|
|
James Brock Genealogy Site |
|
|||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
Our Background Page |
|||||||||
|
Our Background |
|||||||||
|
Many surprises have popped up on the way, I suppose like many people, the reality was very different from |
|||||||||
| the stories I was told as a child. I would imagine that family embroidery is common to most families as reality | |||||||||
| sometimes seems a little dull. | |||||||||
| Finding out that my very dignified paternal grandmother was born in a workhouse was quite a surprise, as | |||||||||
| you would never guess that she started life with that sort of stigma. | |||||||||
| Reputations were very important in those days, as I am finding out! The amount of time that children were | |||||||||
| claimed by parents as their own, when in reality they were actually grandparents is commonplace, to save | |||||||||
|
the daughter's and more importantly, the families reputation. |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
| Then I found out that my maternal grandfather had been using the wrong surname for over | |||||||||
| 60 years!! | |||||||||
| He was born the wrong side of the blanket, along with his brother, then his mother married | |||||||||
|
and had two more children, and everyone naturally assumed her married surname belonged |
|||||||||
| to the whole family! | |||||||||
| I clearly remember my rather eccentric aunt telling me that some of our ancestors were called | |||||||||
| Seaborne. The reason being that a young boy was washed up in Bristol Harbour and the authorities gave | |||||||||
| him the surname 'Borne from the sea therefore Seaborne'. A very romantic tale but nothing could be further | |||||||||
| from the truth, as they were mostly coopers and innkeepers, originating from Uley in Gloucestershire, but a | |||||||||
| sweet tale nevertheless. | |||||||||
| Brock is a Surname of ancient Norman origin. The Name arrived in England with the Norman conquest of | |||||||||
| 1066 with Henry de Broc, who was granted lands and castle by the King, Henry II. | |||||||||
| The Broc family had estates in Essex granted after the conquest, which included a fine castle, farms and | |||||||||
| forests. The name however, derives from the families former residence in Broc, in the area of Anjou in | |||||||||
| France. | |||||||||
| Sir Ranulph de Broc was one of the four knights who, in 1170, responded to the best known incitement to | |||||||||
| murder in history! Henry II's despairing cry; "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" | |||||||||
| Shortly afterwards, Thomas à Becket was murdered with considerable brutality inside Canterbury | |||||||||
| Cathedral. | |||||||||
|
The Family motto on the Coat of Arms translates as "Courage grows stronger at the wound". |
|||||||||
