{"id":133,"date":"2019-08-09T20:07:20","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T20:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/findthekevin.com\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2020-04-10T00:48:38","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T00:48:38","slug":"granfield-genealogy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hopperguy.com\/Genealogy\/granfield-genealogy\/","title":{"rendered":"Granfield Genealogy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Welcome to Kevin Grandfield’s genealogy page. I have a database of more than 5,000 names of people with the last name Granfield or Grandfield and their relatives. I will gladly share any information. I also administer a listserv related to Granfield genealogy<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My Grandfields Top Row L-R: Charles, John, William Bottom Row L-R: Mary Brazell (Mrs. William Grandfield), Delia, Mayme, ?[Mary Griffin (Mrs. John Grandfield) or Mary Ellen Burns (Mrs. Thomas Brazell)]?<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This is the only known photo of my original emigrant. That’s\nJohn Granfield in the middle of his two sons, Charles on the left and William\non the right. Below them are (L-R): Mary Brazell (Mrs. William Grandfield),\nDelia, Mayme, and ????? (either Mary Griffin [Mrs. John Grandfield] or Mary\nEllen Burns [Mrs. Thomas Brazell]). The baby is William and Mary’s first-born\ndaughter, Mary Ellen, who later went by the name Helen Marie and became Mrs.\nRoy Cook.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Gran(d)field was born 19 March 1833 according to the\nCatholic Parish records, but he later claimed his birthday was 12 December\n1836.  He was born in Ballybrack, Kerry\nCounty, Ireland, on the Dingle Peninsula. \nHis parents were John Granfield and Bridget McCrohon.  John immigrated 25 Sep 1854 to New York from\nQueenstown (Cork) Ireland aboard the Isaac Wright.  He died 1 Nov 1910 in Cincinnati, OH from\nPneumonia.  A legend that was passed down\nis that John came over with three brothers, and all were kicked out for ringing\nthe church bells.  Wikipedia reports that\nin the Irish Tithe War of 1831-6, people organized resistance with signals such\nas ringing the chapel bells.  Anyway, he\nhad a brother William who settled in San Francisco and married Mary Jane\nRodgers; a brother Thomas who settled in Virginia and married Margaret Doyle;\nand a sister Mary who married James Brown in Ireland and later married James\nMichael Houlihan in Chicopee, Massachusetts. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name Granfield in Ireland is found almost exclusively in\nCounty Kerry, either on the Dingle Peninsula or across the bay on the famous\n“Ring of Kerry.” Granfields came from these places (as well as\nSomerset in England) to the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(With thanks to Jason Grandfield in Tasmania) Apparently,\nRichard de Granville was the originating ancestor for our group of surnames\n(Gran(d)field, Granville, Grenville, Granvilia, etc.). He was a Norman knight\nwho helped his brother, Robert Fitz Hamon, beat the local Welsh in Glamorgan\nand set up one of the early Marcher Lordships around 1093. In return, Richard\nwas given the lordship of Bideford in Devon, along with a string of estates in\nthe counties in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Gloucester. He was also made\nconstable of Neath (?IIRC) in the new Welsh territory, and there are many\nreferences on the Net to him bestowing an estate near Neath to an order of\nmonks around 1130, shortly before his death supposedly on pilgrimage to the\nHoly Land. The senior branch of the family became known as Grenville, and\nresided in Bideford right up to somewhere in the 1700’s when the male line died\nout. The motto of the Grenville family is “God, Country, Friends”. I\nimagine that the Gran(d)field branch probably broke off fairly early on,\nperhaps in Somerset. According to research by Niven Sinclair, Robert and\nRichard (and a 3rd brother called Hamon) were possibly half 2nd cousins of\nWilliam the Conqueror. Their father was Hamon Dentatus, who was killed opposing\nWilliam in the early days of his Norman reign (1047). However, the 3 brothers,\nalong with 6 cousins, made up 9 “Sinclair knights” who may have rode\nfor William at Hastings. Certainly Hamon seems to have been heavily favoured by\nWilliam (appointed Sheriff of Kent and held many estates by 1086 – Domesday\nBook), but Robert does not seem to have come to prominence until around 1088\n(made Earl of Gloucester by William II after thwarting a rebellion) and Richard\nonly on the coat-tails of Robert. Anyway, this Sinclair research is debated by\nsome French experts, and the theories may not be fully supported with hard\nevidence. As with all information taken from the Internet this should be taken\nwith a grain of salt, but at least it’s a theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Granfield of Somerset, England offered the following:\nThe Somerset Grandfields, or at least a major subset of them and the one to\nwhich I belong, were French Huguenots who arrived in England in the late 17th\nCentury. I don\u2019t have much information on them other than to say that\nGrandfield is most probably an Anglicization of Granville, the town from where\nwe believe they were forced to leave after the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of\nNantes made being a non-Catholic in France a little bit tricky (or fatal,\ndepending on one\u2019s luck). Much of this is family lore and not based on research\nbut it may help clarify what you may have found so far.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I (Kevin) will add that Granville is in the same\n“bay” as Jersey island and St. Malo. It makes sense that the town\nwould have changed hands between the English and French repeatedly, and\nalternately expelled the Catholics or Protestants, depending on who was in\ncharge of it at the time. <\/p>\n

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Welcome to Kevin Grandfield’s genealogy page. I have a database of more than 5,000 names of people with the last name Granfield or Grandfield and their relatives. I will gladly share any information. I also administer a listserv related to Granfield genealogy. This is the only known photo of my original emigrant. That’s John Granfield […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-133","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopperguy.com\/Genealogy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopperguy.com\/Genealogy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopperguy.com\/Genealogy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopperguy.com\/Genealogy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopperguy.com\/Genealogy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hopperguy.com\/Genealogy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162,"href":"https:\/\/hopperguy.com\/Genealogy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/133\/revisions\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopperguy.com\/Genealogy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}