The Wider Knapman Family. An account of all known instances of families and individuals named Knapman (or close variants of the name) from about 1650 to 1850, and their origins, where known. Compiled by David Knapman © May 2015 Contents 1 Introduction 2 2 Knapmans from the 15th to the mid-17th Centuries 5 3 Marriages from 1650 to 1699 15 4 Marriages from 1700 to 1753 41 5 Marriages from 1754 to 1774 59 6 Marriages from 1775 to 1799 77 7 Marriages from 1800 to 1819 100 8 Marriages from 1820 to 1835 138 9 Marriages from 1836 to 1850 178 To the reader: This document has evolved out of an earlier study that I made of all of the Knapmans that I could find who were alive at the time of the 1841 census, and contains almost all of the information in that earlier document, plus a great deal more. If you find something here which is of interest, you are welcome to quote from this document, or to make reasonable use of it for your own personal researches, but it would be appreciated if you would acknowledge the source where appropriate. Please be aware that this is a ‘live’ document, and is sure to contain mistakes. As and when I find or receive better information I will add to and/or correct it. This raises two points: if you find an error or omission, please let me know; and if you propose to use the information contained here at some future point, it may be worth checking back with me to see whether the information you propose to use has subsequently been corrected or improved. Although I do not propose to add further chapters with post-1851 marriages involving Knapman bridegrooms, I have tried to provide a reasonable flavour of ‘what happened next’ within the current text, which provides at least some details of most of the relevant marriages contracted in England and Wales prior to about 1880. I would be pleased in future to add further outline information on how families of 21st century Knapmans can be traced back to any of the families identified here. So if you find your ancestors, and the Knapman surname survives via their / your family, please let me know. One other document that can be made available on request covers the descendants of William Knapman of Throwleigh over the period from 1500 to about 1650 (i.e. up to the start of this document). Other than that, I do not have any further information to offer regarding very early Knapman families: whatever else I have is included here. David Knapman, May 2015 (david.j.knapman @ btinternet.com) DNA Testing In February 2013 I added my Y-DNA to the Devon surname project (see familytreedna/public/Devon for more information), and would encourage other male Knapmans to consider doing the same. It is not cheap, but for families whose roots cannot be traced back before the late 18th century it offers a way of discovering whether your Knapman family really is related to others, provided that someone from those other branches also participates. If you would like some further information to enable you to come to a slightly more informed decision, send me an Email. Chapter 1: Introduction This document The main purpose of this document is to provide information on all of the marriages that I have managed to find, either directly or by inference, which involved bridegrooms called Knapman or Napman, and which took place between 1650 and the census of 1851. These marriages can be found, arranged in date order, in Chapters 3 to 9. Chapters 1 and 2 provide an introduction and cover the period before 1650, and in doing so provide background information on several of the families which appear in Chapter 3, and which then thread their various ways through the subsequent chapters. The year that I have chosen as my starting point (1650) was towards the end of the Civil War: Charles I had been executed in 1649, and Cromwell’s final victory was at Worcester in 1651. Coincidentally it also marks the point by which some of the better documented early branches of the Knapman family were dying out (at least as far as the male line, and therefore the surname Knapman, is concerned). My end point1 (the 1851 census) represents the point at which modern records become generally more reliable. Apart from the 1851 census returns themselves, which are notably more informative than those from 1841, the system requiring the formal registration of births, marriages and deaths in England had bedded in and become almost universal by 1851 (in contrast to the first few years after 1837, when some baptisms and burials were still not registered, though they may, of course, often be found in parish registers). The marriages are arranged in a series of chapters, each of which starts with some contextual information regarding the main sources used in the chapter concerned, and a brief reference to some of the main events which shaped the relevant time period. All references to families use the format ‘Family 1699, John & Mary’, and each family has a title line in that same format. If the date of the marriage has not (yet) been found, then it would be ‘Family c.1699, John & Mary’, with the approximate year generally being 12 months before the baptism of the couple’s first known child. Within any one year, marriages on known dates are sorted before those on estimated ones. In Chapter 9, where the main source is the official marriage register and the date is not known but the quarter is (e.g. 2Q1845), dates known by quarter are sorted after those where the full date is known. This document has emerged from an earlier one that I produced which looked at everyone recorded as Knapman or Napman on the 1841 census returns. That document was organised around families, with different generations of each distinct family line being grouped together. The advantage of that approach is that it is easier to follow a single family; the disadvantage is that it can be quite difficult to find the right place when one has to hunt through so many families. Having experimented with a variety of approaches in other ‘one-name studies’2 I have concluded that the layout that I have used here deals better than any other with uncertainty, because where it is unclear whether a particular individual comes from Family A or Family B that can be clearly stated, without having to allocate the individual and his subsequent descendants to one physical tree rather than the other. Indeed if new evidence emerges that disproves an inter-generational link that had been accepted, and ‘re-allocates’ that indivudual and his descendants to a different ancestor, the changes that are required in order to accommodate that better and newer information are very simple. Use of colour Notwithstanding what is said in the previous paragraph, I have used colour (applied to the family title lines) to facilitate the process of tracking the more complex families through the full 200-year period covered. 1 In reality I have covered a further 150 or so marriages which took place after the 1851 census, because within Chapters 7, 8 and 9 where a Knapman son did marry later, I have provided such information as I have been able to assemble about these marriages and their offspring. These details are, inevitably, incomplete. 2 I use the term ‘one-name studies’ loosely. I have not registered any of them (the others covering the surnames Trick, Webber, Stote and Blandy with varying degrees of geographical focus), but that is in effect what they are. Knapman families, 1650 to 1850. Page 1. By no means every family has a colour allocated to it. In particular those that only last a generation or two from the point where they first appear, whether as a consequence of not having children, or by being ‘daughtered out’, do not have colours. Separately, I have used yellow and blue highlighting, generally within family trees but occasionally in the accompanying text, to indicate those individuals who can be found on the 1841 census (primarily as indexed and transcribed by ancestry.co.uk). Yellow means that the individual can be found, while blue means that although they cannot be found on the census returns, later evidence can be found which proves that they were alive in 1841. The origins of the name Knapman As a child I was told that the name Knapman was associated with flint knapping (which involved the making of arrow and spear points, and subsequently the supply of strikers for flintlock firearms and the production of building materials). Knapping was an important activity in flint bearing locations, such as Brandon in Suffolk, and some parts of Norfolk and Sussex. However, the 1841 census shows that almost 88% of the 471 Knapmans (or close variants of the name) in Great Britain at that time were living in Devon, while there were no Knapmans in Suffolk or Sussex, and just one family group in Norfolk, who had brought the name from Devon. At that time there were also 112 persons called Knapper in Britain, 91 of them in Staffordshire; 1,051 called Knapp (over half of them in Middlesex, Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Hampshire); and 564 called Napper (two thirds of them in Sussex, Somerset and Middlesex). If anyone took their name from knapping, these seem to me to be stronger candidates. If the name does not come from flint knapping, the most likely derivation seems to be the term knap which is widely used in Devon to signify a hill, or the crest of a hill, and which has its origins in the Old English word cnæpp meaning top, and possibly the Old Norse word knappr meaning knob.