Re: Avent/Avant name origin
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In reply to:
Re: Avent/Avant name origin
Tami Haggerton 4/01/05
Looks like the page is gone. More of Mr. Coldham's report can be found in David A. Avant Jr.'s book, "Florida Pioneers and their AL, GA, Carolina, MD & VA Ancestors". Here's an excerpt from that I found on another site:
"It has been established through a detailed study of the sources that the Avants/Avents were mainly established from at least 1541 in Plympton, St. Mary, Devon, on which date John Avent was a witness at the Inquisition Post Mortem of Robert Brett. At later dates the Avents are found in Wembury, Brixton, Modbury, and other Devon parishes and in Cornwall.
The first mention of an Avent in the London area occurs in the Westminster Denization Rolls of 36 Henry VIII where a Raynt Avent, born in Normandy, is listed as living in Westminster with a wife and children in 1544. The Avent name occurs spasmodically in a number of London parish registers after that date but, for the most part, it seems likely that these were emigrants from Devon and not London born. The first such after Raynt Avent (of whose family no further information has been forthcoming) is George Avent, a waterman, against whom a suit was brought by the citizens of Gravesend, Kent (will, p. 51). There is no evidence of any Avent migration from London to the West Country and such a move would seem improbable. It seems more likely that the Devon and Cornwall family took its name from a local village, possibly Advent in Cornwall. There is also no evidence to suggest that any of the Avents settled in England were of Huguenot extraction. That the separate families of Devon and Cornwall were closely related can be demonstrated from the fragmentary remains of an early legal document."