Vikings & Natives - Shorrock Hey!

I became interested male-line YDNA genetics, and in the Shorrock(s) family and its history, following the discovery (from male-line YDNA tests) that my grandfather changed his name from Harry Shorrocks to Harry Johnson when he left Salford around 1903 to 1905 and settled in south London.

In the light of this, I have become involved in the wider history of the Shorrock(s), Sharrock(s), Shurrock families and the degree to which people holding these names may descend from a common ancestor. The work of Professor Bryan Sykes who is a molecular biologist at Oxford University has suggested that around 50 percent of the males who share a relatively uncommon surname may descend from a single male progenitor.

Male line YDNA is a bit like a supermarket barcode that is passed down from generation to generation by the males in the family.

The website for the wider study that I am running can be found at:

www.familytreedna.com/group-join.aspx?Group=Shorrock

PROJECT BACKGROUND

From Syke’s work, it seemed probable that all the males who share one of the Shorrock(s), Sharrock(s), Shurrock and related surnames originate from a single ancestor (i.e. the name is monogenetic). The name apparently relates to a former hamlet 4 miles west of Blackburn in Lancashire called Shorrock Green (there was also a nearby place called Shorrock Hey). The name probably comes from Old English 'scora' = bank + 'ac' = oak.

In the 1881 Census nearly all the UK name holders (about 2,200 in total) were strongly focused on Lancashire. It seems that the variants may also be monogenetic in that they broke away from the parent name 'Shorrock' (1,480 people in 1881) one by one with specific ancestors being associated with each name. In 1881, the main localities and numbers were:

Shorrock (1,480) Blackburn,Preston,Haslingden
Sharrock (938) Wigan, Ormskirk, Bolton, Liverpool
Shorrocks (395) Bolton, Chorlton, Salford, Manchester
Sharrocks (352) Rochdale

The study aims to build friendship and kinship while exploring the inter-relationships between the family groups (including Shurrocks and other possible variants). In 1881 in the UK the Shurrocks group were heavily focused on Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

The results for the 6 people who have tested so far are summarised below.

RESULTS AS AT SEPTEMBER 2009

Ken, Keith and John

John Shorrocks (Warwickshire, UK) and Keith Johnson / Shorrocks are confirmed as directly related through James Shorrocks, Brushmanufacturer of Salford, England born c1796. John is a descendant of James' son Edwin Shorrocks and Keith is a descendant of another of James' sons Walter Shorrocks. This solves a long-standing 'brickwall' in Keith's genealogy / family history, as Keith's grandfather Harry Shorrocks changed his name to Harry Johnson around 1905 when he moved from Salford to South London.

Interestingly, Keith's first inkling that there may have been a name change in his family from Shorrocks to Johnson came from a 12:12 match with Ken Grist on the Ysearch site. Keith and Ken then compared their markers at the 25:25 level and found a 24:25 match. Now Ken has a 25:25 match with John Shorrocks. It appears that the marker that Keith differs on with respect to Ken and John (464c) is sometimes prone to slipping back to the value of the marker that precedes it - hence his final four value sequence of 15:15:15:18 as compared to their 15:15:18:18.

The DNA that is shared by Keith, John and Ken has been typed using the classification devised by Stephen Oppenheimer for his study ‘The Origins of the British: a Genetic Detective Story – The Surprising Roots of the English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh’. Basically the DNA is ancestral, aboriginal northern English. However, this does not mean that it is Anglo-Saxon. It goes much deeper than the invasions from the eastern North Sea coast of the period 450 to 600AD. Rather, it stems from the first hunters in Britain who followed retreating glaciers north from the Catalonia (Barcelona area) of Spain around 8,000 years ago hunting for mammoths and other game.

Oppenheimer calls the wider gene cluster that contains this strand R1b-13. About 4 percent of males in the British Isles belong to the R1b-13 group. It is most prevalent in the English Pennines, Cumbria, North West Wales, South East Ireland and South Central Scotland. Our ancestors, over the period 8,000 BC to 2000BC, gradually evolved from hunters into livestock keepers and then to farmer cultivators of limited patches of oats, rye and other coarse grains. They would have spoken a Basque-related language. Their religion probably included the sacrifice of treasured objects and human victims to sacred waters and bogs.

At some point in the first millennium BC, they would have come into contact with more advanced Celtic speaking farmers moving in from the east. Gradually, the Basque-related language of those who lived in what is now England was superseded by a Celtic language akin to Welsh (known as Cumbric). By the time the Romans conquered Britain, our ancestors would have been drawn into Celtic tribes – the most important of which were the Brigantes, who straddled the English Pennines and had an offshoot in South East Ireland.

Overall, it is worth noting that the North West of England was relatively sparsely populated, backward and conservative until the 18th Century, in comparison to the south and east of England. It is likely that there were as few as 2,000 people in Lancashire 1500 years ago. The area then underwent successive conquests and settlements that led to the eventual abandonment of Cumbric in favour of English. The invaders included the Romans, the Northumbrian Angles, the Danes, Norse settlers from Ireland, and the Normans (with periodic invasions from Scotland). No doubt most of these strands can be found in our wider DNA profiles.
David and Larry

THE SHARROCKS OF VERYAN, CORNWALL

There was a new development in the study when David Sharrock joined. David Sharrock has set up an excellent website at:

http://www.btinternet.com/~sharrock.family/

David joined the study to test the hypothesis that the Sharrocks of Veryan Cornwall are indeed part of the extended Shorrock family from Lancashire.

The historic reference is as follows from a Heraldic Visitation in the 16th Century:

"Sharrockes of Ribbelsdale in Com. Lanc. first of wh. was Ralph Shorrock of Shorockhayes wch in the Barrons' Wars was advanced to be a Captaine and therein lost his life, his descent grewe poore, and when the Scotts overan the Northern borders & parte of Lancashire and Chesheire the most part of this familie fled into Dublyn in Ireland, where by the Corruption of the Irish Ideoam they were termed Sharlock wch name of necessitie they were constrained to hold in the time of King Henrie the Seventh."

(The Barons War took place between 1258 and 1267. Henry the seventh was on the throne from 1485 to 1509.)

However, the results indicate that David is not directly related to Ken, Keith and John. David’s results are from the same general family (over 10,000 years ago) but there is no recent link. David has what is termed a ‘Friesian haplotype profile’ which has a geographical focus on southern and eastern England.

David then sought another person with the same surname (Larry Sharrock) to test the possibility that he could link to Lancashire through them. The results were intriguing. They show that Larry has an even weaker link to Ken, Keith and John – and the same weak level of linkage to David. The probability is that Larry is a descendant of Norse / Viking settlers in North West England.

There seems to be some possibility that the original Sharrock in Cornwall enlisted or colluded with the Heralds to identify a location that could be ‘tied’ to a supposed manorial, aristocratic origin. This was the 16th Century equivalent of boosting one’s CV!

A NEW RESULT

Keith identified a local subject John Shorrock from Feniscowles, near Blackburn when he visited Central Lancashire in September 2009.

Larry Sharrock has tested 12:12 with the new Study Member John Shorrock.

As already commented, Larry's YDNA appears to have a Viking tinge. The Vikings dominated the Irish Sea in the 7th and 8th Centuries and settled along the coast. In addition, in AD 902, significant numbers were expelled from Dublin and allowed to settle in Cheshire and Lancashire (e.g. the settlement of Thurstaston = Thor’s Stone Town, in the Wirral, Cheshire).

Two distinct groups therefore seem to be emerging in the wider Study Group that have direct links to Lancashire 1.) Larry Sharrock & John Shorrock, 2) Keith Johnson (Shorrocks), John Shorrocks, and Ken (Shorrock) Grist - with the first group being Viking, and the latter ‘indigenous’.

Whether one of these groups represents the original / authentic 'Shorrock' type tied to the small hamlets of Shorrock Green & Shorrock Hey, near Blackburn remains unproven.

It is interesting though that both Ken Grist's family and new subject John Shorrock's family both have links to Blackburn - perhaps there was a crossover / non-paternal event there at an early date.

ORIGINS OF THE NAME - AFTERTHOUGHT

There are possible multiple points of origin for the name in central / north Lancashire.

When I first started to research the name, I came across a reference to it being related to Sharoe Green - this was a hamlet that is now part of metropolitan Preston.

Ekwall's 'The Placenames of Lancashire' has this name as derived from 'scaru' (boundary), 'haugr' (hill) and mentions a reference to 'Charaudhoke', near Fulwood.

On the other hand, Ekwall derives Shorrock Green from 'the oak of Scorra' with Scorra being an Anglo-Saxon personal name, and cross-references a place called Scorranstone in Gloucestershire.

So it may simply be that we have multiple families because there were multiple placenames.