Genealogy Place Names - F

F is for . . . Fécamp

A note to my family: This works out rather neatly. Our ancestor from Fécamp leads to my mother. Our ancestor from Fyndern leads to my father.  One is royal the other comes from a line of knights and ladies and then Quakers.  One is from France and the beaches of Normandy, and the other from a tiny place in Derbyshire, England.  Click on the links for more detail. Don’t be dismayed by different spellings – they abound and are further confused by the use of Latin. Until the majority of people could read spelling remained very fluid

Once again, this is a blog of mostly links like the one immediately below that has photos, maps, and a fascinating history on the origin of Fécamp. Be sure to follow the links.

Fécamp, Seine Inferieure, Normandy, France

Robert Antoine Pinchon, Le port de Fécamp, oil on canvas, Wikipedia

Link to photos of the village

Our ancestor: Gunnora Harldsdottir deCrepon 
936-1031     28^th great grandmother

F is for . . . Fyndern

Fyndern, Derbyshire, England

George Fyndern  1470-1540 is my 16^th great grandfather.
This family comes down through our Quaker lines to my father’s family. Findern/Fyndern is a small village that grew up around the Fyndern manor house.

The village of Fyndern and our Fyndern family have an interesting history. See what’s up in the following link. The Findern Flower was brought back to the village in England from the Crusades.

Fyndern on Wikipedia

The Findern Flower, Narcissus Poeticus Flore Pleno

The Fyndern Flower   By John Hawkins - Findern Historical Society - Take by Findern resident. Wikipedia Commons

Here’s a BBC page on a FyndernHistory Walk – helping you imagine being there! 

The Villages of Findern (Fyndern)and Willington

I hope you’ve enjoyed our visit to a couple of small villages in France and England. The lands of our forefathers.  A challenge to my blog readers – look-up an area your ancestors hailed from and learn its history. It could be 2 generations back in Ohio or 10 generations back in Italy, but wherever it is you will be fascinated with what you find!  

Ohio Pioneers



. . . and so it begins. Our pioneers in Ohio. The dream has been this for decades – to pass along the stories of our family to my children; and to do it by not only personal, specific accounts, but through literature – the well-love and carefully researched historical novels, histories, biographies, and autobiographies that I’ve read along the way.   

This is not to be a linear path from, let’s say, 900AD to the present. The books were and are read in random order. Last year I was inspired by the Medieval power couple, Sir William Marshall and Lady Isabel de Clare, through the well-researched, well-imagined stories of Elizabeth Chadwick in two historical novels: The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion.  When I first picked-up the books I knew that the couple were on our family tree. Looking closer at the spider-web of family connections I found, much to my surprise, that the Marshall family is very significant to the make-up of our family. No fewer than five lines from four of the Marshall daughters found their way down to our present-day family. I’d have to say that my children and grandchildren have a strong claim to the Marshall legacy. It is one to be proud of and to cherish.

http://elizabethchadwick.com/

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I started by buying new copies of each of the Chadwick historical novels as Christmas gifts for my 4 adult children and 4 adult grandchildren. Then I set about the labor of love – compiling an individualized account that displayed their descendency from William and Isabel.

I hope that each of them will come to treasure the gift and use those three books as the start of their family history library and keep them through their life-times and pass them on to their children.

I have four younger grandchildren and two great grandchildren who didn’t receive copies but it is my hope that their parents will see that they have an opportunity to read them. This year one of those four grandchildren, Maia, has reached the age of 10 and is a reader. She will receive her personalized copies. And so there will be nine. . . ‘Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise!’ as they once said back in Ohio territory. . .