martinlf on Family Tree Circles

This is not actually about Ardington the surname, but Ardington the place. Where in practice everal Arding(tons) came from. One of my ancestors, Martha Taylor came from. I am trying to put together the genealogy for the entire village. I have all the BMDs from the church. I have photographed the MIs, and I am going through the census info. I am more than willing to share any of this. If you have any information we can swap then let me know.

Hello I am a Ferrier. I have been researching the name Ferrier and variations for the last 41 years and have a database of about 805,000 ferriers/relations. Most of these are not in my direct family tree.
I am more than willing to share this information I have gathered and hopefully expand my knowledge of Ferrier worldwide. My own particular branch of Ferrier started out life as Ferrar in Aberdeen in Scotland about 1700. You can view a fairly recent copy of my specific tree at http://www.martinferrier.com/genealog.html.I currently communicate with several hundred other people who are researching Ferrier.


As far as I can figure it the majority (about 80%) of the Ferriers come from an area of Scotland called Angus. They got the name Ferrier because they ferried people across rivers. There are also variations which stem from iron/Farrier. There were definately parts of that source which moved locally to Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

Another source was Normandy in France where early on a de-Ferriere came over to England with William the conqueror. This family later changed their name to deFerrer and there are several towns in england with the part of their name being De Ferrer. There is a branch of that Family it is believed, (although never definitively linked) in the Norfolk area of England. There are also pockets of the name which came from France, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy.

Naturally there are many corruptions of the name and one which is
poularly quoted although never really proved is a corruption of Farrier a person who shoes horses. Several Ferriers emigrated to the US, Canada and Australia. There are many in Australia mainly from Scottish descent. There are several in Ontario who come also from Scotland. There was a large family in the Orange county area of NY which came from an Irish Ferrier. There is also a large family around Mifflin County Pennysylvania who came from Scotland. I know that some of the Ontario Ferriers came via the US and also went back to the US and I believe that some of those were from Missouri but have never found anyone who had much information about them.

I have a lot of fragmented information on US Ferriers from Census records, death records telephone records. Where I can trace someone back to england/wales or scotland I have a lot of information on
birth/death/marriage census information. Currently of the entries
I have I can link myself to a few hundred of them, although my full
tree with other branches of the family is several thousand in size. My own antecedents come from Aberdeen in Scotland, then to London via the north of England, following the docks. They have been in London area since about 1850. I am trying to trace other parts of the Ferrier family to get a comprehensive picture.

The reason I got started in genealogy was a family story that my great grandfather Alfred James Ferrier left his wife and went to America with another woman. Now what I think I have put together is that Alfred left his wife sometime after 1881 and went away Elizabeth Smee. Elizabeth Smee (nee Lawrence) was the wife of Edward Smee. They next appeared in 1901 (census) in Newcastle, northumberland england. Most of the Smee children went with them. Elizabeth died a few years later. Shortly before his death in 1925 (in Jarrow) he was living with a woman called Maria.

Any snippets of information you have which will fill this story out is welcome.

regards
Martin