There are many separate families that may one day be merged. Two such families were merged into one last year, and with a little more evidence another two should merge shortly. To begin with, this is family 1 (one) to which I belong.
Earliest known ancestors: John Duncalf born before 1586 probably in the Middlewich, Cheshire, area. His son John, born 1604 in Middlewich married Elizabeth Wright at Middlewich in 1632. The family stayed in this area until William Duncalf, my direct ancestor, moved to Weaverham (1760s) and then to Kingsley in Frodsham parish a decade later. My family stayed in Kingsley until the 19th century.
A branch of this family moved to Witton in the 1740s and founded a family that now has descendants in Australia and Staffordshire.
Other branches can be found in Liverpool, Bolton, Wales, Sussex, Manchester and many other places in the UK including, of course, Cheshire. There are 933 people on this particular tree (July 2009).
Earliest known ancestor: Joseph Duncalf born about 1744. He married Ellen Mear at Warrington in 1762 and had a child baptised in Great Sankey near Warrington in 1763. He next turns up in the parish of Weaverham, Cheshire in 1786 and he died there in 1809. He married again in Weaverham to Mary Whitby in 1787. Mary gave birth to four daughters, three of them triplets who all survived. These daughters had many illegitimate children between them and descendants of the triplets and other members of this family now live in New Zealand, Australia, Burnley in Lancashire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Hertfordshire and East Yorkshire.
This small group with only 34 members is first found in Wharton near Davenham in Cheshire in 1800. The Davenham registers at this time follow the "Dade" system and give the tantalysing information that John, the father of William baptised in 1800, was the son of John and Nancy Duncalf of Liverpool. However, no trace of a John and Nancy has been found there yet. It seems likely that some early (18th century) members of Family 1 migrated to Liverpool and therefore Family 3 may become part of Family 1 in the future. There do not seem to be any male descendants of the family after the end of the 19th century, but a descendant through the female line lives near Bristol.
This large family, which adopted the Duncalfe spelling, originated in the area around Tong in Shropshire. There are 448 people on this tree at present. The earliest linked ancestor was a Richard Duncalf who married Isabel, their first child being baptised at Tong in 1652. This family left many wills, and an earlier family using the same forenames in the Albrighton area are probably related, but so far the link has not been found.
The family boasts a knight (Sir Roger Duncalfe), and a member of the Long Range Desert Group during WW2 (the late Roy Duncalfe). The early Tong family were coopers through many generations. Other descendants have dispersed throughout the UK and to other parts of the world, a large contingent living in Manitoba, Canada.
Family 6 (family 5 has been merged with family 1) currently has 272 members.
The earliest known ancestor is John Duncalf, son of Thomas, baptised at Prestbury, Cheshire in 1707. Thomas was "of Butley", a small hamlet near Prestbury, and the association with the Foxwist family is very probable.
After a sojourn in Allostock, the family lived in Congleton, and some descendents are still in the area. One branch lived in Macclesfield, and various sources show that they owned land in both Macclesfield and Congleton. Many of their gravestones survive in the churchyards of Congleton and Astbury.
Branches of this family are found in Derby, Salford and Kent during the 19th century. A John William Duncalf emigrated to New York with his wife Ruth in the 19th century but they appear to have had no descendants. John W died in Manhattan in 1904.
A small family that began in Staffordshire with William who married Mary Serjeant at Wolstanton in 1771.
Of the 251 members of this tree most have remained in Staffordshire, living in the Norton, Stanthorne, Hanley and Stoke on Trent area, working in the potteries and the coal mines. Many descendants still live in the area. There is, however, a branch in Australia.
It is very possible that this tree may merge with Family 6 as a sister of William Duncalf belonging to Family 6 married a man from Norton in the Moors! William is the right age to be the William mentioned first above. The names of the children are very similar in the same generation of the two families.
George Duncalf, the present head of this family, was born, according to all the census returns on which he appears, in Kingsley, Cheshire. On his two marriage certificates he names his father as George Nicholls, but his baptism has never been found and it is presumed that he was illegitimate. Search of the various sources for bastardy records have drawn a blank, but I have narrowed down his possible mother to two ladies, and he should eventually fit into either Family 1 or Family 2.
George appears in Alvanley, Cheshire in the 1841 census, a servant. By 1851 he has married Eleanor Proffitt and is living in Liverpool where he remained for the rest of his life. Many of the present day Liverpool Duncalfs are descended from George and Eleanor. George married secondly to a widow, whose previous husband is a member of Family 1.
Very few members of this family moved away from Liverpool, but there are Duncalfs from Family 8 in Kent, Yorkshire and the Manchester area.
This is the family most likely to be directly descended from the early Foxwist family as described above in connection with the coat of arms.
The earliest proven ancestor is Gowen Duncalf, born about 1590, father of another Gowen Duncalf born about 1613. The family can be put together in these early years through wills. There was at least one Gowen Duncalf in the family in every generation; a female descendant who was given Gowen as a third forename died in 1989.
This is also the family some of whose members became Duncufts. But to begin at the beginning.
The first Gowen lived in Butley, near Prestbury, in Cheshire. The family was well off and mobile, and different branches moved to Siddington, Hale in Bowdon parish and Ashton on Mersey. Their movements are recorded both in parish registers and in manorial records and leases. Another branch moved to Adlington, also in the parish of Prestbury.
Isaiah Duncalf, born at Hale and baptised at Bowdon in 1700 made the move to Oldham in Lancashire, and almost from the time of his move his name became Duncuft in the parish registers. This spelling has persisted down to the present day; descendants of this family live in the Stalybridge area.
This particular branch also boasts John Duncuft, MP for Oldham, who unfortunately died of cholera at his country house in Cheshire (Alvanley) in 1852, a few days after he was elected for the second time as member for Oldham.
Another large branch of this family moved into the Newton Heath and Bradford areas of Manchester in the 19th century. These, however, kept the Duncalf spelling. A few members of the Manchester families have been found as Duncliffe.
I must not forget to mention that there is a large family in Wisconsin, USA, that is descended from Family 9. Thomas Duncalf emigrated with his wife Ann (Jackson) and their children from Macclesfield to Wisconsin in 1865.
Family 11 (there is no family 10), perhaps the most interesting and diverse of all the families.
The baptism of Edward, son of Henry (born about 1560) and Joan is recorded in the Penkridge, Staffordshire parish register in 1589. In succeeding generations the favourite forenames are Henry, Abraham, Isaac and Simon. The last of the Duncalfs to live in Penkridge was Isaac who died there in 1816.
Several of the sons of Simon Duncalf (1645-1690) were sent to London where they were apprenticed to freemen belonging to, mainly, the Cutlers Company. These families remained in London, but there were few male descendants. One descendant is possibly a certain Henry Duncalf, an organist who also wrote a hymn that can be found today in the Methodist Hymnbook.
Another branch of this family went to live in Hitchin in Hertfordshire, where the third generation Isaac (1747-1819) was a stonemason. He married twice but had only one daughter illegitimately by quite another lady.
Francis, the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Duncalf, moved to Southwark where he and his descendants lived into the 20th century. Most were hatmakers, but there is also a Lighterman amongst the family. Many of the hatmakers emigrated to Australia in the 19th century, and there is to this day a building in Brisbane with "Duncalfe & Co" written across it. These Duncalfs continued the hatmaking and became tailors and outfitters.
The family boasts a bigamist, Abraham, who married his second wife in Birmingham in 1885 whilst his first wife was alive and well and living in London in 1891! Abraham died on a ship in the Suez Canal in 1887, whilst on his way to Australia, presumably to join his brothers and their families.
This family has only 37 members at present. Joseph, at the top of the tree, was born about 1690 and died in Macclesfield in 1763. The family always lived in or around Macclesfield, including places such as Bosley, Pott Shrigley and Rainow. The family had money, and two female descendants in Macclesfield were annuitants in the late 19th century.
The family also had connections with Butley which places them firmly within the possible ancestors of the Foxwist family.
Family 14 (there is no family 13) is a large family from Yorkshire, with several Roberts in each generation.
The earliest known ancestor of this family is John Duncalf who married Sarah Chambers in 1713 in Campsall, Yorkshire. Where John came from is as yet unknown.
His son, Robert, was orphaned by 1726, when he would have been 7 years old, and he next appears in the Easingwold area, where he was a flaxdresser. He married Mary Brown at Brafferton in 1752. He held land from the manor of Helperby. The family moved between several parishes during the 18th and 19th centuries - Easingwold, Raskelf, Brafferton, Sessay and Coxwold among them.
In the 19th century one of the Roberts emigrated to New York with his wife and children. Their descendants now live in Iowa and Minnesota.
Family 15 is another family from the Macclesfield area. James Duncalf, son of Thomas, was born in Pott Shrigley in 1721. The family lived in and around Butley, again giving them a connection with the old Foxwist family, but no connection can yet be proved.
Daniel, a descendant of James, married his wife Mary in India, where he was in the army, and his children were born in Bombay, Madras, Bangalore and Burma. Two of Daniel's sons also became soldiers.
This is another small family tree of only 132 members.
Family 16, or rather a collection of as yet unconnected families from Cornwall.
There has been some investigation into why Duncalfs appear in Cornwall in the 16th century, and these Duncalfs were well off. During Richard III's reign (1483-1485) there were uprisings in Cornwall and some loyal people from Cheshire and Lancashire were apparently transplanted to the south west. This is one possible explanation.
The earliest families are in St Neots and Gunwalloe on the Lizard Peninsula. The Gunwalloe family has been put together from wills and the few entries from Bishops Transcripts and parish registers that are available.
Popular names amongst the Cornwall Duncalfs are William, Christopher, Oliver and Hanibal.
The earliest families cannot at present be brought forward to meet some of the later ones that have been reconsituted. The later (18th-20th century) families are mainly in Penzance, Redruth and Mevagissy. Descendants of the Redruth family, from Thomas Duncalf and Alice Trestrail (married 1784) emigrated to Victoria, Australia and the USA, Michigan and Colorado.
Family 18 (there is no family 17) is from the Birmingham area. These Duncalfs became Duncuffs, and the name carries on today.
One large family that can be put together begins with a Charles Duncalf, who also appears as Charles Webb Duncan, and who was possibly the illegitimate son of a Susanna Duncalf. His descendants are known well into the 20th century. Popular names in this family are Charles, Samuel, Edward and Martin.
Some of this family moved to Middlesex during the 19th century, but most stayed in Birmingham.
Family 21 comes from Wednesbury in Staffordshire and the name is spelt here in many different ways - Duncalf, Duncoff, Duncuff, Duncomb, Duncum to give but a few of the variations. It has not been difficult to build the trees as they never seem to have moved out of Wednesbury.
At the top of the tree are Thomas and Mary Duncalf born about 1789 and 1791 respectively. Most of the information about this family has been gleaned from census returns. It has helped that some of the forenames are unusal - Daniel and Levi being good examples.
Family 22 is a collection of American families that I have not yet placed into the English trees. Among these are two Duncuffs that appear in the New York census for 1850. One was a grocer, and the other a watch case maker. Putting together the spelling of the name, Duncuff, and the latter occupation, it seems likely that they came from the Birmingham area. However, I have been unable to find these two in England. Perhaps they were brothers, the eldest, John, born about 1813 and the younger, Joseph, born about 1831.
A Duncalf family in Seattle has also been included in family 22, but is unlikely to be related to the Duncuffs mentioned above. It is more likely that the Seattle family is descended from a Canadian family that is, in turn, descended from a Yorkshire branch of the Duncalf family. However, there is scant proof of this connection at present.
Family 24. This family is built from some of the earliest records that I have found, including Heralds' Visitations and other early pedigrees, plus articles in newspapers, and the notes written by three well known Cheshire historians, Ormerod, Earwaker and Renaud. Many of these records do not agree with each other, and errors have been found in some of the pedigrees.
These pedigrees begin in the 14th century, with a James, or Thomas, and the story is told of how a marriage between a Duncalf and Elizabeth Foxwist, the heiress of her father, Vivian de Foxwist, brought the manor of Foxwist into Duncalf hands. The moated mound on which the old wooden manor stood is still visible near Hill Top Farm, not far from Prestbury in Cheshire. I have a transcript of the document whereby most of the Duncalf land in Foxwist and Butley was sold to Urian Legh of Adlington in 1609.
It has been impossible so far to research this very early family, but the 15th to 16th century information is easier to come by. It has been possible to follow Urian Duncalf (died 1597) from Cheshire to Ottringham in East Yorkshire, where his burial and those of his children are to be found. His will names many relatives, but unfortunately he calls most of the "kinsmen" and the relationships are not obvious.
Living with Urian was a certain John Duncalf who married Margaret Hall, the daughter of the Vicar of Patrington, in 1607, who was buried in that church in 1637. There is a brass plaque on the wall of Patrington church that bears the Duncalf coat of arms, as shown above, but with a difference. John must therefore be a descendant of the Foxwist family. John's descendants became aldermen of Hull and had numerous children. The last female descendant of the family married in London in 1753 and emigrated to America with her husband.
There is another set of pedigrees for another branch of this family. Although the exact relationship is not shown, the branch begins with the marriage of John Duncalf to Cicely Mather. Their son John (died 1592) married Margaret Ratcliffe and their son John married three times, the third time in Manchester Cathedral in 1596/7. His son Alexander lived near Moberley and the family can be traced for some generations from Mobberly into Lancashire and possibly to Wigan and Burnley. Favourite names in the family were Samuel and Ralph.
Welcome, welcome Ashley. I have been so lonely here for the past few days. Now which group below do you think you might belong to? Unfortunately they are bottom up - the first family is on page 2 of the comments!
My great grandmother Mary Duncalf Hicks was born in Redruth, Cornwall 1843. Her father Thomas Duncalf and mother Mary Wollcock also born in Redruth. I thiks and would enjoy further information on thier life
Perhaps it will be better if we use the Start Discussion for individual families. The title of the discussion will stay at the top of the page whereas the comments will disappear downwards and eventually off the page!
Louise, you are family 14 - see page two of the comments - I have briefly outlined each family in the comments. Just above here is the Discussion Forum where you can start a discussion by clicking on +StartDiscussion. I have already started one on Cornwall Families.
Anne Cole
There are many separate families that may one day be merged. Two such families were merged into one last year, and with a little more evidence another two should merge shortly. To begin with, this is family 1 (one) to which I belong.
Earliest known ancestors: John Duncalf born before 1586 probably in the Middlewich, Cheshire, area. His son John, born 1604 in Middlewich married Elizabeth Wright at Middlewich in 1632. The family stayed in this area until William Duncalf, my direct ancestor, moved to Weaverham (1760s) and then to Kingsley in Frodsham parish a decade later. My family stayed in Kingsley until the 19th century.
A branch of this family moved to Witton in the 1740s and founded a family that now has descendants in Australia and Staffordshire.
Other branches can be found in Liverpool, Bolton, Wales, Sussex, Manchester and many other places in the UK including, of course, Cheshire. There are 933 people on this particular tree (July 2009).
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
Earliest known ancestor: Joseph Duncalf born about 1744. He married Ellen Mear at Warrington in 1762 and had a child baptised in Great Sankey near Warrington in 1763. He next turns up in the parish of Weaverham, Cheshire in 1786 and he died there in 1809. He married again in Weaverham to Mary Whitby in 1787. Mary gave birth to four daughters, three of them triplets who all survived. These daughters had many illegitimate children between them and descendants of the triplets and other members of this family now live in New Zealand, Australia, Burnley in Lancashire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Hertfordshire and East Yorkshire.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
This small group with only 34 members is first found in Wharton near Davenham in Cheshire in 1800. The Davenham registers at this time follow the "Dade" system and give the tantalysing information that John, the father of William baptised in 1800, was the son of John and Nancy Duncalf of Liverpool. However, no trace of a John and Nancy has been found there yet. It seems likely that some early (18th century) members of Family 1 migrated to Liverpool and therefore Family 3 may become part of Family 1 in the future. There do not seem to be any male descendants of the family after the end of the 19th century, but a descendant through the female line lives near Bristol.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
This large family, which adopted the Duncalfe spelling, originated in the area around Tong in Shropshire. There are 448 people on this tree at present. The earliest linked ancestor was a Richard Duncalf who married Isabel, their first child being baptised at Tong in 1652. This family left many wills, and an earlier family using the same forenames in the Albrighton area are probably related, but so far the link has not been found.
The family boasts a knight (Sir Roger Duncalfe), and a member of the Long Range Desert Group during WW2 (the late Roy Duncalfe). The early Tong family were coopers through many generations. Other descendants have dispersed throughout the UK and to other parts of the world, a large contingent living in Manitoba, Canada.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
The earliest known ancestor is John Duncalf, son of Thomas, baptised at Prestbury, Cheshire in 1707. Thomas was "of Butley", a small hamlet near Prestbury, and the association with the Foxwist family is very probable.
After a sojourn in Allostock, the family lived in Congleton, and some descendents are still in the area. One branch lived in Macclesfield, and various sources show that they owned land in both Macclesfield and Congleton. Many of their gravestones survive in the churchyards of Congleton and Astbury.
Branches of this family are found in Derby, Salford and Kent during the 19th century. A John William Duncalf emigrated to New York with his wife Ruth in the 19th century but they appear to have had no descendants. John W died in Manhattan in 1904.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
A small family that began in Staffordshire with William who married Mary Serjeant at Wolstanton in 1771.
Of the 251 members of this tree most have remained in Staffordshire, living in the Norton, Stanthorne, Hanley and Stoke on Trent area, working in the potteries and the coal mines. Many descendants still live in the area. There is, however, a branch in Australia.
It is very possible that this tree may merge with Family 6 as a sister of William Duncalf belonging to Family 6 married a man from Norton in the Moors! William is the right age to be the William mentioned first above. The names of the children are very similar in the same generation of the two families.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
George Duncalf, the present head of this family, was born, according to all the census returns on which he appears, in Kingsley, Cheshire. On his two marriage certificates he names his father as George Nicholls, but his baptism has never been found and it is presumed that he was illegitimate. Search of the various sources for bastardy records have drawn a blank, but I have narrowed down his possible mother to two ladies, and he should eventually fit into either Family 1 or Family 2.
George appears in Alvanley, Cheshire in the 1841 census, a servant. By 1851 he has married Eleanor Proffitt and is living in Liverpool where he remained for the rest of his life. Many of the present day Liverpool Duncalfs are descended from George and Eleanor. George married secondly to a widow, whose previous husband is a member of Family 1.
Very few members of this family moved away from Liverpool, but there are Duncalfs from Family 8 in Kent, Yorkshire and the Manchester area.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
This is the family most likely to be directly descended from the early Foxwist family as described above in connection with the coat of arms.
The earliest proven ancestor is Gowen Duncalf, born about 1590, father of another Gowen Duncalf born about 1613. The family can be put together in these early years through wills. There was at least one Gowen Duncalf in the family in every generation; a female descendant who was given Gowen as a third forename died in 1989.
This is also the family some of whose members became Duncufts. But to begin at the beginning.
The first Gowen lived in Butley, near Prestbury, in Cheshire. The family was well off and mobile, and different branches moved to Siddington, Hale in Bowdon parish and Ashton on Mersey. Their movements are recorded both in parish registers and in manorial records and leases. Another branch moved to Adlington, also in the parish of Prestbury.
Isaiah Duncalf, born at Hale and baptised at Bowdon in 1700 made the move to Oldham in Lancashire, and almost from the time of his move his name became Duncuft in the parish registers. This spelling has persisted down to the present day; descendants of this family live in the Stalybridge area.
This particular branch also boasts John Duncuft, MP for Oldham, who unfortunately died of cholera at his country house in Cheshire (Alvanley) in 1852, a few days after he was elected for the second time as member for Oldham.
Another large branch of this family moved into the Newton Heath and Bradford areas of Manchester in the 19th century. These, however, kept the Duncalf spelling. A few members of the Manchester families have been found as Duncliffe.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
I must not forget to mention that there is a large family in Wisconsin, USA, that is descended from Family 9. Thomas Duncalf emigrated with his wife Ann (Jackson) and their children from Macclesfield to Wisconsin in 1865.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
The baptism of Edward, son of Henry (born about 1560) and Joan is recorded in the Penkridge, Staffordshire parish register in 1589. In succeeding generations the favourite forenames are Henry, Abraham, Isaac and Simon. The last of the Duncalfs to live in Penkridge was Isaac who died there in 1816.
Several of the sons of Simon Duncalf (1645-1690) were sent to London where they were apprenticed to freemen belonging to, mainly, the Cutlers Company. These families remained in London, but there were few male descendants. One descendant is possibly a certain Henry Duncalf, an organist who also wrote a hymn that can be found today in the Methodist Hymnbook.
Another branch of this family went to live in Hitchin in Hertfordshire, where the third generation Isaac (1747-1819) was a stonemason. He married twice but had only one daughter illegitimately by quite another lady.
Francis, the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Duncalf, moved to Southwark where he and his descendants lived into the 20th century. Most were hatmakers, but there is also a Lighterman amongst the family. Many of the hatmakers emigrated to Australia in the 19th century, and there is to this day a building in Brisbane with "Duncalfe & Co" written across it. These Duncalfs continued the hatmaking and became tailors and outfitters.
The family boasts a bigamist, Abraham, who married his second wife in Birmingham in 1885 whilst his first wife was alive and well and living in London in 1891! Abraham died on a ship in the Suez Canal in 1887, whilst on his way to Australia, presumably to join his brothers and their families.
This family now spell the name Duncalfe.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
This family has only 37 members at present. Joseph, at the top of the tree, was born about 1690 and died in Macclesfield in 1763. The family always lived in or around Macclesfield, including places such as Bosley, Pott Shrigley and Rainow. The family had money, and two female descendants in Macclesfield were annuitants in the late 19th century.
The family also had connections with Butley which places them firmly within the possible ancestors of the Foxwist family.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
The earliest known ancestor of this family is John Duncalf who married Sarah Chambers in 1713 in Campsall, Yorkshire. Where John came from is as yet unknown.
His son, Robert, was orphaned by 1726, when he would have been 7 years old, and he next appears in the Easingwold area, where he was a flaxdresser. He married Mary Brown at Brafferton in 1752. He held land from the manor of Helperby. The family moved between several parishes during the 18th and 19th centuries - Easingwold, Raskelf, Brafferton, Sessay and Coxwold among them.
In the 19th century one of the Roberts emigrated to New York with his wife and children. Their descendants now live in Iowa and Minnesota.
The family tree holds 441 people.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
Daniel, a descendant of James, married his wife Mary in India, where he was in the army, and his children were born in Bombay, Madras, Bangalore and Burma. Two of Daniel's sons also became soldiers.
This is another small family tree of only 132 members.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
There has been some investigation into why Duncalfs appear in Cornwall in the 16th century, and these Duncalfs were well off. During Richard III's reign (1483-1485) there were uprisings in Cornwall and some loyal people from Cheshire and Lancashire were apparently transplanted to the south west. This is one possible explanation.
The earliest families are in St Neots and Gunwalloe on the Lizard Peninsula. The Gunwalloe family has been put together from wills and the few entries from Bishops Transcripts and parish registers that are available.
Popular names amongst the Cornwall Duncalfs are William, Christopher, Oliver and Hanibal.
The earliest families cannot at present be brought forward to meet some of the later ones that have been reconsituted. The later (18th-20th century) families are mainly in Penzance, Redruth and Mevagissy. Descendants of the Redruth family, from Thomas Duncalf and Alice Trestrail (married 1784) emigrated to Victoria, Australia and the USA, Michigan and Colorado.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
One large family that can be put together begins with a Charles Duncalf, who also appears as Charles Webb Duncan, and who was possibly the illegitimate son of a Susanna Duncalf. His descendants are known well into the 20th century. Popular names in this family are Charles, Samuel, Edward and Martin.
Some of this family moved to Middlesex during the 19th century, but most stayed in Birmingham.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
At the top of the tree are Thomas and Mary Duncalf born about 1789 and 1791 respectively. Most of the information about this family has been gleaned from census returns. It has helped that some of the forenames are unusal - Daniel and Levi being good examples.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
A Duncalf family in Seattle has also been included in family 22, but is unlikely to be related to the Duncuffs mentioned above. It is more likely that the Seattle family is descended from a Canadian family that is, in turn, descended from a Yorkshire branch of the Duncalf family. However, there is scant proof of this connection at present.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
These pedigrees begin in the 14th century, with a James, or Thomas, and the story is told of how a marriage between a Duncalf and Elizabeth Foxwist, the heiress of her father, Vivian de Foxwist, brought the manor of Foxwist into Duncalf hands. The moated mound on which the old wooden manor stood is still visible near Hill Top Farm, not far from Prestbury in Cheshire. I have a transcript of the document whereby most of the Duncalf land in Foxwist and Butley was sold to Urian Legh of Adlington in 1609.
It has been impossible so far to research this very early family, but the 15th to 16th century information is easier to come by. It has been possible to follow Urian Duncalf (died 1597) from Cheshire to Ottringham in East Yorkshire, where his burial and those of his children are to be found. His will names many relatives, but unfortunately he calls most of the "kinsmen" and the relationships are not obvious.
Living with Urian was a certain John Duncalf who married Margaret Hall, the daughter of the Vicar of Patrington, in 1607, who was buried in that church in 1637. There is a brass plaque on the wall of Patrington church that bears the Duncalf coat of arms, as shown above, but with a difference. John must therefore be a descendant of the Foxwist family. John's descendants became aldermen of Hull and had numerous children. The last female descendant of the family married in London in 1753 and emigrated to America with her husband.
There is another set of pedigrees for another branch of this family. Although the exact relationship is not shown, the branch begins with the marriage of John Duncalf to Cicely Mather. Their son John (died 1592) married Margaret Ratcliffe and their son John married three times, the third time in Manchester Cathedral in 1596/7. His son Alexander lived near Moberley and the family can be traced for some generations from Mobberly into Lancashire and possibly to Wigan and Burnley. Favourite names in the family were Samuel and Ralph.
Jul 18, 2009
Anne Cole
Jul 19, 2009
Anne Cole
Jul 19, 2009
Anne Cole
Jul 20, 2009
Dick Richards
Jul 20, 2009
Anne Cole
Jul 20, 2009
louise duncalf
Jul 25, 2009
Anne Cole
Why not start a discussion on your US/Yorkshire Duncalf line?
Jul 26, 2009
louise duncalf
Jul 26, 2009
Anne Cole
Jul 27, 2009