Late last year (2014), I decided to take up a discounted offer to have a DNA test undertaken, hoping it would confirm (one way or another) whether my branch of the Elsegood family was actually descended from Anglo-Saxon or Danish Viking roots. In the event, it didn’t really tie the question up, but it did reveal that my branch was descended from the Chauci, a tribe/clan which lived on the coast of the North Sea just east of the River Weser in what is now Northern Germany. In the time of Tacitus (the Roman whose writings were the first trustworthy history), the Chauci were at the mouth of the River Weser. Members of that tribe/clan probably arrived in Britain with the so-called Anglo-Saxon invasions and settlements of the 4th to the 6th centuries AD.
However, not all the members of the Chauci would have left their ancestral area at the same time, and all tribes at that time were transient, following their fishing or hunting grounds seasonally. The Chausi were described (somewhat disparagingly) by Tacitus as “a miserable people who eked a dismal living on the edges of the North Sea”, their diet being principally fish and vegetables. They were one of the Germanic tribes (living in the area the Romans hadn’t conquered, because the people were just too savage!) and the Romans called that area Germania. It incorporated what is now Germany, also the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Southern Norway, the Czech Republic and most of Poland. So, it’s just as plausible that some of them lived rather further north of the Weser and on the peninsula we now recognise as Denmark, and came across to the UK in the time of the Danish invasions commencing with their raids in the 8th Century.
The facts that we can ascertain include:
- from the 11th Century (the earliest recorded Elsegood names in England), they all lived in East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk);
- until transportation systems made travel easier (by rail, commencing around 1850) it was rare for ‘ordinary people’ (including almost all the Elsegood family members in those times, who were mainly agricultural labourers, and the occasional licensee) to travel far;
- even into the 20th Century, it was mainly the First World War which took men from their home villages and introduced them to places farther afield;
- from the Parish Registers, we can confirm that until late into the 19th Century most of the Elsegood names were to be found in Norfolk and Suffolk, some in Kent (in and around the Medway towns) and some in London;
- all these areas were originally part of the Danelaw, in which Danish Viking law prevailed and the indigenous Britons and the (recently-arrived) Anglo-Saxons had to pay taxes and homage to their Danish rulers (Svegn, Cnut [Canute], Edward “the Confessor”, and a succession of Haralds [Harold 1 and 2]), until the arrival of William “the Conqueror” … who was originally Norwegian, of course, before his father subdued the French and ruled Normandy, and who considered that his cousin, Harold, had ‘stolen’ the crown of England. So, he took it back!
What I can vouch for is that the first direct ancestor I can trace in my tree was Thomas Elsegood, born/baptised in Diss (on the Norfolk/Suffolk boundary) in 1708. [I haven’t yet traced his parentage.] My own grandfather was born and lived with his parents and siblings in Brome, Suffolk. His two older brothers moved to York when the railway came to Stowmarket and Bury St. Edmunds. My grandfather, Ben, followed then in 1891 or 1892, when he was 12, induced to go to York for the better prospects of work. He arrived at York Station with a few pennies in his pocket – not enough for the tram and something to eat – so he was told to follow the tram lines until they forked to the left (at Skeldergate Bridge) and then walk along Fulford Road to where his brothers were living. He found employment as a Gardener, but joined the Army (apparently exaggerating his age) to fight in the South African War [Boer War]. He won medals in Cape Colony and was still a Reservist when the First World War broke out, and he was one if the first to join the Regular Army in France, on 10 October 1914. Thankfully, he also survived and returned from that conflict.
So, my paternal line – far beyond the point I can trace it back to – was based in East Anglia and that’s where most of my current research is focused. The chances are that your line is to the same root of the same tree – but haven’t we got EVERYWHERE since railways, ships and (latterly) aircraft enabled us to spread around the globe? If you can add to this story, I’d love to hear from you and add some further information to this blog.
elsegoodfamily 