Catterill Family Research Site

This website's purpose is to document the Catterill family line.     This will be a multi-year task, which I have only just started as of early 2006, so the site's content will be updated, hopefully on a frequent basis.

The graphic to the left is a scan of the blazon of arms for our family name.  Since it bears great similarity to the arms of derivative names (Catterall, etc), I tend to trust it's validity.     Associated with this is the following info:
  •     Blazon of Arms:  Azure three mascles or.
  •     Crest:  A cat passant guardant argent.
  •     Motto:  Fidelis et suavis.
  •     Translation:  Faithful and gentle.
  •     Origin:  England

    The English surname Catterill and it's variants Cattarall, Catterall, and Catrell is of local origin.  Local surnames were derived from the place where a person once lived, or a prominent local geographical feature, perhaps a hill identified one person from another who lived near a bridge, river, lake, etc.  Many of these names were preceded by a proposition such as 'de', 'at', or 'in'.   These tended to lapse in later years.  In this case the name means 'of Catterall', which is a township located between Preston and Garstang, County Lancashire.  The place name itself is derived from the Old Norse words 'kottr' meaning cat, and 'hali' meaning tail, and referred to a long, thin piece of land.

Early records of the surname Catterill or a variant date to the 13th century when Richard de Caterhale is recorded as having held, among other places, Gosenhar and Katerale, in 1257-1258AD during the reign of Henry III (1216-1272).  Later records are found in the Lay Subsidy Rolls (tax records) of Rylands where Lora de Caterhale of Lancashire is mentioned in 1332.   More recent references are Thomas Caterall listed in the Preston Guild Rolls of 1562, and Ellen Catterall of Croston, Lancashire appears in the Wills at Chester in 1593.

Enough "pre-packaged" family history..   To me, this type of trivia has much more meaning if it can be backed up with genealogical data.   Using family records from a 5th cousin over in England (thanks, G.B.), I was able to track back to the early 1700s... 

The full family tree database can be now viewed via this link..    You can even edit the data yourself, once I have processed your account.
The database can also be viewed in the "old" format, in both pedigree and ancestor formats.

Here is a standalone graphical depiction of the family tree, in Acrobat PDF format..   Since it's a manual process to generate it, it will be always out-of-date, compared to the master database.

The bulk of the Catterill line (that I know of) between 1700-1900 lived in Pirton, Hertfordshire, England.   With permission from the Ordnance Survey, I have the four segments of an old Pirton map available:  SE, SW, NW, NE, all reproduced from the 1884 Ordnance Survey Map.   You can also see what the town looks like now via Google maps.   For similar vintage maps of surrounding areas, see the www.old-maps.co.uk site.

The Pirton Local History Group have a large selection of historical Pirton maps on their site, along with other resources.

Currently, my clan live in Arnprior Ontario, where I serve as a member of the Arnprior & District Museum Board.

If you have any comments regarding this site, please email me.


Helpful links relating to family research:
 Other links:


Wikipedia article on determining relations across the family tree
 Catterill Webmail (free for family members)
WorldConnect - Good site for starting your genealogy research.. Catterill Family Database
FamilySearch.org - Another good family research site.
 Arnprior and District Museum
The National Archives of the UK - Links to census data/etc.
Society of Genealogists Opacity (urban ruins)
Federation of Family History Societies - List of online resources Urban Exploration Resource (with lots of CDN content)

Abandoned Airfields

< Site last updated: 03 May 2010 >
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