Origin of the Hoare Surname and the name’s meaning - Introduction

Victorian Surname Dictionaries

The Patronymica Britannica [1] provides the following information:

"HOAR. HOARE. Doubtless from A-Sax. hár, hoary, grey; applied to a person having a grey or hoary head. The Common medieval form is Le Hore."

An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names [2] provides further details:

"Hoare. White, hoar, grey."
"Hore. Hoar, white, grey. Horr, Local a ravine.

More detailed information can be found in the Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames [3]:

"Hoar, Hoare, Hore. - Nick. 'the hoar,' i.e. the white, the greyish white; probably from complexion of the hair; cf, Fairfax, Grey, White, Black.
'Ae olde men and hore
That help-lees ben of strengthe.'
Piers plowman , 1682-3
Very common in the Hundred Rolls [4], as for instance:
Adam le Hore, co. Derby, 1273. A.
John le Horre, co. Norf., ibid.
Alicia la Hore, co. Oxf., ibid.
Richard le Hore, co. Soms., 1 Edw. III: Kirby's Quest, p. 84. London, 3, 55, 6; New York, 5, 8, 4."

Old Pedigrees

Many old publications  can now be found online at a variety of websites. For example a fully digitised copy of "Some Account of the Early History and Genealogy of the Families of Hore and Hoare" is available at the Internet Archive. This was particularly interesting for me as the document identified that in the Domesday Book a village (modern day Ower) was known as "Hore". I am currently a long way from tracing my Hampshire Hoare family back to the village of Hore in 1086 however it is certainly motivating.

Entry for Hore in the Domesday Book
(image kindly made available by Professor J.J.N. Palmer. Image may be reused under a Creative Commons BY-SA licence - please credit Professor J.J.N. Palmer and George Slater.)

If you have Hoares (or any of its variants - Hoar, Hore, Horre, Horr, Hoor or Hor) in your family history in Hampshire or Sussex then I would be delighted to hear from you.

[1] Mark Anthony Lower MA FSA (1860) Patronymica Britannica A Dictionary of Family Names of the United Kingdom, John Russell Smith, London. Page 159.
[2] William Arthur MA (1857) Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names. With an Essay, on their Derivation and Import. Sheldon Blakeman & Co. New York. Pages 160 & 163.
[3] Charles Wareing Bardsley MA (1901) Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames with Special American Instances. Henry Frowde. London. Page 387.
[4] The Hundred Rolls are a census of England and parts of what is now Wales taken in the late thirteenth century. They are named for the hundreds by which most returns were recorded.

The Chicago Connection Pt. 1

My direct line of descent comes from Hoare families who originated on the borders of Hampshire and Sussex. Over the years I have been undertaking family reconstitution on each generation to try to fill in as many gaps as I can for my direct line. As a result when investigating the family of Samuel Hoare my 2x great-grandfather I was astonished to find that after his first five children were born in London between 1862 and 1870, his sixth child Florence Ann Hoare was shown in the censuses as having been born in Chicago W, USA in approximately 1874. Five further children were again born in London from 1876 until 1880.So did Samuel's wife Emma Winfield just pop over to Chicago between 1870 and 1876 to have a daughter and then come back or was this a failed attempt at immigration? If it was immigration for the whole Hoare family what could have encouraged them to leave their well established roots in London and move to Chicago?

The Great Chicago Fire burned from Sunday 8th October to Tuesday 10th October 1871. The fire killed hundreds and destroyed over three square miles of the city of Chicago. Although the fire was one of the largest disasters of the 19th century, the rebuilding that began helped develop Chicago as one of the most economically important American cities.

That rebuilding was undertaken by both American and migrant workers who came to Chicago for the work. Samuel Hoare was a bricklayer one of the many trades for whom work was advertised as being available in Chicago. However that advertising, often by shipping lines and passenger agencies, hawked the high wages and steady work that were supposedly the lot of all who came to the city. In Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871-1874 (Historical Studies of Urban America), Karen Sawislak describes the tumultuous months of rebuilding that followed the fire and the difficulties that there were for foreign workers, "One grim letter from a British migrant to Chicago appeared in the Manchester Courier in late March [1872]. Noting that 'money is scarce here,' the writer reported that 100 bricklayers had left the city, 'finding it impossible to support themselves and families, board and everything else being so high". At the same time in March 1872 the Workman's Advocate was reporting that 400 bricklayers, direct from England, had landed in the city. The paper reported that by April 1872 that 25 to 30 skilled tradesmen were arriving in Chicago every day.

If you want to look into your own Chicago family history there are some excellent books on the topic. The techniques of family reconstitution are also admirably explained in Nuts and Bolts: Family History Problem Solving Through Family Reconstitution Techniques

Have you had some odd migrations abroad with a quick return to the United kingdom? If so we would be delighted to hear about them in the comments below.

Laws of Migration

So how did it come about that the Hoare name spread across southern England?

This expert suggested some of the answers during the nineteenth century.

E.G. (Ernest George) Ravenstein

E.G. (Ernest George) Ravenstein was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany to a family of cartographers. When he was 18 years old he became a pupil of Dr. August Heinrich Petermann. After moving to England, Ravenstein became a naturalized British Subject and was in the service of the Topographical Department of the British War Office for 20 years (1855–75). A long-serving member of the councils of the Royal Statistical and Royal Geographical Societies, he was also Professor of Geography at Bedford College in 1882–83. He was the first to receive the Victoria gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society (1902) for geographical research.

A geographer by trade, most of Ravenstein’s published works on migration came after his retirement in 1874. While in the employ of the War Office he produced numerous publications and maps primarily dealing with Africa. His statistics and projections were much respected and used as a basis for official planning at the time; he had even predicted that human population would grow beyond the earth's capacity by the mid-20th century (subsequent developments in agriculture and fertilizers have altered the basis of that projection).He established a theory of human migration in the 1880s that still forms the basis for modern migration theory. It considered the implications of distance and different types of migrant, with women more likely than men to migrate within the country of their birth but less likely than men to leave the country of their birth. His migration research, especially his two papers on the “laws of migration” were very influential on later work dealing with the structure and process of migration. Although his work focused on current migrations Ravenstein had a major impact on migration studies across many disciplines.

Ravenstein's laws immediately created a stir, with some complaining that he had identified patterns of migration, but that this was not the same as discovering "natural laws." Four years, later, he presented another paper that looked at migration patterns elsewhere in Europe and North America, in which he highlighted an exception to migration patterns based upon the American frontier experience. He noted that people are more willing to travel long distances to occupy unsettled land than they would in a country more fully settled, as was the case in the United Kingdom.

Later social scientists would be more kind to Ravenstein's legacy. Some recent reviews of his work credit him with as many as eleven original migration laws. He is generally credited with the origination of distance decay theories of migration and spatial interaction, and later theories expanded on "push" and "pull" factors of migration. Later studies by R. Lawton in the 1950s and 1960s reused Ravenstein's methods but added additional demographic indicators to arrive at refined migration models.

Selected Relevant Works:

Ravenstein, E. G. 1876. The Birthplace of the People and the Laws of Migration.

Ravenstein, E. G. 1885. The Laws of Migration. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 48: pp. 167-235.

Ravenstein, E. G. 1889. The Laws of Migration. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 52: pp. 241-305.

Ravenstein's Laws of Migration [1]

1. The majority of migrants go only a short distance.
2. Migration proceeds step by step. There is a process of absorption, whereby people immediately surrounding a rapidly growing town move into it and the gaps they leave are filled by migrants from more distant areas, and so on until the attractive force is spent.
3. Migrants going long distances generally go by preference to one of the great centres of commerce or industry.
4. Each current of migration produces a compensating counter-current.
5. Natives of towns are less migratory than those of rural areas.
6. Females are more migratory than males within the kingdom of their birth, but males more frequently venture beyond.
7. Most migrants are adults: families rarely migrate out of their country of birth.
8. Large towns grow more by migration than by natural increase.
9. Migration increases in volume as industries and commerce develop and transport improves.
10. The major direction of migration is from the agricultural areas to the centres of industry and commerce.
11. The major causes of migration are economic.

[1] Grigg, D B 1977. “E G Ravenstein and the ‘Laws of Migration’” Journal of Historical Geography, 3, pp. 41-51

Do Ravenstein's Laws provide reasons for the movements of your ancestors? If you think so why don't you tell us about it below?

Finding Printed Pedigrees and Family Histories

The Genealogical Dark Ages?

Back in the days before the advent of the personal computer and the internet, we would have found our genealogical forebears hard at work in their local archives hunting through original records for the documentary traces of their ancestors - or would we?

Today if I go hunting my ancestors at any of the online sites, such as Ancestry or The British Newspaper Archive, as well as original records such as births, wills or newspaper articles I also use finding aids such as Pallot's Index to Marriages or the National Probate Calendar. These were produced either by the original holders of the records such as the Probate Registry or by those who needed indexes to enable them to undertake their business such as Messrs Pallot and Co who were record agents.

At Family Search today you can also look at pedigrees or family trees constructed by contributors to the site. However, what did you do if you wanted to look at pedigrees which had already been researched before the convenience of the internet?

Nature, Origin and Purpose of these Sources

These sources are indexes of pedigrees which have been documented in a variety of places including heraldic visitations, county histories, biographies, local periodicals and guides and a variety of published and unpublished books and pamphlets.Many of these documents have been privately published and therefore are of very limited circulation. The pedigrees mentioned in texts such as "The Genealogist’s Guide" can be difficult to find as the references can be codified in the abbreviations of the time which are less well known today. Whitmore's "A Genealogical Guide" provides some help in this regard but even if you can decipher the references then you may find it difficult to find the original document. For example, Whitmore includes "Descent of My Family (J. H. Hoare, 1903)" a privately printed pedigree which I have been unable to find any reference to.

G W Marshall LLD FSA (1903) The Genealogist’s Guide

George William Marshall, LLD FSA (1839–1905) was an officer of arms, serving the College of Arms as Rouge Dragon Pursuivant from 1887–1904, and as York Herald from 1904–1905. Marshall compiled large collections of wills, pedigrees, registers, church notes and other genealogical material, 32 volumes of which were bequeathed to the College of Arms under his will.

The Genealogist’s Guide is limited to an index of "pedigrees" defined by Marshallas "any descent of three generations in the male line". This very much reflects the patriarchal nature of genealogy at the end of the 19th century which had arisen out of a need for pedigrees to prove line of descent and support primogeniture. Interestingly this can also be seen in the all male membership list at the beginning of the Society of Genealogists as reported in the Pedigree Register in September 1911 (Edited by George Sherwood (1910-1913) “The Society of Genealogists of London” in the The Pedigree Register [The official organ of The Society of Genealogists of London.]. Vol. II, Pages 186-189. London: Published by the Editor.). Indeed in the December 1907 copy of the Pedigree Register there appeared an article entitled "Hereditary Tendencies in Female Descents" which whilst suggesting that more attention be paid to maternal lines also made it clear the reasons were to understand 'female traits':

"If greater attention were given to female descents it is more than probable that [she] might be aware that certain traits in her character, tendencies connected with child-bearing, etc., had descended in her family ... from mother to daughter."

(Edited by George Sherwood (1907-1910) "Hereditary Tendencies in Female Descents" in the The Pedigree Register. Vol. I, Pages 49-52. London: Published by the Editor.)

The Genealogist's Guide (Page 408 - Part)

At first glance this is a confusing mixture of publication titles and abbreviations which may have been well known to genealogist's in Marshall's day but are less well known today to users of online indexes. However once it is transcribed (with the essential assistance of the introduction and abbreviations found in Whitmore below), laid out with each reference on a separate line and the abbreviations expanded fully then the citations to pedigrees become easier to understand and therefore to find [see italicised expansions in square brackets].

HOAR:, or HOARE.

1. Pedigrees and Memoirs of the family of Hoare, by Sir R. C. Hoare, Bart. Bath, 1819, 4to. [Collected and compiled by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart. (1819) Pedigrees and Memoirs of the Families of Hoare of Rushford, Co. Devon; Hoare of Walton, Co. Bucks; Hoare of London; Hoare of Mitcham; Hoare of Stourton; Hoare of Barn Elms; Hoare of Boreham, Co. Essex. Privately printed for his Family and Friends. Bath. Imperial Quarto (10-12"). 64 pages.]
2. Some Account of the Early History and Genealogy of the Families of Hore and Hoare, by Edward Hoare. London, 1883, 4to. [Edward Hoare Esq. (1883) Some account of the early history and genealogy, with pedigrees from 1330, unbroken to the present time, of the families of Hore and Hoare with all their branches : ... with anecdotes ... of the principal persons mentioned. London. Alfred Russel Smith. Quarto (10-12")]
3. Gentleman's Magazine, 1838, ii. 28. [Sylvanus Urban, Gent. (1838) "Stourton Church, Wiltshire; and the Sepulchral Memorials of the Family of Hoare (with a plate)". The Gentleman's Magazine. Volume X New Series, July to December Inclusive. London. William Pickering; John Bowyer Nichols and Son. Page 28]
4. Burke's Landed Gentry, (of Cliff,) 5 supp., 6, i, 8 (of Kelsey,) 8.
5. Harleian Society, viii. 481. [G W Marshall, LLD, FSA, Editor. (1873) Harleian Society Visitation Series, Vol 8: Le Neve's Pedigrees of the Knights made by King Charles II, King James II, King William III and Queen Mary, William alone, and Queen Anne. Harleian Society. London. Page 481]
6. Harleian Society, ix. 100. [Lt-Colonel John Lambrick Vivian and Henry H Drake MA PhD, Editors (1874) Harleian Society Visitation Series, Vol 9: The Visitation of the County of Cornwall in the year 1620. Harleian Society. London. Page 100]
7. Lipscombe's History of the County of Buckingham, iv. 390. [George Lipscomb (1847), The history and antiquities of the county of Buckingham, Volume 4, Page 390]
8. Hoare's Wiltshire, I. i. 61, 62. [Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart. (1822) The History of Modern Wiltshire, Vol 1. Part i (Mere). Pages 61 and 62. London. John Bowyer Nichols and John Gough Nichols.]
9. Hoare's Wiltshire, V. iii. 13. [Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart. (1837) The Ancient History of Wiltshire, Vol 5. Part iii (Addenda to the Several Hundreds and General Index to the Whole Work.) Page 13. London. John Bowyer Nichols and John Gough Nichols.]
10. Betham's Baronetage, iv. 177. [William Betham (1804) The Baronetage of England: Or The History of the English Baronets, and Such Baronets of Scotland, as are of English Families; with Genealogical Tables, and Engravings of Their Armorial Bearings. Volume 4, Page 177 Ipswich : Printed by Burrell and Bransby, for William Miller.]
11. The Visitations of Cornwall, edited by J. L. Vivian, 232. [With additions by Lt-Colonel John Lambrick Vivian. (1887) "Hoare of Trenouth" The Visitations of Cornwall Comprising The Heralds' Visitations of 1530, 1573 and 1620. Exeter: William Pollard and Co. Page 233]
12. New England Register, xvii. 149. [Henry Fritz-Gilbert Waters (1863) "A Sketch of the Early Members of the Hoar family at Middleborough, Mass." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. Albany: J Munsell. Volume XVII, Page 149]
13. History of the Wilmer Family, 259. [Charles Wilmer Foster and Joseph J. Green (1888) History of the Wilmer family together with some account of its descendants. Priv. print. Leeds. Goodall and Suddick. Page 259]
14. Aldred's History of Turville, 47. [Henry William Aldred (1894) The ancient and modern history of Turville in the county of Bucks, shewing the history of Turville - St. Alban's manor ... also history of Turville - court manor ... the whole forming a valuable and interesting history of the parish compiled by Henry W. Aldred. Camberwell  Priv. print. for H.W. Aldred. Page 47]

See Hore.

Many of these old publications being out of copyright can now be found online at a variety of websites. For example a fully digitised copy of "Some Account of the Early History and Genealogy of the Families of Hore and Hoare" (item 2 above) is available at the Internet Archive. This was particularly interesting for me as the document identified that in the Domesday Book a village (modern day Ower) was known as "Hore". I am currently a long way from tracing my Hampshire Hoare family back to the village of Hore in 1086 however it is certainly motivating.

Entry for Hore in the Domesday Book
(image kindly made available by Professor J.J.N. Palmer. Image may be reused under a Creative Commons BY-SA licence - please credit Professor J.J.N. Palmer and George Slater.)

As well as the Internet Archive many other old publications are available on Google books. Lipscombe's History of the County of Buckingham (item 7 above) for example, can be found there and below is shown both the family narrative (Page 359) and the pedigree chart for this Hoare family (Page 360).

Another excellent source for old out of copyright publications is the Family History Library Catalog of  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Item 11 above "The visitations of Cornwall : comprising the Heralds' visitations of 1530, 1573, & 1620" and other published visitations can be found here amongst other genealogical gems.

J B Whitmore BA FSA FSG (1953) A Genealogical Guide: An Index to British Pedigrees in Continuation of Marshall's Genealogists's Guide (1903)

Major John Beach Whitmore, BA FSA FSG (1882-1957) was a compiler of a range of genealogical records, abstracts and indexes especially monumental inscriptions and London Visitation pedigrees.

Whitmore's outstanding piece of work was "A Genealogical Guide" which updated Marshall's work to include pedigrees published from 1903 up until between 1945-1948 when Whitmore compiled his Guide.

A Genealogical Guide (Page 257 - Part)

Like The Genealogist's Guide, the entries in Whitmore  like the one above are also a confusing mixture of publication titles and abbreviations. Unlike Marshall however, Whitmore provides a detailed introduction of nearly thirty pages which clearly lays out what has been included in his work and why. It also provides an explanation of the citations used and a list of abbreviations. I therefore have not reinterpreted the the list above but just extracted each of the entries below. The introduction is also useful when trying to interpret Marshall's work.

HOAR, HOARE.

1. Memoirs of Samuel Hoare by his Daughter Sarah and his Widow Hannah (F. R. Fryer, 1911), p. xv.
2. Hoare's Bank, A Record, 1673-1932 (n.a., 1932).
3. The Hoar Family in Americaand Its English Ancestry (H. S. Nourse, Boston, 1899).
4. London Vis. Peds. 1664, Harl Soc. xcii, 78.
5. Misc. Gen. and Her., 5th Ser., ii, 233.
6. Ruvigny (Tudor), 271, 272.
7. Ruvigny (Exeter) 196.
8. Ruvigny (Essex) 264.
9. Ruvigny (Tudor), 271, 272; (Exeter) 196; (Essex) 264; (Mortimer-Percy) 369.
10. Barber of The Peak, 239.
11. Erminois, 79.
12. Memorials of an Ancient House, 87.
13. NorfolkFams., 347.
14. Kerry Arch. Mag., iv, 198.
15. Tickell Family, 102.
16. Buttevant, i, 36, 39.
17. ** Descent of My Family (J. H. Hoare, 1903).

See HORE.

** Circumstances prevented Whitmore examining some privately printed family histories the existence of which was known to him from notices in booksellers catalogues and elsewhere: these he marked with a double asterisk. Whitmore also stated that other family histories which he had been unable to examine will be found in "A Catalogue of British Family Histories (Theodore Radford Thomson, 1928: 2nd Ed. 1935)" which was reprinted in a 3rd edition with Addenda in 1980.

G B Barrow (1977) The genealogist's guide: an index to printed British pedigrees and family histories, 1950-1975 being a supplement to G W Marshall’s Genealogist's Guide and J B Whitmore’s Genealogical Guide

Geoffrey Battiscombe Barrow (1927-2002) was in the antiquarian book trade, having been Cataloguer of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books for the famous bookseller Bernard Quaritch Ltd. Barrow's earlier work "A History of the Battiscombe and Bascom Families of England and America" is one of the very publications which these indexes refer to and it appears both under Battiscombe and Bascom on page 11.

The Genealogist's Guide (Page 84 - Part)

HOARE, HOAR, HORE.

1. Surrey Arch. Coll., L, 127;
2. Burke, L.G., I, 385; 111, 460.

T R Thomson (1980) A Catalogue of British Family Histories 3rd Edition with Addenda

Theodore Radford Forrester Thomson (1897-1981) was a Fellow and Honorary Librarian of the Society of Genealogists. His Catalogue of British family Histories was first published in 1928. His other publications included the "History of the Family of Thomson of Corstophine".

A Catalogue of British Family Histories (Pages 84 and 85 - Part)

Hoare –

1. Pedigrees and Memoirs of the Family of Hore ... Hoare ... comp. by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bt., fo., Bath, 1819.*
2. Some Account of ... the Families of Hore and Hoare, by Capt. Edward Hoare of Cork, 4to, London, 1883.
3. History of my Family .... by J. N. Hoare, 1903.

*An asterisk denotes 'privately printed'.

Using Printed Pedigrees

You would not just copy someone else's tree from Ancestry or from a Family Search pedigree and equally you should not assume that these pedigrees are automatically correct. These pedigrees will however provide you with ample pointers to look for other primary evidence which can help you reliably trace your family history.

Where else to look

Many genealogical societies, archives and libraries hold collections of documents which include pedigrees. My favourite is the library of the Society of Genealogists (SOG).

"The Society of Genealogists collects printed and published family histories as well as unpublished material in typescript or manuscript form. Family histories and pedigrees can be found all over the library and of course online. Hence there is no one place to look, whether at the Society of Genealogists, or on the Internet. The Document Collection contains thousands of unique miscellaneous manuscript research notes arranged by surname. These notes (or microfiche or digital copies of the notes)  are available in the archive section of the Lower Library where you will find a printed list of all the surnames represented.  An alphabetical list of the surnames and families in the Document Collection can also  be found on the SOG website."

SOG also has an excellent guide to " Surname Searching at the SoG and Elsewhere. What’s Been Done Before?" available online at their website.

Pedigrees for Other Places

Marshall, Whitmore, Barrow and Thomson dealt primarily with English and Welsh pedigrees but there are similar finding aids for Scottish and Irish published pedigrees, which I will discuss in a later post.

So have you ever used a pedigree finding aid? What did you find? Was it accurate?

Tell us all about it in comments below.