New light on the origins of the name?
Doea anyone know for certain whether Edward Tegg/Teague, of Somerset County -- and later, Cecil County, Maryland -- was the original grantee of the two tracts in Cecil County (Pembroke and the famous Tegg's Delight) which he patented in the fall of 1695?
Peter Wilson Coldham doesn't list any grantee prior to Edward Teague's 1695 patent, so early indications are promising that Teague was, in fact, the first.
The question which then arises is why Edward Teague would be likely to name half of his land after a town in SW Wales. The simplest answer is, of course, that it had been his home back in the old country.
The advantage of this theory is that is derives directly from verifiable facts which go back to Edward himself. That the surname of his descendants has almost always followed the Cornish spelling may mean no more than that the Chesapeake Bay area, with its large numbers of settlers from Cornwall and the English West Country, was more familiar with the Cornish name. (On Tangier Island, after all, they speak a West Country-derived dialect to this day.) The same process turned Elvis's German Presslar ancestors into Presleys (a Scotttish/Scots-Irish name more familiar in Maryland).
Although I have long been a supporter of the Cornish origin theory, I am coming to think that, unless good, solid evidence is found to the contrary, we should probably look for Edward Teague's origin among Welsh families named Tegg who lived in Pembrokeshire in the mid-17th C. After all, he handed us what may turn out to be the key himself, back in the fall of 1695.
More Replies:
-
Re: New light on the origins of the name?
James Morgan 11/07/13
-
Re: New light on the origins of the name?
David Teague 2/24/14
-
Re: New light on the origins of the name?
-
Re: New light on the origins of the name?
Lynette Jester 9/06/11
-
Re: New light on the origins of the name?
Nancy Magnuson 10/03/10