger Arundel.

“Roger himself holds HUISH CHAMPFLOWER. Aethelric held it in TRE and it paid geld for 2 hides and 3 virgates of land. There is land for 12 ploughs. In demesne there are 2 ploughs and 5 slaves; and 20 villans and 6 bordars with 6 ploughs. There is a mill rendering 12d, and 20 acres of meadow, and 60 acres of woodland, [and] pasture 1 league long and half a league broad. It was worth £6; now £7.”

By the 18^th century our Normans don’t appear to have been landed gentry, but many of them were farmers employing a number of labourers to work the land. Possibly that would place them socially as villans were they there and counted in the Domesday Book, and assuming they retained their social standing through the years. But if they had been slaves they might have taken their name from their “master” and later worked their way up the social ladder.

Church records and the research started by earlier genealogists in the family in the 1970-1980s, have traced the family back to the early 1700’s. Not a great deal survives earlier than that – and DNA evidence starts to get pretty sketchy around there too.

The common ancestors who most trees DNA and non-DNA seem to settle on are Richard Norman baptised 1719 at Stogumber and his wife Sarah Long. They were married in the church at Clatworthy, after banns, on 24 December 1747 and had at least 5 children. The baptisms of some of the children record their place of residence as “Huish.” Richard’s parents are possibly John Norman and Elizabeth Nation who married on 30 May 1717 at Stogumber, another neighbouring parish, and had about 8 children.

Two of Richard and Sarah’s children are my 5 x great-grandparents. (Pedigree collapse is real in my tree)

Jane born in early 1754 married John Vickery (from another Huish Champflower family) at St Peter, Huish Champflower on 14 December 1774. They had 10 or so children a number of whom died in infancy. Their daughter Sarah born 14 November 1789 at Huish Champflower married her cousin William Norman.

William’s parents were Robert Norman (Jane’s younger brother born late 1760) & Jane Venn who had married at Clatworthy on 8 May 1782. Robert and Jane had a large family of 12 children, most of whom married into other local families, Langdon, Darch, Sellick…

By the mid 1800’s many of the great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of those common ancestors Richard and Sarah had emigrated across the globe to the colonies; Canada, America, New Zealand and more than likely Australia ('though I haven’t found them yet !)