[Granville-Hough] 16 June 2009 - Hough Origins
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough at oakapple.net
Thu Sep 30 06:24:01 PDT 2010
Our Origins as Houghs
When I first got to England about 1960, one of the first things I did
was go to the British Museum (and National Library.) I was interested in
where the Hough family had originated. Quite readily, I found that the
name was most frequently located with Cheshire and vicinity. At some
time before 1200 some refugees (from Flanders) had been placed between
the Saxons of England and the Celts of Wales. Among the names which
traced back to that buffer group were Hough and another I recognized as
Ainsworth. I had cousins who had married Ainsworths. Hough had gone
through variations of Hogh, de la Hogh, Hoghe, etc, but it was
phonetically Huff. I accepted this writeup, or legend, as perhaps close
enough, because when later I worked on all the Hough and Huff families
of the US, I found more could actually trace back to Cheshire and its
religious groups, such as Quakers, than to any other source.
As I have studied genealogy, the surname has always been the most
important indicator. Now I know that surnames did not become mandatory
for England until about 1300, so whether the name is Hough, Ainsworth,
Chisholm, or Hollingsworth really has no meaning for the generations
before. Lets say three brothers had to choose surnames, or be given
them by a tax (or census) enumerator. Brother John had a mill for
grinding grain. He became John Miller. Brother Joseph made a living
fishing. He became Joseph Fisher. Brother Mark was a hunter, so he
became Mark Hunter. Three brother founded different families, so we
assumed no kinship. Now we know they all carried, and passed down, the
identical YDNA. So it is with the Hough, Chisholm, and Hollingsworth
families. We have a common ancestor somewhere in our background. Thanks
to Leif Ericson, we even have a few Eskimo cousins in Greenland. (The
settlement he established did not survive, but his people who adopted
Eskimo ways did survive, and they are there today, speaking Greenlander,
a mixture of Old Norse and Eskimo, and looking like any other
Greenlander Eskimo.)
Now, about that legend of Houghs being in a buffer group between the
Saxons and the Welsh. I have found no further reference to any refugee
group from Flanders to England, but what I do find is plenty of evidence
of a refugee group from Norse Dublin, Ireland, to Western England about
902 AD. Their leader was Ingimund, a Norseman who left Norway after or
during its unification under the ruler, Harold the Fine-Hair. (There
were other Norse refugees at that time who settled in Ireland, Iceland,
the Faroes, Shetland, the Orkneys, Isle of Man, Western Isles, Skye and
anywhere else on the coast of Scotland or Ireland which looked
promising.) Some rather haughty leaders such as Ingimund tried the Norse
kingdom of Dublin, and Leif Ericson, who tried Iceland; but they
violated local customs and were banished. Ingimund then tried to settle
in England. On his second try, he besieged Chester, and lost; but the
Queen of Mercia agreed that Ingimund could settle on the Wirral, the
land now across the Mersey River from Liverpool and lying between the
Mersey and Dee Rivers. There the Norse and their Irish supporters
established their own little kingdom, speaking Old Norse, having their
own parliament or assembly field at Thingwall. It appears that there
were Norse additions from other places for 200 years. It was an
effective buffer against the Welsh from the Saxon point of view. Those
of us with the so-called Viking YDNA, I1a or other I variants,
probably descend from most of those settlers in the Wirral Peninsula, 25
to 30 generations ago.
When interest in YDNA became prevalent, there was an effort to identify
those with Viking/Scandinavian ancestry in the Wirral Peninsula and in
West Lancashire. The population influx has been 60 fold, and all sorts
of admixtures must exist. The research group selected surnames that were
recorded before 1572, including Hough, from the Wirral Peninsula and
picked a control group from more recent names. After doing the YDNA
analyses, the old-name group showed a significantly higher percentage
with the Viking-associated YDNA. So our people have been there a long
time and are still there. So I conclude my particular group of Houghs
most likely goes back to the Vikings of Wirral.
Are there other possibilities? Yes, indeed there are. The Normans who
came with William the Conqueror in 1066 were Franco-Vikings, not long
removed from Norway. Among these were undoubtedly some with the same
YDNA that we have. They left their upper-class progeny all over England,
wherever they could grab and hold land, though not numerous in the total
population. So far as I know, no Hough has traced back to the Domesday
Book or to William the Conquerors underlings, but other surnames with
our DNA may so trace. It merely means our common ancestor is back in
Norway, with some descendants going to Ireland and others to Normandy.
We must keep in mind, there were no English surnames for most people
before about 1300, and still no inherited surnames in Iceland such as Hough.
Then there were the Danes who gave Alfred the Great so much trouble. Did
they have the same YDNA as we do? So far, there has been no
distinguishing feature among descendants which defines a Dane versus a
Saxon. They have different YDNA from us, so far as I can determine.
How accurate is the YDNA? I can answer that with a recent testing of
John Emile Hough. I had traced his family as probable cousins and
descendants of Francis Hough of GA, AL, and Wayne Co, MS, but I did not
know from which son of Francis he descended, or if he belonged in some
different Hough family. He did the 67 marker test and he and I match
completely, marker for marker. He knew his ancestry back to Francis. He
and I are either 5th cousins, or 5th cousins, once removed. We have
apparently had no mutations, and his test validates the Francis Hough
family tree. If anyone else claims to descend from Francis Hough, but
with a completely different YDNA, I would say that person has an
ancestor who was involved in some sort of hanky-panky.
I would make one point about the I variant occurencies in Central or
Eastern Europe. I would suggest this happened when the Swedes and other
Scandinavians made their way southward over the river systems to
Constantinople in historical times rather than the much earlier post
ice-age time when they were moving northward through central Europe to
Scandinavia. That is just a best guess on my part.
This is as far as I have gotten in this new quest for early ancestors.
It does not answer the question posed to me about recent tests, which I
hope to re-analyze For future discussion.
More information about the Granville-Hough
mailing list