The meaning of Starbuck

For seven years, in two spurts – 2016-17 and now, 2020-23 – I’ve hunted for documentary evidence of Edward Starbuck’s origins. He was the first of that name to arrive in New England and later, famously, in Nantucket. Accumulated circumstantial finds, however, make it certain that his Starbuck tribe was rooted in the ancient soil of south-east Derbyshire and south-west Nottinghamshire, most likely in Long Eaton and Toton, tiny settlements under the Danelaw on either side of the river Erewash, today’s county border.

Catchment area of the River Trent

One of the most well-known commercial brands today has always been a rare  surname in England. Only a handful of Starbuck families existed at any one time in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, all of them in or from that watery landscape where rivers Derwent, Trent and Erewash meet. We call it ‘Starbucky Territory’.

Starbuck variants

Back then, the name had regular variants: with or without a final ‘e’, with any of the five vowels after ‘St’, or between ‘b’ and ‘c’. Sometimes ending in ‘c’ without the ‘k’ and vice versa. A double or single ‘r’. And most intriguingly, it was sometimes written as two parts: Star Buck. Or Starr Bucke.

DNA testing proves that some English people named Buck are matched to Nantucket Starbuck descendants. The name Starr occurs in one or two parishes alongside Starbuck, so the names Buck and Starr have to be considered too.

Whatever the spelling or variant, however, the name’s etymology is uncertain. The only theory found online suggests an origin from the hamlet of Starbeck in north Yorkshire, between Ripon and Knaresborough. The earliest known version of the name is claimed to be Robert Starbok in 1379 Yorkshire Poll Tax returns, but I have also found a Thomas Starbok, tailor in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk in Close Rolls of 1384 (Hathi Trust). Since only a few Starbucks can be found in Yorkshire before the modern period, and occurrences of the name as Starbeck are vanishingly rare, these theories do not feel strong.

Viking origin?

A Y-DNA project in (2012-15) of Prof Turi King and colleagues suggested that Starbuck is a Viking type surname, potentially corroborated by the Y-DNA of tested participants named Starbuck. Long Eaton, Toton and most of ‘Starbucky Territory’ lay within the Danelaw, a region of Anglo-Saxon England colonised by Danish armies, ruled under Danish law from the late 9^th century until 1066.

Reading a modern transcripton of the 1086 ‘Domesday Book’ – the nationwide tax assessment ordered by William I – shows that Long Eaton’s population at that time included 22 ‘sokemen’ and its location within Sawley Manor was always termed in historical documents: ‘Sawley Manor and Soke’. The area of that ‘Soke’ was almost entirely in Long Eaton. Next-door Toton had 4 ‘sokemen’.

It is unsurprising that a tax assessment conducted just two decades after the Conquest noted the presence of landholders who themselves, or their forebears, were almost certainly Danish – the ‘sokemen’ who were freer than freemen and freeholders in feudal terms. They held their ‘sokeland’ freely, able to buy and sell, come and go, without a Lord’s permission. The 1086 Domesday Book shows sokes, sokelands and sokemen in many settlements of ‘Starbucky Territory’, though Long Eaton with 22 appears to have had the largest number in that area.

A fresh etymology suggestion

The Domesday Book notes that Long Eaton’s neighbouring settlement of Breaston was held before the Conquest by Leofnoth Sterre, a significant landholder of 29 manors in Derbyshire and Leicestershire, who lost everything to the Normans.

Leofnoth is an Anglo-Saxon name, ‘Leof’ meaning ‘loved’ or ‘friendly’ and ‘noth’ meaning ‘strength’. ‘Sterre’ is a Saxon as well as Viking/Danish nickname, translated as ‘Star’ in modern English. Another etymology suggests that as a Viking nickname it could mean ‘leader’. For such a prominent landholder, a nickname of ‘leader’ would be appropriate.

The coincidence of a Danish nickname of ‘Star’ so close to where Starbucks originated is enticing. If we add a possible meaning of the ‘buck’ part of their name, we find that while related to the sense of male goat or deer, it was also a term for ‘man’ (Old Norse ‘bokki’), especially a ‘fashionable man’.

Surname history shows that heritable surnames began to develop from the 11^th century in England so maybe it’s not too much of a stretch to think that someone known as Leader’s Man (‘Sterre Buck’), farming perhaps in Breaston or Long Eaton in the early 11^th century led to the establishment of the Starbuck surname.

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The accuracy aspiration

Readers and followers of my occasional blogposts know that my favourite theme is surprise! That is, when a new historical discovery is hard to believe, facts that I have never encountered before and which I think will intrigue or fascinate others. In an era when ‘alternative facts’ are spread around like chicken feed, and wrong data in online family trees goes viral, I’d hate to become part of that trend. I want to tell a true story based on accurate facts.

Which leads to the question… what is ‘true’ historical fact? That question is especially hard to answer when we come across our forebears deliberately setting out to be misleading, obfuscating, deceptive. They, it’s clear, were no different from us, in most cases for good and not criminal or malign reasons.

Fine (or Final Concord) and Common Recovery

As an example, take a family situation in the 17^th century where some land was ‘entailed’ on a particular heir or heirs, most commonly of course, male ones. It was hard to legally challenge that entail if or when the need arose to convey (“sell”) the land. Two popular methods of conveying entailed land were the Fine or Final Concord and the Common Recovery, both of which methods involved … fictitious court cases.

Already daunted by the language? Now try this – how the Fine and the Common Recovery worked:

In a Fine or Final Concord, the buyer of a property (called the plaintiff or querent) brought a court case against the seller (called the deforciant), with his agreement, alleging that he had agreed to sell him the property in question but had failed to do so. Before the court could reach the judgment, the two came to an out of court settlement whereby the seller acknowledged that the property should rightfully belong to the buyer. The reason this charade was followed is that by taking out such a case in the courts, the buyer was awarded the property in fee simple, even if the land was previously subject to an entail… Unfortunately fines themselves do not provide much detailed information on the property being sold; usually, the description is limited to nothing more informative than a house and so many acres of land in a particular parish. Even the amount of money paid for the property is usually recorded as a standard figure that bears little resemblance to the amount that actually changed hands. However, they were often accompanied by a Deed to Lead to (or Explain) the Uses of a Fine, which does often provide more specific details of the transaction.

A Common Recovery involved a fabricated lawsuit in the courts, in which the buyer (demandant) brought an arranged case against the seller (the tenant-in-tail) to ‘recover’ the property being sold, claiming that it was rightfully his and that he had been wrongly ejected from it by a third party (a wholly fictitious individual normally given a stock name such as Hugh Hunt or Richard Rowe). The seller, instead of ‘defending’ the case in person, called upon another (called the vouchee) to stand up for him. Following the pantomime protocol of such cases, the buyer would then ask to consult (or imparl) with the vouchee out of court. Both then left the court for a brief period, but while the buyer returned the vouchee did not, and he was thus held to be in contempt of court. The seller’s case therefore collapsed and the buyer was awarded the property in fee simple*. In its developed form, the recovery case was often brought against the seller’s lawyer or agent, to whom the property had been previously assigned by a Deed to Make a Tenant to the Precipe (‘precipe’  being the first word of the relevant court action). The written record resulting from this legal fiction was an Exemplification of a Common Recovery, a rather grand looking document sealed with the court seal.

Both excerpts from: Title Deeds for Family Historians, by Tim Wormleighton (The Family History Partnership, 2012) pp17-20.

*Fee simple means: “a permanent and absolute tenure in land with freedom to dispose of it at will especially as freehold tenure, the most common type of land ownership.” (from Oxford Languages, Google’s English Dictionary)

I hear you ask: what were Feet of Fines? Fines were recorded as three copies on one large sheet, usually of parchment, two at the top and one across the bottom or ‘foot’ of the document. The sheet was then cut up into three (usually with wavy “indentured” cuts rather than straight ones, leading to the term “indenture” for many legal documents created in this way – the copies could be validated later by matching up the cuts). The two top copies were given to the ‘buyer’ and ‘seller’, while the bottoms, the feet, of these Fines were retained by the Court.

Records of Fines (Feet of Fines) heard in the Court of Common Pleas are held at the National Archives at Kew (TNA). Common Recoveries were mostly heard by that same court and are also held at TNA in the Plea Rolls (later Recovery Rolls). TNA’s guide to the Feet of Fines can be found here: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/land-conveyance-feet-of-fines-1182-1833/

However, even if Common Recoveries were mostly heard in Common Pleas, I have come across many of them in local manorial records too, most notably in the Duffield Fee Court Books held at Derbyshire Record Office.

So anyone endeavouring to locate their family lines before the 19^th century could easily stumble across these fictitious shenanigans and feel the pain, as I still do, trying to work them out. Especially as they’re in Latin before 1733 and, all too often, spider’s leg handwriting.

In my attempts to compose articles about the early 17^th century English families of emigrant Edward Starbuck for a descendant’s new website, trying to decode such fictitious events in legal documents, how can I be sure I’m offering a ‘true story’ when our forebears went to such lengths to confuse and disguise their intentions?

It works out that all any of us can do as historians is make guesses from the documentary evidence, as educated ones as we can manage, slap on a hopeful smile and keep fingers crossed we don’t add to the sea of ‘alternative facts’ we swim in.

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Starbuck surname mystery deepens

The trouble with a rare surname like Starbuck, of trying to pin down just one of them (Edward) in 16^th and early 17^th century records – it genuinely is a needle in the haystack quest. Imagine our recent joy therefore when that search unexpectedly became even harder – as well as more interesting.

Nottinghamshire Archives has not been the fastest off the blocks getting their records digitised and online, but at last we can see most of the PRs now at Ancestry. On the downside, the two parishes we most want to trawl – Nottingham St Nicholas and Nottingham St Peter – won’t be online until next year. But Nottingham St Mary PRs are there and I have checked them from the start, 1566 to 1640 and beyond.

Big parish – the job took several days and the great discovery was near the end.

On 1 October 1610, Godfray Cragell married Jone Starre Bucke.
On 9 January 1619/20, Isabell the daughter of Edward Stare Buck was buryed
On 10 January 1619/20, Anne the daughter of the said Stare Bucke was buryed
On 22 December 1625, Edward Star Buck married Mary Kirke

In twenty years of researching, this is the first time EVER I have seen a 17^th century surname split into two halves like this. Two of these four entries gave capital letters to both halves, all four had a clearly visible space between the syllables.

• This is not an alias of two complete surnames (we have Starbuck alias Johnsons in nearby Toton, Attenborough parish)

• It is not a double-barrelled surname with a hyphen between two complete surnames. I have it on good authority from a surname history expert that double-barrel names are not known in England until the 18^th century.

• Now let’s add the fact that alongside the ‘split surname’ Starr Bucke in Nottingham St Mary, there were Buck(e)s – and there were dozens more of both names at the same early dates in nearby Attenborough St Mary.

• Not far away in Greasley, Nottinghamshire, and a century later on 12 August 1744, a marriage was recorded between Charles Star-buck and Martha Onion. On a page where all the entries were squeezed into three narrow columns, that is the only word with a hyphen. The couple moved to Hucknall Torkard, Notts and were thenceforth just Buck(e) by name. We can almost hear the Greasley priest asking Charles: “Well, is it Starbuck or Buck, hmm? Tell you what, I’ll write both.”

• Over in Leicestershire at Kegworth, there were people named Starr from the 1560s, among them a Christopher Starr, while on 4 Feb 1605/6, Christopher Starrbucke married Elizabeth Chambers, and as Christopher Starrbuck (both times, double RR) he was buried there in 1647. His widow Elizabeth was buried as Starbuck a few years later in 1654 and a George Starbuck, carpenter, lived alongside them, possibly their son.

All of a sudden we have three rare surnames to research not just one.

And now we need men bearing all three surnames to invite for Y-DNA tests so we can see which of them named Starr and Bucke had Starbuck ancestors. Luckily, we have already discovered by DNA tests that the Bucks of Hucknall Torkard are a match, if fairly distant, to Nantucket Edward Starbuck’s line.

The surname expert referred to earlier informs me that losing for good the front half of a surname did happen at these early dates although only occasionally. Knewstubbs to Stubbs (1589) and Broadbelt to Belt (1741) are examples (and who can blame them).

However, the actual rendering of the Starbuck surname as two separate, even capitalised words (Starr Bucke) is about as close to unique in English surname history as it gets.

It was written that way in Nottingham St Mary over the space of fifteen years. Examining the handwriting, that appears to be the same for the whole period, though by the 1620s considerably more untidy than in 1610. There were changes of Vicar and Curate between 1603 and 1625, none of them in post throughout the fifteen years, so it appears a long-term parish clerk was responsible. Perhaps he had never heard or seen the Starbuck name before and simply did his best to render its uncouth sound in writing.

This was a time when few everyday folk could read or write. Mostly they knew their own and other’s surnames just ‘vocally’ with local accents thrown in. The occasions for surnames to be put on paper would be rare and special. If asked to spell their names, most would not be able to. In any case, official records like PRs were often compiled by scribes after events had happened, and according to their own spelling whims. This applied not only to parish register-keeping, but manorial court minutes, estate rentals, property leases and so on. At these dates, even when witnessing documents, many people did so with their mark, having heard the document read out to them, so name-spelling was someone else’s choice.

Perhaps the Nottingham Starbucks pronounced their Viking-derived name as Strrrbk, vowels often disappearing from ‘northern’ accents. (When I lived in Nottingham in the 1990s, locals invariably spoke it as Nottn’m). There could have been rolling RRRs in the middle of the Starbuck name and possibly a glottal stop. There must surely have been some reason for a perplexed scribe at St Mary’s to split the name into two. He certainly didn’t splinter any of the other names under his pen.

If anyone reading this article knows examples in early written records of ‘split surnames’ or any that lost a first or second syllable, we’d very much like to hear from you. Please leave a Comment at the end of the post.

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Global and Connected

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been flattened against a wall by the History Police and they’re shouting at me: “Why didn’t you realise this???”

It began with an entry in Derby All Saints Churchwardens’ Accounts of February 1620/1, searching for any mention of Edward Starbuck (volume held at Derbys Archives, ref. D3372/86/1):

“Receaved of the Virginia Companie by the hands of Mr Gabriell Barber and Mr Robart Perkes at the instant sute of these Churchwardens, twelve pounds: 40s whereof to be bestowed on the Chauncell leades, and the rest of the Some at the discreation of Mr John Chappell and these Churchwardens … £12.00.”

Why on earth would the Virginia Company (financiers and founders of the Jamestown settlement) hand over £12 (surely worth hundreds of pounds in today’s money) to a Derby parish?

A bell and a lottery

My first call was to Derbysgen.io mailing list, where Edna in Ottawa prodded me to ask Google – and Google immediately stepped up to the plate. A link to the Derbyshire Archeological Journal of Jan 1879, p47-52, giving the history of Derby All Saints church bells, explained:

“BACHELERS Bell (until 1677/8, known as the Treble Bell): The history of this bell is most interesting, the particulars given in the Accounts being very complete and curious. It appears that the Virginia Company started a lottery in the parish, and that certain of the parishioners subscribed three guineas to be “adventured” in it; their enterprise was fortunately successful, as they won £12, £2 of which was given towards the repair of the Chancel leads, and the £10 towards the new treble bell… [the winners] magnanimously handed over the money towards the rehanging of the great bell.”

The article tells us the bell-founder was George Oldfield of Nottingham and gives full lists of the many benefactors who contributed to the total cost of £33 1s 6d for the new bell, the sixth for the church.

So far so good, but why and how did the Virginia Company choose to hold a lottery in Derby all Saints?

A possible link : Richard Croshawe of London

Google helped me again, with a link to Virginia Gleanings in England and the 1631 Will of Richard Croshawe of London, a fabulously wealthy merchant who needed 25 pages to make his bequests (a PCC Will also available on Ancestry). Among them were gifts to Derby area names and locations:

• For 20 poor boys born in Marton & Mackworth, co. Derby, for apprenticeing £5 each.
• To 20 poor ministers, 10 in London, & 10 within 15 miles of Derby, £10 each.
• To my kinsman Robert Carter of Osmaston, Derbys, after death of his mother, lands I bought of Mr Cregson & his wife, in fee.
• To Richard Carter & Thomas Carter sons of my sister Frances Carter of Osmaston, widow, & to the children of her dau’r Alice Leeper decd, £500.
• To my cousin Carter of Ashborne & his children £500.
• £100 to my poor kindred in Derbyshire.
• To town of Derby £1,250 for a preacher to read a weekly lecture every Friday in the forenoon in the parish church of All Hallows at £20 a year.
• £15 a year for 7 poor inhabitants of said town, £28 a year for poor of Marton & Mackworth.
• To said town of Derby £100 for householders of Marton & Mackworth.
• and many other people with unknown locations who could also be Derbyshire relatives.

His 3 executors included his nephew John Croshawe of Heanor, and he also left to his godson and namesake Richard Croshawe, son of the Puritan Divine Rev William Croshawe of Whitechapel, several houses “for his education in learning”. Rev William was born at Handsworth by Sheffield, Yorks – he was also a member of the Virginia Company.

Another look at the All Saints Churchwardens Accounts confirms Richard Croshawe’s generosity on the second page of the volume, listed with the other parish charities:

“Richard Crowshaw of London Esqr hath settled Fifteene pounds yearly for ever to bee distributed unto Seaven poor people on the Sabbath Day after Morning prayer. Every one of them Foure pence in Bread two pence in Cheese & Three pence in Money. Such Doale to begin at AllSaints & soe to goe through all the Parishes within this Burrough: And the Surplusage of the Fifteen pounds is to bee given to the Sexton or Clarke of Allsaints for theire paines.”

Richard wasn’t necessarily the direct link between the Virginia Company and Derby All Saints but he’s certainly a strong contender.

And so perhaps were plenty of other Derby businessfolk and gentry – including women – because the surprising story doesn’t stop there.

A slice of Virginia Company history

Another find provided by Google is a University of Manchester article titled Women Investors and the Virginia Company in the early 17^th Century, by Misha Ewen (2019). This gave me new and surprising information:

“In the early 17^th century the interests of investors in overseas trade and colonization were both global and connected. Investors in Virginia ‘adventured’ in multiple ‘New World’ colonial enterprises, in Newfoundland, New England, and Bermuda, and they invested in the East India Company, French, Irish, Levant, Merchant Adventurers, and Spanish companies…

          “In 1609, for the first time, the Virginia Company made its shares available for sale to a broader membership, which quickly increased its number of investors. Starting as an elite council in 1606, it now had hundreds of investors across England…

          “In 1612, with an expanded charter that included territory in Bermuda and authority to hold a lottery, the Virginia Company attracted a greater number of women investors.” The Countess of Derby being one.

The lotteries that the Virginia Company used for income over a number of years were held in numerous places, as this ‘Encyclopedia Virginia’ webpage shows:

“In 1616, the company instituted so-called running lotteries. Rather than build up to a final drawing, running lotteries allowed purchasers to immediately draw lots, which either indicated prizes or were blank. The running lotteries were operated by two company men, Gabriel Barbor and Lott Peere, who traveled from town to town and worked to create goodwill with local authorities by bestowing gifts… While the running lotteries were very profitable, they were plagued, like their predecessors, by claims that people were being cheated out of their money, and that the poor were only being made poorer. (In 1621), the King banned them.” So Derby All Saints only just made it!

This is what flattened me against the history wall – the revelation of how deep and broad the early 17^th century adventuring and colonising networks were.

By following the trail from a £12 receipt in Derby All Saints’ Churchwarden accounts to the Virginia Company and its investors, it’s revealed that provincial folk, including those of Derby, and not just Londoners would also have known of the Virginia Company, of ships, colonies and fresh opportunities opening in the Americas – helping to fund them via lottery tickets, enjoying the peals of a new, lottery-financed bell and joining the migrations themselves, as Edward Starbuck later did in the 1630s.

Additional note

For more information about Gabriel Barber, see:

• Pages 62-3 and 125 of The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans – The Last Phase of the Elizabethan Struggle with Spain, by Arthur Percival Newton (Yale University Press 1914, free online).
• Wikipedia’s article on the Somers Isles (Bermuda)

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God’s Outlaws

There are many myths about Separatists. That’s scarcely surprising when 37 of them sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 and formed America’s proudly celebrated colony at ‘Plymouth Rock’.

Recently, an article on the BBC website reported the estimated number of people worldwide who are direct descendants of those pilgrims. The number ranges from about 3 million to 30 million, give or take ‘pedigree collapse’! Either way, there are a lot of people alive with a premium interest in the Separatists, as well as those like me who enjoy the history.

I also enjoy debunking of those myths which are widely thought to be historically true but aren’t, so a recent book fully hits that spot: Journey to the Mayflower – God’s Outlaws & the Invention of Freedom, by Stephen Tomkins.

The blurb calls it a “rattling good read” and I couldn’t agree more. Stephen’s bio shows he’s a Dr in Theology and also a stand-up comedian and bass player in a covers band. That sense of humour peppers the book, with gently ironic comments on the detailed doings and publishings of these argumentative, contradictory and extremist religious radicals.

Hard to imagine how that could be a good read but Stephen’s style makes it a pleasure and even, at the end, introduces edge-of-the-seat tension! Will they make it across the Atlantic or not??

So what myths does Stephen debunk? Top examples…

1 A longer Separatist history than we might imagine, hung on a row about clothing: ‘Underground churches’ of people who rejected Elizabeth I’s religious settlement (established 1558) were meeting in London for half a century before the Mayflower. They courted trouble in many ways including failure to attend parish church, illegal ‘conventicles’ and unorthodox publications. Significant numbers went to the Netherlands for safety long before the Scrooby and Gainsborough groups did the same.

The main trigger for these original Separatists’ discontent was ‘vestments’. Queen Elizabeth liked the bling and finery of the old Catholic clergy and dictated that reformed ministers still wear frocks and caps. This one issue was too much for some purists to endure, painting themselves uncompromisingly into the Separatist corner. I find it  amusing to think that a foundational story of today’s US superpower began with an argument over clothing.

2 The Mayflower venture was not the first attempt to found a Separatist colony in the Americas: Really? Yes, definitely. In 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert had made the first attempt to found a permanent English colony (of Roman Catholics) in Newfoundland, with the approval of Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I’s top man. The plan fell through but it had established a precedent for official approval of colonisation as a means to rid England of her religious unwanted. So in 1597 when Separatist leaders, then imprisoned in London, petitioned for release towards another such expedition, Burghley agreed. In April that year, four ex-prisoners stepped onto two ships, the Hopewell and Chauncewell, and sailed with their captains and crews to the uninhabited Magdalen Islands, off the west of Newfoundland, with a view to settlement. If they found a viable site, other Separatists from London and the Netherlands would join them.

As Tomkins succinctly puts it however, they “found the Islands rather less uninhabited than expected.” Four French ships were already there (for fishing and hunting) along with hundreds of First Nation Canadians. The story that followed can only be described as farcical but, in summary, despite best efforts, the English attempts to stake their claim were unsuccessful.

It seems that this receives no attention in US history, with Plymouth Rock always claimed as the first Separatist venture in the Americas when a much earlier attempt at a Separatist colony surely warrants a footnote at least?

3 Reasons for the Mayflower trip are not what we think: No doubt enjoying some ruffled feathers by stating it this way, it’s Stephen’s considered and expert conclusion that:

‘There were a number of considerations that made the Separatists look to America in 1617, but the most commonly cited motive for the sailing of the Mayflower – to escape persecution and worship freely – was not one of them.’

It is true that these factors came into play later, before the actual sailing in 1620, but Stephen shows that in 1617 the Separatists were already enjoying religious freedom without persecution in the Netherlands, so he suggests their real motivation at the start was different and remained primary even when Dutch conditions became less comfortable.

It is a fact they were concerned by 1617 that their progeny were becoming Dutchified and less devoted to strict religious adherence, but most of all, Stephen suggests, the ‘holy vision’ of a journey to a promised land, escaping the ungodly, was the biggest motivation. It was a model inspired by the biblical Exodus of course, as it had been for Robert Browne in 1581, leading the first Elizabethan Separatists (‘Brownists’) from Norwich in England to Middelburg in the Netherlands. It’s a concept that later propelled Winthrop too, the Puritans’ future new home envisioned as the ‘City on a Hill’.

As always, documented history has far more nuances and complexities than myths allow. And I can definitely recommend ‘Journey to the Mayflower’ for full disclosure of the fascinating and unmythical nuances of Separatist history up to 1620.

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Don’t forget the Baptists

Have to admit I have been neglectful of Baptists when it comes to non-conformist targets for my family researches. Presbyterians and Independents/ Congregationalists yes, Quakers absolutely… Baptists, er nah not really. Mea culpa, for me they have definitely been the also-ran team in the 16^th and 17^th century Puritan league.

All of a sudden I’m finding out differently, thanks to a fresh look at Edward Starbuck and Nantucket.

Previously on the Starbuck quest…

Read my Starbuck blogposts to refresh on the background to Edward Starbuck, born about 1603, allegedly in Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire, who emigrated to Dover (now in New Hampshire) before 1638. In about 1660, he made a new home on the island of Nantucket, later famous for its Quaker whaling industry, spawning the story of Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and several films. Plus the coffee shops (no relation, the founders just liked the name).

Was Edward a Baptist?

Short answer is yes, he probably was, at least in 1648 and 1649 when accused by the oppressive Puritan theocracy of Massachusetts Bay of the “gross misdemeanour” of professing Anabaptism and (just as terrible) having long hair. ‘Professing’ in this context means going about saying that infant baptism is wrong, and only adult believers, capable of their own decisions on the matter, should be baptised. He was disrupting the peace of the Town.

The Puritans of Mass Bay totally disagreed with this ‘adult baptism only’ doctrine and were horrified at growing numbers of settlers becoming convinced of it. They cracked down on Baptists, and the similarly minded Quakers who began appearing in 1656, with more and more intolerance and cruelty. No wonder Edward and others like him felt a need to move away.

What do ‘Anabaptism’ and ‘Baptist’ mean?

For many centuries before the Reformation in Europe and Britain, almost every Christian believed in infant baptism as a major point of doctrine (a ‘canon’). Come the Reformation and the various types of Protestants who emerged mostly retained infant baptism as a vital part of their faiths. Even the Puritans – members of the Church of England keen to purge all vestiges of Catholicism from the church – were adamant about infant baptism.

But there were some who disagreed with the puritan attempt to purify the church of England. They were ‘Separatists’, believing a completely new church was the only way forward, founded on original Christian principles. They carried out their own religious meetings (illegal conventicles) and were penalised by the authorities so hard, they opted to set sail for more-tolerant Holland. These were the people often called Brownists, whose meetings at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire and Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, were to become famous after many of them arrived as Pilgrims on the Mayflower bound for Plymouth Rock (and the rest is history).

But even before the Pilgrim departure, there were constant debates amongst European Protestants in Holland about infant versus adult baptism. Those who believed in adult baptism ‘re-baptized’ themselves by immersion (as Jesus did with the aid of John the Baptist), believing that their baptism at birth, carried out by parents without their consent, was false. The term ‘Anabaptist’ apparently means, from the Greek, ‘re-baptizer’. However, it was soon generally applied to anyone who rejected infant baptism.

A second baptism, by the way, was a fundamental breach of sacred Christian belief, viewed with horror by Protestant conformists and Puritans.

In one of those annoying contradictions of history and language, the English Separatists of anabaptist persuasion took to calling themselves Baptists (to reflect their principle of adult or believer-baptism).

So Baptists were Anabaptists, what next

One of the English ex-pats in Holland was Thomas Helwys (apparently pronounced, amusingly, ‘Elvis’). Before the flight abroad, he lived at Broxtowe Hall in Bilborough,  Nottinghamshire, next Ilkeston over the border in Derbyshire. Thomas and his wife Joan Ashmore refused to conform with church rituals and payments, organised conventicles and preached their Separatist message around the area, joining in the meetings at Scrooby and Gainsborough. See Wikipedia and the story of Helwys of Broxtowe Hall for more details.

Thomas escaped with the Brownists to Holland but did not join them for the Mayflower journey to the new world. Instead in 1613, he and twelve other Baptists returned to London and established the first English Baptist Congregation in Spitalfields, East London. He was imprisoned of course, and died only three years later in 1616 aged about 40. But the Baptist movement developed, in spite of many persecutions and difficulties, and now, in the 21^st century, is one of the largest Christian denominations worldwide.

Minor players in England

Baptists were never as numerous in England as the other main non-conformists: Independents (known as Congregationalists), Presbyterians (who became Unitarians), Quakers and (later) the Methodists (other n/c churches are available of course). But, as I discover more about Edward Starbuck, his home environment in England and his associates in Dover and Nantucket, it’s becoming clear that ‘Anabaptism’ was a seriously important issue among Puritans, far bigger than we (genealogists) are likely to realise.

It leaves completely open the question: was Edward already a Baptist in England before he emigrated, or was he only persuaded towards Anabaptism after he left our shores? This could explain why baptisms for some of his children born in England are nowhere to be found. And it could easily be the main reason why Edward went to New England at all. Certainly, it now seems to be the most important issue that sent him, with his Baptist associates Thomas Macy and James Coffin, across the tricky waters to Nantucket.

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Hog’s Tush & Nantucket Starbucks

Tush is a nice slang word, slightly naughty but mostly affectionate or even admiring. I remember it being used quite freely in my homeland of north Buckinghamshire half a century ago but not much recently. Therefore, some younger people might not know its meaning. The word refers to a human backside, and I guess that nowadays we’d more usually say, in Britain, ‘bum’ or ‘arse’ or ‘bottom’. In America, ‘butt’, ‘fanny’, ‘booty’ or ‘ass’. There are plenty more synonyms available, suggesting quite a fascination among humans for the body part used to sit down with.

Some might feel this is unnecessary swearing but perfectly upright Nantucket Quakers used it to describe the root of a local plant which would be ground up for medicinal use. Hog’s Tush was their name for it. It’s documented. A root that resembled the backsides of a pig.

A US researcher of Quaker Starbucks on Nantucket has reached a dead end trying to establish the botanical name of the plant with the root called Hog’s Tush. Aha! some of you will say, remembering my Starbuck blogposts of a few years ago (this is the segue to the present post). Edward Starbuck migrated from Derbyshire and the watery confluence of Derwent, Erewash and Trent to New England by 1638. His son Nathaniel Starbuck ran a shop on Nantucket supplying dry goods and other necessities, including Hog’s Tush, which is listed in his paperwork.

Hopefully, someone reading this blog will also shout Aha! because they know what plant this is. If so, please do provide the botanical information in a comment below the post, so we and Starbucks everywhere can be relieved from the agony of not knowing.

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Discovered! (probably) – the grandmother of Edward Starbuck

Researchers into the origins and ancestry of Edward Starbuck of Nantucket (1603/4-1690) may be interested in a new discovery – it’s possible we’ve found his paternal granny … a much-widowed woman, born Elizabeth Pepper, who died in Bingham, Nottinghamshire in June 1611.

On 27 February 1603/4 at Derby All Saints church, an Edward Starbuck was baptised, son of Edward senior. This is thought to be the baptism of Nantucket Edward and is the starting point of the current quest for Edward’s origins.

In 1595, a “tuition bond” was granted by a probate court in Nottingham to Thomas Pepper, granting him responsibility for three people: another Thomas Pepper, Ann Thompson and Edward Starbuck. Legally, these were minors but as guardianship laws stood then, they could have been aged up to 25. 1595 is too early for this Edward Starbuck to be Nantucket Edward but could be his (supposed) father Edward senior.

Starbucks were disinclined to leave Wills in those days, probably because they weren’t very well off, so I widened the trawl by looking at Wills of people associated with them (this is the FAN club approach to research – Friends, Associates, Neighbours). Because of the tuition bond, Thompsons and Peppers seemed a good place to start. I found a partial Will at Nottinghamshire Archives for a Thomas Pepper of Bingham, dated 1595, evidently linked to the 1595 Tuition Bond. But the Will is only one line long, telling us nothing more than the testator’s name and location. But the location detail is critical – I could now look at other testators in Bingham.

Into my film-reader’s sights rolled the Will of John Worthington, written on 6 September 1600 and proved at Nottingham on 22 January 1600/1. He was buried at Bingham on 16 September 1600, only ten days after making his Will. Among his beneficiaries were three “sons-in-law”: Humfrey Bludworth and William and Edward Starbuck, plus his brother-in-law Thomas Pepper. His wife was named Elizabeth.

After restraining my arm from punching the air in Strangelove fashion – mentions of Starbucks in 16^th century documents are like hens’ teeth – I digested what this could mean. In 1600, the term “in-law” could refer to a number of relationships – but I started with the most obvious, ie. his wife was sister to Thomas Pepper and she’d had two previous marriages, to a Bludworth and a Starbuck, producing three children from those marriages. John called them sons-in-law where today we’d say stepchildren.

At Bunny in Notts, I found this marriage: 15 Jul 1588 – Edmund Blodworth, of Bingham, & Elizabeth Starbuckle, “of Breeson [Breaston], within the sucken [? Soke] of Sawley, [Derbyshire] married by lic. from thence”. I later found out that Bunny was a Pepper location in the 16th century.

Stitching together the various bits of information, we can suggest the following picture of John Worthington’s wife Elizabeth:

• She was probably born about 1550-60 and there is a baptism at Bunny on 22 Feb 1559/60 for an Elizabeth Pepper (no parents are named in Bunny baptisms until 1597).
• She had a brother Thomas Pepper and they were both children of Thomas Pepper senior of Bingham, who died in 1595
• She first married a man named Starbuck, probably about 1575-80 and probably in Sawley, Derbyshire (for which no parish registers exist until 1640). They had at least two children, William and Edward, before Mr Starbuck departed this life. In a 1566 rental for Sawley, there was a William Starbuck occupying a cottage in Long Eaton with a small amount of land. It’s possible he, or maybe a son of his, was Elizabeth’s husband.
• In 1588, still a resident of Breaston in Sawley parish, but marrying in her birthplace of Bunny, widow Elizabeth plighted her troth with Edmund Bludworth of Bingham. They had one child Humfrey before Edmund also departed this life, before 1598 when Bingham PRs begin. Sadly, young Humfrey also died soon after his father, buried in Bingham in November 1601
• Elizabeth married a third time to John Worthington of Bingham, who had also been married before, with several children named in his Will. It seems likely they had little time together as John died in September 1600.
• Four months later on 19 January 1600/1 in Bingham, thrice-widowed Elizabeth married a fourth time to Clement Clifford. It’s possible that in her early 40s, she had two more children, John and Thomas Clifford, born in Bingham in 1602 and 1604, both of whom died as babies
• On 8 June 1611, Elizabeth the wife of Clement Clifford was buried at Bingham. She was probably in her early fifties. In her modest half-century of life she had experienced a terrible tally of bereavement, losing three husbands and at least one child, probably three.

This picture of the life of Elizabeth Pepper-Starbuck-Bludworth-Worthington-Clifford needs additional verification of course, as does the deduction that her son Edward Starbuck was the father of Nantucket Edward. It is entirely possible that this Starbuck line is quite separate from Nantucket Edward’s. However, there are so few known Starbucks around in late 16^th century Notts and Derbyshire, and even fewer Edwards, that this deduction must be considered reasonable.

Documentary evidence and additional information about Peppers, Thompsons,  Bingham and Bunny can be requested by emailing me: celiarenshawATgmail.com.

 

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The unexpected dangers of genealogy

In my last article, I described my new hunt for the family roots of Edward Starbuck, first of the name in America. A few weeks ago, I took a trip to the Starbucky area of Derbys-Notts-Leics where he probably lived before departing these shores about 1635. I walked around Draycott then drove one of the little lanes alongside the Derwent, imagining Edward fishing or ferrying there. Suddenly, without warning this church appeared in front of me…

In the middle of nowhere, the ancient church of St Chad in Church Wilne. A Saxon church was here first. The present one has parts built in the 13^th century! I explored all round in the sunshine, sad but not surprised that I couldn’t go inside. If you fancy knowing more about it, try this link.

St Chad’s parish registers start in 1540 and in that year Agnes Starbuck was baptised. So there were probably Starbucks already there in Medieval times and they continued to appear in the register until the 1590s. Just one or two families who I could easily imagine walking the paths across the river plain from Draycott and Breaston a mile or so away, sometimes with a small baby for baptism, sometimes a happy procession for marriage, or a sad one bearing a coffin.

Luckily there was a car park opposite the church and I read signs telling me that just beyond some trees was a nature reserve, a former gravel pit, called St Chad’s Water, with walking paths all round. I took my lunch with me to a seat in the sun looking out at this prospect.

Perhaps if you zoom the picture, you can see a small white dot in the far distance (right up against the trees)? That is a swan and it clearly thought the whole of St Chad’s water was its job to police, even against a solitary human half a mile distant from its brood of smaller white dots which I saw darting about. That swan set off in a straight line towards me as I munched. I munched faster as it got closer. It never veered from its line, directly towards me. It was ten yards out when I got truly spooked. I’d heard of what swans could do. Grabbing my things, I ran up the path. Turning round briefly, I saw it, standing tall with its wings spread in the classic aggressive pose, right next to the bench where I’d been sitting.

Of course, it might just have wanted a share of my sandwich but I was taking no chances. Fearing it might follow me up the path I ran to my car and sat inside with a racing heart, before I began to laugh.

Now, encouraged by my Starbuck-descendant friend Keri-Lynn, I thought I ought to warn unsuspecting genealogists… there are more unlikely dangers out there in heaven and earth than we dream of.

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The Story of Starbuck

It would be a glorious understatement to say that the surname Starbuck is well-known. But the exact opposite was true when Edward Starbuck left our shores for New England in about 1635.

In his day Starbuck was one of the rarest names in England. The few there were clustered mainly in the wet and marshy area where the counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire meet. They were in Wilne, Draycot, Attenborough and Toton, by the rivers Derwent, Trent and Erewash. There were offshoots in London and Kent, where the men were Thames watermen, but the soggy East Midlands was the Starbuck homeland in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

The story of the surname is a kind of rags to riches one and from the start was associated with water. It comes from the village of Starbeck near Harrogate in Yorkshire, and that name was Norse for ‘Great River’.

Edward Starbuck, reputedly born about 1603/4 in Derby, settled for a while in the area that’s now New Hampshire, where he was appointed one of Dover settlement’s rivermen and fishers, responsible for providing a regular supply of fish to the colony. But, after a dispute with the Puritan authorities on the issue of infant baptism, he sailed with some companions the dangerous 18 miles to Nantucket island. Then he went back for his wife and children.

And so it was they became one of the first white families on the island. Edward’s daughter Mary Starbuck Coffin introduced Quakerism there and between them they created most of Nantucket’s Quaker whaling dynasties of the 18^th century.

In 2015, Natucketers starred in a blockbuster film ‘In the Heart of the Sea’, based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s book which investigated the sinking by a whale of the Nantucket whaler ‘Essex’ in 1820. Herman Melville famously based his 1851 book ‘Moby Dick’ on that event and he included a character named Starbuck as first mate of Captain Ahab’s ‘Pequod’ in the story.

Skip forward to 1971, Seattle, USA and the founders of a new coffee business are looking for an appealing brand name. They settle on Starbuck, remembering the name from Moby Dick, and the rest, as they say is ….. So the omnipresent Starbuck’s coffee shops have no relationship at all to Puritan Edward Starbuck and his Nantucket descendants, but the company has surely carried the endearing surname into world history.

The job I have volunteered for now in 2016 is to find good evidence that Nantucket Edward’s roots really were in Derby in 1603/4 and to find his ancestry. It seems likely he was the son of another Edward Starbuck and Anne Barnes who married in Nottingham in 1603. He may also have had a brother William (bap Derby 1607) and sister Elizabeth (bap Nottingham 1608). But that’s as far as the likelihoods go so far.

Judging by their surname’s history, the two Edwards probably travelled about the rivers and seas of Britain leaving few footprints for us to find four hundred years later on the banks and shores.

 

 

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