FAMILY HISTORIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 95, 18 April 1941, Page 4

FAMILY HISTORIES

Sir,-Perhaps I can help " Neutral," Petone, who seems rather undecided about her family traditions, "About 1219 Hugh Rose of Geddes was witness to the foundation charter of Beauty Priory. His son Hugh acquired the lands of Kilravock by marriage, and Kilvarock remains with the family to the present day. Sir Hugh Rose, born in 1803, did much to save India for the Empire, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Strathnairn in 1866. The present chief, of Clan Rose is Lieut.-Col. Hugh Rose 24th of Kilravock." If "Neutral" would like more information she should get "Clars and Tartans of Scotland . by Robert Bain, City Librarian, Glasgow, from which the above is taken. "Origin of British Surnames" by C. Lestrange Owen is also a useful little book, and Ewen says: "Before the coming of William the Conqueror, -hereditary family appellations were unknown in the British Isles. Of so little permanent value were the secondary descriptions in the 12th Century that numbers of people from the King downward had nothing of the kind. By the end of the 12th Century the recording clerks considered it a duty to give every person a mark of identification and thereafter it is rare to find any person without an official secondary description." So " Neutral’s" Clan goes. back about 722 years. The original name was most probably " Rosen" but about this time names changed very much, and naturally "Rosen" became English "Rose." My own family claims to go back to about 1297 in Scotland, and to get further information we must go to Cleveland in Yorkshire, where the name had a different form in Norman and gradually changed to English. Anyhow, it’s great fun tracing British surnames.-" ARGOSY" (Te Awamutu).