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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1999-09 > 0937637715


From: Richard Borthwick < >
Subject: Re: Walter de Caen and the Dickinson line
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 23:55:15 -0700


At 01:19 PM 17/09/99 +0800, you wrote:
>>X-From_: Fri Sep 17 09:27:29 1999
>>Resent-Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 18:26:17 -0700 (PDT)
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>>Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 21:31:16 -0400
>>From: "Todd A. Farmerie" < >
>>Organization: Case Western Reserve University
>>Sender:
>>Subject: Re: Walter de Caen and the Dickinson line
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>>Dora Smith wrote:
>>>
>>> I am interested, but I question this, since Dickin or
>>> Dickon is a very common name in Yorkshire, where the Dickinson's lived.
>>> It seems as if Dickinson would be a common surname. Like Johnson and
>>> Williamson and Richardson and Robertson.
>>
>>Trust your instincts here. There is no reason to assume that any two
>>Dickinsons are related, and to talk of the "Dickinson family" is like
>>talking about the Smith family. All the name means is that someone had
>>an ancestor named Richard who used the common nickname Dick, with the
>>diminutive ending -> Dicken.
>>
>>> My allegation says only that Walter de Caen was the grandson of Walter de
>>> Caen son of Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, who got the Town and Castle of
>>> Caen for an inheritance.
>>
>>No such person can be shown to have existed. Rollo had two, and only
>>two children documented in the historical traditions of normandy -
>>William, later duke, and Gerloc, who married the Duke of Aquitaine.
>>(There is an additional daughter who appears in Icelandic tradition,
>>this information is not independently supported, and perhaps false.)
>>There is no son Walter.
>>
>>> What I would like to know is, more about Walter de Caen. Where did he hold
>>> lands, who were his children and who did they marry, and what happened to
>>> them? Is there any known connection to Yorkshire or to the vicinity of
>>> Hull, where it seems the Dickinsons always lived, atleast by 1260,
>>> century, and any of the family of Walter de Caen? They would have had 200
>>> years, about six generations, from 1066 to find their way to Hull.
>>
>>As to the younger Walter, there may have been a Domesday baron of that
>>name, but it is unlikely that his male-line descendants would have used
>>the surname Dickinson, and anyhow, your source couldn't trace it, or
>>they would have. This whole thing is likely an unsupported tradition,
>>perhaps based on nothing more than Walter holding at Domesday the land
>>that some Dinkinsons would hold 300 years later, but not the stuff of
>>reliable genealogy.
>>
>>
>>taf
>>
>>
>
I don't know whether this is the Walter de Caen under consideration but
Keats-Rohan at I:449 has an entry for a Walter de Cadamo (de Caen). His
father was Alberic. There is no mention of a wife but he had three sons:
Robert (ancestor of the Chesney family), Ralph and Roger (ancestor of the
Huntingfield family). Walter held Horsford, Norfolk, from Robert Malet with
whom he came to England in 1066. Robert's wife was Sibil de Chesney dau. of
Ralph (II) fitz Ralph (I). William, Robert's son, took his mother's name
and was lord of Blythborough, Suffolk.

[K S B Keats-Rohan *Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons occurring
in English Documents, 1066-1166* (The Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 1999)
I:331, 449; I J Sanders *English Baronies: A study of their Origin and
Descent, 1066-1327* (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1963 [1960]) 16; CP
V: Chart facing p.72; HKF III:314, 316-317]

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