The Origin of Croston Surname in Lancashire, England

I begin the Croston story with the earliest place where the surname appears in records, with the family that took it's name from the village of Croston, Lancashire, England.

It's not known if all Crostons in the world today have their ancestral origins in Croston, Lancashire. More research is needed to prove this, but it seems like the right place to begin.

With genealogical research, you tend to start with your closest family and move backwards. This story would be more simple to tell if I was only explaining one family branch, but I want to go a step further and write about the surname as a whole. The story is more complicated than you might think- not all of the families with the name Croston are related through the paternal line, some may not be related at all; the research is still incomplete.

The village of Croston, Lancashire, England dates back to the 7th century when St. Aiden, an Irish monk and missionary came to the area to spread the gospel. Before a church could be built, a cross was erected in the center of town as a place of worship. The name of the town literally means "cross-town"

 

The cross that stands in The Village of Croston, Lancashire, England

This ancient parish was once much larger and contained the towns of Bispam, Bretherton, Chorley, Hesketh Bank, Mawdesley, Much Hoole, Rufford, Tarelton, Ulnes Walton and Walmer Bridge.

Early maps show that a castle once stood in the town. The castle is thought to have been a wooden structure as no traces of stone remain today. The only trace that remains of the castle is the suggestion in the landscape of where a moat might have been.

Map of Croston, Lancashire

There was once a manor house in the village called Croston Hall that was the home of the Ashworth and then later the de Trafford family. The house was demolished in the 1960's, but much of the original grounds remain undeveloped today.

The second version of Croston Hall before it was demolished in the 1960's.

The use of surnames in England began after the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The Croston family took the name of the place where they lived. The name Croston first appeared in a document from the time of William the Conqueror where the name of a man named 'de Croston" (____ of Croston) is mentioned.

Below is a family tree from the book The History Of The County of Palatine And Duchy Of Lancaster, Volume 4, by Edward Baines (Author), Brooke Herford (Author), William Robert Whatton (Creator).

While researching the Croston family of Lancashire, I have found this tree to be an interesting guide, but have found some errors. It is also very generalized and incomplete. I will come back to this tree in later posts. The main thing to make note of right now is when and where the surname began in Lancashire.

There is evidence that the family held land and had some degree of social status into the late 1600's as they left land or money in their wills to their children or institutions, A couple of examples are:

-Edmund Croston who left books and money to build Brasenose College (part of Oxford University) in 1507.

-Henry Croston who started the Croston Almshouse in 1693.

The parish birth/marriage/burial records start in the mid 1500's in Croston. At this time most of the entries list the families residencies as Croston or Ormskirk. However record keeping was not well enforced. War or other disasters may have destroyed some of the records. By the late 1600's the family lines start to become more clear.

In general, the family that remained in England stayed in Lancashire County- there are only a few cases where they branched beyond the Lancashire boarders to the neighboring counties of York and Cheshire.

Also around this time the name began to appear in other parts of the world:

1. Sometime between 1650 and 1750, one family line left England and settled in County Cork, Ireland where they became the ancestors of one of the largest Croston families outside of England.

2. In the mid 1700's, a seemingly English Croston family appears in the records of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. This family appears to have ended without a surviving son to carry the name.

3. In the mid 1700's Gustavus Travis Croston was born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. His parents are unknown. Gustavus served in the Revolutionary War and later settled in Virginia.  The descendants of Gustavus Travis Croston are a very large family group in the USA- spreading up and down the east coast from the mid-Atlantic states to the South and into the Midwestern region.

In the 1800's the surname spread more widely- some returned to England from Ireland, others emigrated from England and Ireland to the USA, Canada, Australia, Northern Ireland, Scotland and other countries.

This post is a general overview. I will take some time in upcoming posts to go into more detail about individual families.