It is
fitting that we should know something of the origin and derivation of the name
we bear.
There are
several ways of spelling the name in use at the present time, the most common
being Maltby and Maltbie, through one also finds Maltbey and Molby.
Many
inquirers ask why Maltby is usually given as the correct spelling when our
emigrant ancestor in New England spelled his name Maltbie. First of all, our emigrant ancestors spelled
the name both ways, and the recorders added a variety of spellings to these.
A common
idea in the family seemed to be that the village of Maltby, Yorkshire, took its
name from the family of Maltby, who were believed to have come down from
Denmark before the Norman Conquest. This
is an error, as will be subsequently shown; also it explains how the name comes
to be claimed by so many nations.
Miss
Martha J. Maltby, while in Christiana, Norway, was a stone house, known for
years as the "Maltby House."
It was a private residence and was once owned by a physician by the name
of Maltby.
Miss
Maltby was told by a Norwegian traveling acquaintance (of Chicago, but who was
born in Christiana) that Maltby was a Norwegian name.
Miss
Margaret Maltby was told by a Danish professor of the University of Copenhagen,
that Maltby was a Danish name.
While in
Stockholm, Miss Maltby was told that it was Swedish and, Miss Maltby adds:
"We know it is English!"
In the
"Maulsby Genealogy" Miss Ella K. Barnard has given a most able and
clear analysis of this subject and we can not do better than to quote from her
comprehensive and instructive summing-up.
Page 13. "The Maulsby Genealogy": "Maltby is an old
Norse of Saxon name. Saxon, mealt;
Swedish and Danish, malt. It is perhaps
scarcely necessary to say that malt is barley or other grain steeped in water
until it germinates, then dried on a kiln, evolving the saccharine
principal. It is used in brewing.
"'By'
is an old English word, with the same spelling in Danish and Swedish. It is a place suffix, equivalent to town; see
Grimsby, Whitby, Derby. Maltby therefore means the town which
produces malt, or where malt is made."
The
present form of the word Maltby seems to indicate Danish origin but the word
malt probably antedates the coming of the Danes who settled in that part of
England containing the township and parish of Maltby and probably influenced
its later spelling. Saxon history
contains many such records and leases, as the following:
"Lufe
in 832 charged the inheritors and assigns of her lands at Mundlingham with the
following yearly payments to Canterbury forever; that is to say, Sixty ambers
of malt, one hundred and 50 loaves, 50 white loaves, 120 alms-loaves, one ox,
one hog and four wethers, two weys of bacon and cheese, one mitta of honey, ten
geese and 20 hens."
And:
"20 hides of land were leased by Peterborough to Wulfred for two hoes on
condition of his getting its freedom and for the following yearly rental: First
to the Monastery--2 tons of bright ale; two oxen fit for slaughter; two mittan
or measures of Welsh ale; and six hundred loaves. To the Abbot's Private
Estate--One horse and thirty shillings of silver, L1/2, one night's pasture;
fifteen mittan of bright and five of Welsh ale, and fifteen sesters of mild
ale."
And so
the parts of Yorkshire where the malt was made in great quantities finally
become known as Maltby and they are still known to us through the names of
(Page 14) Maltby, a chapelry, a township and parish.
"Maltby,
a chapelry, in the parish of Paithby, union of Louth, Wold division of the
hundred of South-Eske, parts of Lindsey, county of Lincoln, contains 1100
acres, 3 miles (S.W. by S.) from Louth.
"Here
was formerly a preceptory of Knights Templars, to which Ranulph, one of the
Earls of Chester was the first benefactor; it afterwards belonged to the
Hospitallers.
"Maltby,
a township in the parish of Stainton, union of Stockton, W. Division of the
liberty of Laughbaugh, N. Riding of the county of York; 3 1/2 miles (E. by N.) from Yarm, Contains 171inhabitants."
Mrs. G.M.
Watson, of Maltby House, Cleveland, Stockton-on-Tees, was kind enough to write
the compiler something about the village of Maltby, and we append extracts from
her letter:
"It
is only a small village with a few outlying farms of about one hundred and
forty inhabitants, in the township of Stainton.
It consists of some nice cottages, and three or four larger houses and
the house I occupy is the largest. In
referring to the history of Cleveland, we find little in ancient records
concerning this place except that at an early period it gave names to a
resident family, John de Maltby in the reign of Edward I, (1272-1307). This family was in possession for several
generations, till by failure of male issue part of the extate passes to
others. It is now in the hands of
different proprietors."
The
History of Cleveland by Rev. John Graves, has the
following account:
"The
Parish of Stainton consists of the several townships of Stainton, Maltby and
others.
"Maltby
lies about a mile to the west of Stainton.
The village is small, consisting of a few farm houses and cottages
situated on the summit of a gently elevated ridge.
"Maltby temp. Doomsday consisted
of 3 caracutes ad geldum, ..." According to Kirkby's Inquest we find
(1272-1307) "Jonh de Maltby held 6 caracutes of land here of the fee of
Walter de Fancouberge where ten made one knight's fee. This family continued in possession,"
etc., "till by failure of male issue* a part of their estate passed by
marriage to the Morleys of Normanby after alverated to the Pennymans of
Ormsby. The other
morety of their estate in the reign of Car. I. (1625-1648) came to Sir George
Wentworth of Woolley, Kt., by marrige with Averall, daughter of Christopher
Maltby, Esq., Alderman of York."
Graves
Hist. of Cleveland, p. 444, has the following pedigree:
"Nicholas
Morley of Normanby, Co. York, 24 Hen. VI., m. Joan, dau. of John Hedlam,
Esq., 24 Hen, VI. Their son, Christopher
Morley of Normanby in Cleveland, Esq., has Robert Morley of Normanby, who dwelt
at Maltby. He m.
first, Isabel, dau. of William Maltby of
Maltby. He m. second,
Elizabeth, dau. of ------- Symonds of
Kirklington. Their son, James Morley,
was of Maltby in 1584. He m. Phillis Thornaby."
(Transcribed
for the secretary be Edward C. Harte, Esq., of Wells, Somerset. To the courtesy and kindeness of Mr. Harte,
whose wife is a Maltby, we owe a vast amount of valuable and interesting
material concerning the Maltby family.
The help Mr. Harte has given the compiler with heraldry, explanation of
old English forms and so on, has been of inestimable value.)
To return
to Miss Barnard's comprehensive study of our name: "Maltby (St.
Bartholomew's), a Parish, West Riding, of county of York, 830 inhibitants. Parish contains 3919 acres. Church, residence of Earl
of Scarborough, etc.
Note. --
A Geographical Dictionary of England and Wales, by William Cobbett, London,
published by Wm. Cobbett, 1832, also gives "Maultby, Co.
Norfolk." This book is in the Mass.
Mist. Soc. Tooms, Boston, Massachusetts. There was also "Enderby Malbys,"
but this place is now Mavis Enderby."
"To
these sections of England comprised in the old Kingdom of Northumbria and
Mercia we have traced the Maltby family, and it seems likely that they took
their name from the land on which they dwelt, the common practice at that time.
"At
first one name was considered entirely sufficient for an individual, but as the
population increased the necessity for some added designation became urgent;
and the surname was the result. It came
into use in different countries at different times.
"In
England surnames come into general use about the time of the Norman Conquest,
before which time some added sobriquets or epithets, and perhaps a few
heridatary surnames were used, but they were first recorded in the public
documents at this time, and became essential for the identification of the
individual hereafter."
(p.15). "Our ancestor
took the name of the place Maltby.
"Guffy
classifies the name Maltby as English or Welsh, and says it is to be found at
present in three countires of England: Derbyshire (7), Lincolnshire (8), Nottingham (24). [The
numbers indicate there are about that many in 16,000 inhabitants.]
The
following explanation given by Miss Barnard of the term freemen will be found
very interesting:
(p.16)
"The freeman is he who possesses enough land to feed himself and
family. He aided in the government,
making, applying and executing the laws, and as a burger was one of the
representatives to the national parliament.
"If
a freeman became the owner of one hide (from 33 to 120 acres) of arrable land
(with which he would be entitled to a proprotionate amount of meadow and forest
for his horses, cattle and hogs) he was elected a noble or earl by his fellow
freemen and then became eligible to be elected priest, judge or king.
"Below
the freemen in the social scale were the stranger, the freedman and the
serf."
We give
one or two more facts concerning the name Maltby and the numerous ways in which
it is spelled. "Maulsby
Genealogy," p.349:
"There
is at least presumptive evidence that the surname Maltby arose independently in
each of the three places, as it is found as De Malteby on the Rotuli
Hundredorumb 1273 in both Norfolk and Lincolnshire, and as De Maltby on the Pol
Tax List of the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1379."
Descendants
will please note the following--for many of us have been skeptical as to the
Mawtby's of Norfolk being of the same name as Maltby.
"The
Norfolk Malteby became Maultby and then Mautby and as a surname further
deteriorated into Mawbie and Mawby.
The name
Maltby indicates a Danish settlement in which the malster plied his ancient
trade.
"The
prototheme is Old Norse malt, which is cognate in etymology and identical in
meaning with the old Saxon malt; the Old High German, Middle High German and
German malz; the Middle Low German molt and malt; the Dutch mout; the Danish
and Swedish malt; Anglo Saxon mealt; (p.350) Middle English malte, mault and
malt, and the Scotch-English maut.
"The
denterotheme By is our most common Scandinavian suffix
in place-names, and is an infallible proof that the Dane was once in the
land. It appears in Danish and Swedish
as By; in Norwegian as Bo; in Old Norse as Bast and
Bry, and was loaned into Anglo-Saxon as By or Bye. It is derived from the old Norse Bua,
"to dwell,: and originally devoted a
"dwelling," then a "farmstead" and later "a village or
town." Domesday
Book tom. 11., fol. 134b."
This very
comprehensive philopogical account of the name Maltby, explains conclusively
why the name is claimed as Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and English. It should also settle the question as to the
correct way of spelling the name.
In
compiling the Maltby Genealogy it has been clearly shown that where members of
the same family resided in close proximity an endeavor was made for one family
to change the spelling of the name. This
is not only true of the English families but is practiced in our own times in
the States, where in one instance Maltbey is used as a distinctive mark;
another uses Malby and a third Molby, although they unquestionably belong to
the same Maltby family.
A few
extracts from personal letters to the compiler are appended; they come from
Englishmen conversant with genealogical matters, who
were kind enough to offer suggestions concerning English research work.
Hylton B.
Dale, Esz., writes: "In searching indexes for the
name (i.e. Maltby) it is as well to look under 'Mau' as well as 'Mal,' as the
name was frequently spelled 'Mauteby.'"
"The
name Maltby is rare."--J. Harvey Bloom.
"The
Mautebys, Mawtbys or Maultbys were an old Norfolk family."--Reginald C.
Duddine.
"There
was a good family of the name with a pedigree entered in one of the 16th or
17th Visitations of Yorkshire. In the
19th Century there were families of the name in Lincolnshire, Notts and
Derbyshire; but in the last named county in certainly is not an ancient name,
for there are no Maltby Wills at Lichfield down to about 1630.
I have
never met with the name in Warwickshire or Staffordshire."
--William
F. Carter.
"Maltby
is quite a characteristic surname of the Vale of Belvoir district, and is
frequent also in the more central parts of Nottingham. One of their principal 'habitats' was Orston,
a village east of the Trent, about twelve or fourteen miles fom
Nottingham. Here lived a family of that
name, of yeoman rank, for several centuries --indeed, there is, I think, still a
Maltby farming in that parish.
... The
name Maltby also occurs in the 16th and 17th centuries in the parish registers
of several parishes in the district between the river Trent and
Southwell."--Thomas M. Blagg.
"All
the Maltbys in Notts and Derbyshire are connected. They come from one common stock. The Maltby family is one of the oldest in the
midlands . . . Hoveringham branch . . . this branch was related to the Brough Maltbys
also the Maltbys of Hickling and others of the name at Bawtry (Yorks)
..."---Edward C. Harte.