Chapter 19.


FURTHER AFIELD - A Miscellany of Unallocated, Daggetts


      No attempt has been made to classify or arrange in any sort of order the various early and later Daggett references we have come across outside Pickhill and beyond our own line of inheritance.


      Topcliffe's registers have yielded page upon page of baptisms, marriages and burials but the lack of connection with our present interest has ruled out any deep study of them. However, the following Will of Lancelot Daggat of 1547 is not without interest.


      "In the nayme of God Amen; the laste of November in the yere of our Lord God m ccccc xlvij I Lanslot Daggat holl of mynd& good memorye make this my last Wyll and testament in maner and forme followyng. First I commend my sowll to Almyghty God to owr Lady Seynt Mary and to all the celestiall companye of heaven & my bodye to be buryed in the chyrche yeard of Saynt Columbe in Toppclyffe:


Wytnesses heroffe :



      The farmsteads, hamlets and townships of this large parish include Baldersby, Dishforth, Catton, Skipton-on-Swale and Rainton, of which the first two contained most of the local Daggetts. There has been a little overlapping of the Pickhill and Topcliffe families, but it is very surprising how seldom this has occurred.


      At the time of Archbishop Herring's Visitation in 1743 Topcliffe parish included ten villages. Baldersby had 32 families, Skipton 23 and Catton 19. There was a "public grammar school" and other village schools.


      There was a period around 1780-1800 when the Topcliffe registers included a good deal of personal detail about each of the persons listed, a good example which was, alas, too rarely copied elsewhere!

In two entries for 1673 and 1675 the name is spelt Dadggat.














      Ripon has been mentioned before. There were several of our namesakes there between about 1610 and 1780 but, because of their common Christian names and the unfortunate loss of part of the parish registers, it has proved impossible to separate the groups with any degree of certainty.


      York had its share of Daggetts, from 1620 down to the present day. Its multiplicity of parishes very much increases the time and effort needed to investigate the earlier and later families which are, for the most part, outside the scope of the present work. The sudden appearance of a Michael Daggett, barber-surgeon, in 1727 poses the question "Was he a member of a Pickhill or Topcliffe family?" This remains unanswered. He was a Freeman of the City in 1727/28 and was married by licence at Holy Trinity, Goodramgate in April 1734. He was "above 33 years" and his bride was Faith Moysley "above 27". Michael raised a large family in York, became churchwarden at Holy Trinity, King's Court in 1743 and was buried at the latter church on 15th November 1749.


      There was also a George Daggitt who married Mary Scauby at Goodramgate in 1715. He was probably the George who was baptised at St.Michael-le-Belfry in 1681 and also the "George Daggit, dancing master, OId " who was buried in Holy Trinity, Goodramgate in 1748. His widow survived for another 21 years.


      Also at St.Michael-le-Belfry there was "John Daggett buryed in ye high Quire" in 1620.


      A number of couples came to York from other parts of the County to get married, and then they disappeared from the records! The family name has occurred in many official documents in York. For instance a Michael Daggett, (merchant or shopkeeper) was a Freeman of the City in 1592/93, as were George Daggitt, sadler in 1678/79 and John Daggett saddler in 1615.The spelling is quoted from the originals.


      The Yorkshire Coast has seen numerous Daggett families, chiefly in and around Scarborough and Filey. The Bridlington ones of the l9th century stemmed mainly from Thomas of Patrick Brompton whose movements are outlined on pages 16/4 and 16/5.


      Kirby Hill (Kirkby on the Moor ) is a parish on the Great North Road just outside Boroughbridge. It has Daggett records going back to 1590 and up to at least 1740, but there seem to have been infrequent contacts with the Pickhill families.

      Hull and Beverley have been the centres, mainly of Daggitts and chiefly from the early l9th century onward.


      Thirsk (the spelling of which has presented some difficulty to some chroniclers !) has been mentioned above and there are four entries of Daggetts in the registers between 1571 and 1587 and a few more at the end of the 17th century, but few later.


      An Agnes Daggett had an illegitimate son John in 1583 and she eventually married the father some four years later!


      West Yorkshire. Extensive settlements of Daggetts took place early in the 19th century as a result of the westward migration of a family previously based at Ripon. These have been continued to the present day and largely concern the parish of Burnsall near Skipton.










      A Poll Book for Yorkshire of 1741 contains the names of William Dagget of "Pighill" and William Daggett with freehold in "Pighill" and residence at Roxby. Not only were electors listed but one often comes across records of how they voted: there was no secret ballot in those days! For instance, William Dagget, gentleman, Freehold residence at Pickhill, Wapentake of Halikeld, voted Wilberforce and Lascelles.


      In some indexes to sources of information there is no clue to the exact identity of the person named, and so the original document has to be examined if it can be found. There are three Daggetts listed in "Inquisitions Post Mortem" in the Yorkshire Archaeological Societies Record Series. The bare details, which could be amplified by further research, are



      York City Library has an extensive and partly indexed collection of old newspapers and current ones. The later ones have reports concerning Daggetts in 1878, 1887, 1968 and 1980. In addition there are some earlier notes, such as :-

Checking through the York City parishes, we find that on lst April Mary Daggett married Ely Hargrave in the Church of Holy Trinity, Micklegate.


      The Yorkshire Gazette for 3rd June 1871 reported that :-

      This is the Jane who married Jason in 1836 (see p.8/7), and the John mentioned has been discussed on the same page.

      On 12th October 1872 the Yorkshire Gazette printed, also under "Deaths"

      Alice was dealt with on pages 14/3 and 14/4. Groves is a more accurate placing of Townend Street than Clifton which has been noted elsewhere.


      The Quarter Sessions Records tell us that George Daggett of Howe was witness in a treason case against a Yorkshire yeoman in 1653.


      In 1685 William Daggett of Pickhill, yeoman, was accused with others, that they shot 60 doves and took them away at Carthorpe. This is a village about two miles from Pickhill.


      Robert Daggett of Marton-on-the-Moor was accused in 1692 of destroying rabbits at Dishforth, in the parish of Topcliffe.


      Two years later Richard Daggett of Thornton-le-Moor, a woollen weaver, had a pound of wool stolen from his shop.











       Dorothy Dagget and others of Pickhill were accused of the non-repair of fences in 1700.


      In 1709 a "lost mare" was found in the hands of John Daggett of Pickhall. John was given time to find witnesses to prove he had bought the animal innocently.


      Although not involving any Daggetts, we found the following two extracts amusing.



      And in 1716 John Allyson was accused of saying very uncomplimentary things about the Duke of Marlborough!


      We wonder how some of our present-day commentators would have fared under these strict conditions!

There are lists of Daggetts who served on juries between 1605 and 1716, most of whom we have been able to identify.


      Yorkshire Fines refer, not to financial forfeits paid for some misdemeanour, but to single payments made against civil transactions.


      William Daggett is one of the parties in such a deal concerning lands in Picall in 1601.


      George Daggett and others in 1620 sold some cottages and land in "Holme, Aynderbie, Wherene How, Pickall and Rokesbie".


      Robert Daggett and others were similarly engaged in 1614/15 with property in Holme, and various others were quoted in a similar capacity a few years later.


      Local Directories can often help with information which is lacking in other sources of information. For instance, we have noted the following-



      London. There were many Daggetts in London before the arrival of our own branch about 1865. Some of the earliest included Henry Daggett of Poplar who married at Stepney in 1629; various other Daggett marriages have been noted between 1665 and 1690, and a number of other events took place during the 18th century, mostly in the north-east and eastern sectors of the district.













      Present-Day Distribution of Daggetts in the U.K.

Although the telephone is not installed in every home, in the Kingdom, we thought that a summary of contributors to the network would give an Idea of how widespread are our modern namesakes. In 1971, during our research into our maternal ancestors, we went systematically through all the Telephone Directories noting the occurrence of the several surnames with which we were then concerned.


     The Scottish volumes yielded not a single Daggett (or variant thereof) but there were several hundred Olivers, the name of one of our maternal forebears. To make a comparable assessment for different areas we calculated the total number of entries of all names in each directory and then worked out the occurrence of Daggett on a common basis of 100,000 entries. This gave a relative concentration of the family name in the overall population for each telephone area. Out of a total of about five million subscribers we found that there were 36 Daggetts, allowing for spelling variations. This meant that the total population of the country would contain something like 400 people - subscribers and non-subscribers - called Daggett. In each 100,000 names we found the distribution to be as follows : -


with all other places at a lower figure. For comparison we calculated that there were between 100 and 200 Olivers in some areas per 100,000, while another of our ancestors, the Sillitoes, occurred only less than 20 times at the most. All these names varied very much from one part of the country to another.

Early in 1985 we repeated this survey, noting only Daggett and its variants. Some of the telephone areas had changed and the new directories were being replaced, with some overlapping. This time we found there were about 370 people called Daggett in the U.K. The total number of telephone subscribers had more than doubled since 1971!


The new figures work out at : -













      These figures suggest that there has been some northward movement of Daggetts during the past 14 years, the total number in the country as a whole remaining much the same.


      The name Daggett crops up in some unexpected places. For instance there is a Daggett road in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire - perhaps named after some local dignitary. The name is also known in U.S.A., such as a place on the Inter State Highway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, mentioned in a television documentary in June 1979.


      "The Duckett Family History", privately printed by T.E. Duckett of Bristol in 1960, argues that that name was derived from Duket on the Battle Abbey Roll of 1066, but this appears to be Vuket! Duckett lists Doggett, Daggett and Ducket as being all connected, without giving any explanation for such wide variations. He also ignores the dissimilarity of the armorial bearings of the three separate groups. There is no logical reason for connecting these names, apart from occasional mistakes and misprints on the part of chroniclers, particularly in modern times. The Doggett Coat and Badge are, therefore, are quite outside the scope of our studies.


      We have come across the name Duckett quite often in our search of Yorkshire registers, and particularly in York. But none of these seems to be in any way capable of confusion with our own name. Raggett, Haggett and Boggett when indistinctly written are more likely to be misread, but further investigation shows that these were recurring names of families established in the parishes concerned.



























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