Sanford family tradition: It is widely believed in our family that our earliest known ancestor was Thomas de Saundeford, a Norman-French lieutenant under William the Conqueror, who came to England from Normandy in 1066. I had deduced that, since the rulers of Normandy were originally Viking raiders who, several centuries earlier, had conquered and settled in that part of France, "Sanford" (or "Sandford" or "Saundeford") was obviously a Scandinavian name, meaning, obviously, that some ancestor had lived where there was a sandy ford, a shallow place where a stream could be crossed. (Beware "obviously"! It ain't necessarily so!) Well, part of that was correct -- about the sandy ford, though not the location of the stream. Nor the origins of Thomas de Saundeford.
Is Thomas listed in the Roll of Battle Abbey? Before I figured out who Thomas de Saundeford was, I had to work through a lot of history. I knew of the Roll of Battle Abbey, a medieval document that purported to list all of William the Conqueror's lieutenants during the Conquest of Britain.
As I researched it, I learned that there were problems with that ancient manuscript. First, the oldest existing copy is already a copy of a copy -- several generations away from the original, which supposedly had been written not immediately but several decades after the Conquest. There are always problems with documents written long after the events, and also problems with copies (and copies of copies): Copying errors occur, and in this case it is acknowledged (or strongly suspected) that newly wealthy or powerful families, whose ancestors had no part in the Conquest, may have bribed scribes to have their names inserted during the next copying of the document. So some names in the Roll are probably fakes.
And then there is another problem: I expected to see a list of full names, like "Thomas de Saundeford" or "Gerard de Tournay," for example. But no. It is a list of several hundred family names -- no first names -- and most of these are in fact place names, since family names as such did not yet exist at the time. But there was no "Saundeford."
The "Doomsday Book" of 1086: Next I found myself reading parts of the "Doomsday Book," an astounding census compiled for William -- now King William -- in 1086, twenty years after the conquest. ("Doom" comes from the Old English "dom" or "dome," meaning judgment or reckoning -- think "IRS.") Assessors visited every village and estate in England, listing every acre of pasture or cropland or orchard, every ox and cow, every serf and worker, listing who owned it and who had been the owner before the Conquest, in order to determine what taxes should be paid to the crown.
Was Thomas de Saundeford really Gerard de Tournay? In background reading, I learned that the Sandford ancestral home outside Shrewsbury, in county Salop (now Shropshire, in the west near the Welsh border), had been granted to one Gerard de Tournay, one of William's lieutenants. (In the Roll of Battle Abbey, I didn't find a "Tournay," but I found what looked like "Fournay." This was probably it, though either the name was not written clearly or it had gotten mis-copied in the past.)
Wondering where Gerard might have come from, I found, along with several unlikely towns named Tournay in far corners of France, a crossroads named Tournay-sur-Odon, about ten miles southwest of Caen in Normandy -- William's territory. ("Tournay-on-Odon," the name means. "Odon" is what appears to be a very small brook.) There is apparently no castle or anything grand there now (you can Google-map it and see for yourself -- there don't even seem to be any ruins.). So Gerard may have been the son of an insignificant feudal family ruling over a tiny village and some surrounding countryside. (Or was he just a cowherd who enlisted for a chance at greatness?)
One source said that Gerard de Tournay, upon being granted the estate in Shropshire, had changed his name to Saundeford. As usual, the story is not quite so simple. Gerard had been granted not one but perhaps a dozen estates, scattered over half a dozen counties (shires) all across England. He probably chose one of the most desirable estates as his residence (perhaps nearer to London), and then he did what every large landholder did: In return for an oath of fealty and a substantial annual rent, he granted individual estates to lower-level aristocrats. Some of these aristocrats may have been Normans, but many were rehabilitated (and hopefully now loyal) Anglo-Saxons (think post-Civil-War Reconstruction).
So Gerard de Tournay -- or possibly one of his successors, and possibly as late as 1135 --granted the Sandford estate to one Thomas, who then took the name "de Saundeford" -- "of Sandford." Who was this Thomas? There seems to be no information about him. Probably he was a locally prominent Anglo-Saxon leader, with enough wealth and prestige to enter into a contract with Gerard -- and to establish the family line which would be prominent into the 1800s. (Or he might have been a lower-level Norman. We really don't know.)
The Sandfords: not at Sandford Castle: I knew of the law of primogeniture, which made the eldest son the heir to the estate. This law prevented competition among sons, and also prevented an estate from being subdivided into ever-smaller plots as it was shared among increasing numbers of descendants. I had assumed that younger sons would find new careers, in the military or the navy or the church or -- heaven forbid! -- in commerce -- as indeed did often happen.
But as I followed the Shropshire Sandfords through the centuries, I discovered that these were all last resorts. The preferred course for a younger son was to marry into a nearby family that had a daughter but no sons, and thus acquire a title and an estate and carry on both family lines. Also, a family estate could be pledged as collateral for a loan and could be lost, forcing the family to remove to another estate, perhaps one acquired through marriage.
This in fact happened to the Sandfords -- they lost the original estate (with castle) and moved in the 1400s to another estate (known as the Isle of Rossall) on the opposite side of Shrewsbury. (The first time I came upon references to the Isle of Rossall, I Googled high and low -- along the coast and in nearby rivers -- for this Isle, and finally found that the estate with that name is nowhere near water, but just a few landlocked miles west of Shrewsbury.)
From our New England Sanfords back to the Sandford line: Like a tunneler drilling from one side of a mountain, hoping to meet in the middle a tunnel from the other side, I sought to follow our Sanford line back into England from our immigrant ancestors and meet up with someone in the ancient Sandford line. Thomas and Andrew (we are descended from both) were among the ten children of Ezekiel Sanford, son of Thomas, son of Richard, as documented thoroughly and reliably by Carlton E. Sanford, in "Thomas Sanford, the Emigrant to New England."
Richard Sanford: origins unknown: Here's what I found: One American source -- actually several, probably copying from one another -- asserted that Richard Sanford was really Richard Sandford, born in Shropshire, a younger brother of a childless older brother; Richard was said to have left the family estate and settled in Essex, north-east of London, raising a family there. In my innocence, I wrote to the Shropshire Family History Society to inquire if they had any idea why Richard did not inherit the Sandford estate. I was told -- in no uncertain terms -- that Richard had never moved to Essex County, but had lived his life in Shropshire and died childless, like his brother, so the line was eventually carried on in Shropshire by children of an uncle.
Best guess: Our Richard Sanford could have been descended from any one of at least three separate families, each of which took its name from an ancestor who lived near a "sandy ford," in one part of England or another. (Actually, counting the various "Sandford" and "Sanford" and "Samford" and "Sampford" lines, there were probably about ten separate families, which eventually tended to run together, what with intermarriage and flexible spelling.)
So our earliest known Sanford ancestor, Richard, is not a member of the Sandford line, and we cannot, with any assurance, claim descent from the family line that is entitled to the beautiful coat of arms, framed copies of which several of our family members have Oh well. So watch out: The heraldry police may knock on your door and confiscate your coat of arms.
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