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Fairholm & Fairholme Family Trees Worldwide
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Derby

Radford

Basford

Gedling 1

Gedling 2

Southwell 1

Southwell 2

Burton Joyce

English branches - overview

This page sets out what we have found about the early history of the Fairholm and Fairholme families in England. It also describes how the more recent branches may fit together.

Several Scottish families moved South to England and at least one English family moved North to Scotland. We use the terms English and Scottish to refer to the origins of branches rather than their current locations. We have not yet found any evidence for a common ancestry between the English and Scottish branches.

First recorded use of surname

Photo by Mikhail Pavstyuk - unsplash

The earliest recorded use of the surname that we have found so far is Johannes and Magota ffayrhome who lived at Carleton, near Stayncrosse, in what is now South Yorkshire. They are entered in the Yorkshire Poll Tax Records for 1379. However, it cannot be assumed that they are very distant ancestors because Yorkshire surnames were particularly transitory and not necessarily hereditary. The idea of hereditary names took much longer to establish in the north than the south.

The next use of the name is Nicolas Fairholme, son of Nicolas. He was christened on 28 February 1697 at Haydon Bridge, Northumberland. They lived at the hamlet of Lipwood. The same reservations about surames apply and, of course, this could be a stray Scotsman!

First recorded hereditary use of surname

The next use of the name is by George and Anne Fairhome and their daughters Elizabeth, Anne and Sarah and another couple, William and Elizabeth Fairhome. It is possible that William and George Fairhome were brothers, but we have not yet been able to confirm this. They were all living in the parish of Lowdham, Nottinghamshire from at least 1704. Lowdham is a small village on the edge of the Trent valley, about 11.5 kilometres in a straight line from the centre of Nottingham. In 1801 the population of the village was 553. It probably had not changed much over the previous hundred years. The parish also includes the villages of Gunthorpe and Caythorpe. Both families are recorded as being paupers.

William and Elizabeth represent the start of the first hereditary use of the surnames which we have found: their son John Fairhome who married Sarah, followed by John and Sarah's children, Sarah Fareholme and George Farehome. We suspect that John and Sarah Fairhome had four more children, but with the recorded surname of Fairin including a son, William. Further research may resolve this. If they did then it seems that they could be the ancestors of all the English Fairholm and Fairholme branches. We are continuing to investigate this.

Shelford & late 1700s & early 1800s

William Fairholm from Shelford married Ann Miller from Upper Broughton, Nottinghamshire in 1769 at the parish church in Upper Broughton. The marriage register still exists with their entry in it. William is the ancestor of many of today's Fairholms and Fairholmes, including our family, and he is, possibly, the William Fairin born at Lowdham. William and Ann lived at Shelford in the mid-1700s. Shelford is a very small village on the southern edge of the Trent. They had four sons, but only three survived to adulthood.

In the late 1700s / early 1800s eight distinct families had emerged in Nottinghamshire. For ease of identification we have named them after the places in which they lived.

Derby - our family
Basford
Gedling 2
Radford

Southwell 1
Southwell 2
Gedling 1
Burton Joyce

More detail on all of the branches can be found by using the links on the grey tool bar at the top of the page. For further information or to find out which branch you belong to please email us at queries@fairholmfamilytrees.info.

In the list above, the four branches in red are all descended from William and Ann Fairholm.

Of their surviving sons:

John	He may be the head of the Gedling 1 branch.
Gervas	He moved to Gedling and married Ruth Sivians. They had five children. One son, Joseph, is the head of the Gedling 2 branch and another son, John, is the head of the Basford branch.
Joseph	He moved to Nottingham and married Ann Smith at Nottingham St. Mary. They had five children including Benjamin, who is the head of the Radford branch, and John, who is the head of the Derby branch.

Marriage

Reproduced with the permission of the Nottinghamshire Archives. Reference PR 15,367

This is the marriage entry for William Fairholm and Ann Miller for 03 June 1769 in the parish records of Upper Broughton, Ann Miller's home village.

William has made his mark with an 'X'. Ann's ability to sign her name is interesting. Literacy amongst woman was generally lower than amongst men, although it did vary widely. For example, in 1760, literacy for men in parts of Yorkshire was 64%, but for women 39%. William and Ann both grew up in small villages and so we could expect them to have had similar childhoods, but perhaps Ann had a different family background in which she was encouraged to learn. Maybe she "married beneath herself".

Master tree

Simple tree

The first tree shows how all eight English branches may fit together in a simple format showing only the male lines.

The second tree is a fuller version - added 01.01.2019.

Detailed tree

Click on the image to open a pdf.

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Later

Gervas' son, Joseph, remained in Gedling. His other son, John, had moved to Basford by 1840.

Joseph and Ann moved out of Nottingham to New Radford, just to the West of the city. Nottingham eventually expanded to absorb the smaller settlement. Descendents of their son, Benjamin, lived or worked in New Radford for over one hundred years. Joseph's great grandson - also called Joseph - was operating his coal dealing business from Windmill Street in 1936. Joseph and Ann's other son, John, moved to Derby - possibly the first of the family to move permanently out of Nottinghamshire. Most family members stayed in Nottinghamshire until the First World War, with a few excetions as shown on the map opposite. Sometimes they moved on again, and the family that moved to London returned to Nottingham a few years later. Since 1914 the migration across England has continued and is now too completed to map easily.