Re: Cheshire Eatons - Etons of Eaton manor
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In reply to:
Cheshire Eatons - Etons of Eaton manor
Joe Cochoit 10/17/01
Joe:
Alan has suggested that I post what he sent to me some months ago. Actually, I did, but perhaps it was overlooked in the mix of other information.
I will have to search my files for Pulford references, but it is ironic that just this evening, even before I "tuned in" here, I was asking my wife what she recalled about Pulford. This is a "great minfds" situation if there ever was one, although I dare not include myself in that company.
In any event, with regard to Pulford, My files are not labelled that way and there are scores and scores that I will have to pore through, but I will see what I have and post it here.
As to the Stone issue, which I know that I posted previously in connection with Joan of Stockport aka Joan De Eaton or Eton, and who is NOT related to us, it seems, here is the bulk of what Alan sent to me in an e-mail that covered many subjects, including the Eatons'possible, even probably, connection with the Earls of Chester as determined by the presence of wheat sheaths in the arms of families intermarries with ours.
But, I digress.Here is Alan's informed position on Stone, alias Eaton. I think that you will find point four hilarious. I did.
1) Sir Nicholas de, of Warwickshire, who is recorded as "Eton" is NOT Eton but Stone.
2) Therefore, any Warwickshire Eton...needs to be doubly checked, out of simple logical expediency.
3) Which implies that there may be nothing out of the ordinary about Warwickshire, and that every Eton, in any spelling, who comes from a strange place (i.e. not adjacent to the North-West Midland bunch), should be looked at more than once.Local orthography changes.The Cheshire Stone Etone, who married into the Barony of Stockport, and thence the Warrens as well as nearly everybody else, may have been merely opportunistic; or too idle to change the Cestrians' mishearing; or, always to be held at the front of the mind of every genealogist, could not read or write.
4) The rest of the passage is in a way now redundant, in the wake of my sustained rantings.It was my barrage, illustrated by example, [the flow chart model], of the importance of heraldry in detail, showing how I had found the Stockport Stone Etone because, and only because, his coat was "wrong"; i.e. not anywhere near the group of armorial bearings that I have amassed in my synaptic database and not bothered you with, except for the necessary; yet . . . . . .The important remark is where I felt able to say that "this heraldry alone, more or less wraps thing up for you."Much of what I've said since has been built on that foundation: the evidence produced by heraldry that you are i) of the ruthless North-West Mafia, and ii) in one strand at least, FitzAlan.My other point that you probably are also and equally every swineherd, peasant, Welsh outlaw and serf to have come out of that area until your ancestors took ship for foreign parts is one that holds, but can't be followed through, since you need to be of powerful lineage for there to be any pictorial and/or written evidence of your existence.So your ignoble ancestors reside only in the mouth swabs to be taken from you for real DNA analysis.
Then, in support of this premise, I received the following, which deals with how semi-literate scribes of the day confused Etone with Stone and, Stone seemed to like the name so much, he kept it. Read the following from Alan as well:
You will see how easy it would have been then for Stone to be indistinguishable (except by the original writer) from Etone.Also it would explain why, in one Cheshire case I sent you a couple of weeks ago, I list 'Caton alias Eaton'.
So the Warwickshire Stone who came to Cheshire and was taken for an Etone may not have been trying to pull a fast one.He would have found the tonality of the new speech around him barbaric, and he was of a class that did not expect to read or to write.They hired clerks to do that for them.It is this attitude towards literacy that is so foreign to us that we have to keep reminding ourselves that, for the period we're dealing with, the skills that we now consider to be the height of our culture were looked on then by aristocrats as a form of manual labour.
Anyway: I thought that an image would make the point instantly in a way that a dissertation would fail.
Hopefully, the above will cast some light on the subject. We should be deeply indebted to Alan for his on-the-ground research and the expertise which makes it possible.
BTW, as we move forward with the association, I intend to make available all of what he has provided to me. It will be invaluable aned, I hope, he will continue to guide us and provide the benefit of what he knows... when he is able.
Rick
More Replies:
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Re: Cheshire Eatons - Etons of Eaton manor
Joe Cochoit 10/17/01
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Re: Cheshire Eatons - Etons of Eaton manor
Rick Eaton 10/18/01
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Re: Cheshire Eatons - Etons of Eaton manor
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Re: Cheshire Eatons - Etons of Eaton manor
Rick Eaton 10/17/01