Intro

In celebrating Dad’s 90th birthday I wanted to share some of what I remember of our family heritage, the oral history of our family that Dad and his parents shared with me along with some of what I found on the web. The earliest recording of the surname Hancock is from Yorkshire in England before the Norman Conquest in 1066 ad. I could not find this on the websites I visited but dad told me that in English surnames ending with the suffix –cock, like Hitchcock, Babcock, Adcock, Wincock, Leacock, the –c-o-c-k was added in the middle ages as a title or honor given by the king and he actually gave them a rooster which often appears on the family crest or coat of arms.

People often ask us when they hear the last name Hancock, if we are related to John Hancock. Uncle John signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776, while our forefathers were still in England. My Grandpa Hancock told me that Clayton’s great grandfather was an idealistic young pastor in England in the early 1860’s. He went to a lecture by the abolitionist and freed slave Frederick Douglas and was so moved by the condition of the slaves in the United States and the ensuing war that he left his young wife and young family and came to America to fight in the Civil War. Dad believes he died in the Battle of Bull Run. After his death his son Stephen (Bumpy’s grandfather) immigrated to the US when he was about twenty with his young wife Agnes. He became an itinerant preacher, traveling from small town to small town preaching to different congregations and they had a large family, with 5 boys that Dad remembers and 2 girls. Edward, our grandfather was one of the middle children.


Another family story is that one of Grandma Hancock’s forefathers came over on the Mayflower on the Clark side of the family. I googled the names of the signers of the Mayflower Compact and sure enough found a Richard Clark. I haven’t done a complete genealogy to prove we are direct descendents from him but it is a distinct possibility.