(All material above this point has been computer-generated by TribalPages)

AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE by the Webmaster, Chris Meakin - photograph above left. The fully-registered Meakin coat-of-arms dates from about 1760.   If you have useful information that fits, or wish to make contact, do so on J7CHM123@gmail.com. This replaces any email address/es shown elsewhere.

It has been  known  for some time that "Meakin" is a version of "Matthewkin" and in turn means "the son of May" - that being a pet form of Matthew (meaning "Gift of Jehovah") . Pronunciation and spelling would then have been affected by the Great Vowel Shift of the late Mediaeval period.  So an early example of the name in use is 'Maikin de Eylesburi' recorded in 1212. The  adoption of  second names, or surnames, only came into fashion in Europe from in the 11th century onwards (roughly the time of our Norman Invasion) that may be about as far back as any written records go. However if anyone can find an even earlier example . . . . .   

>  >  Please scroll further down this Home Page for:

*  Notes on the geographical origins of English Meakins - there are several    *  Guidance for American or Australian Meakins seeking origins in the UK    *  A simple guide to entering and navigating the Tree
    *  Note on some DNA testing done on members of the Meakin family    *  List of SURNAMES linked into this Tree

Please also sign the GUEST BOOK (click on link above) and please include your  email address if you wish to be contacted by other Meakin researchers and  me. I have watched on other Tribalpages trees how this can develop into a useful  Message Board. If you wish to contact me alone use the 'Contact' button above.
  
 I am always open to more data which fits, and owe a debt of thanks to Joan  Meakin and Margery Griffiths (nee Meakin) for all the information provided  in the early years of research. Joan lives/d in the Leicester countryside; Margery (whom I know has since died at a suitably ripe old age) lived in the Wirral and was the expert on her "Liverpool Meakins".  Although I lived in London from 1965 until 2016 (and now live on the south coast of England in Folkestone) I was born and brought up in Yorkshire, much closer to the ancestral home of the Meakins, as follows:

                                                              GEOGRAPHICAL ORIGINS

There are now related Meakins as far afield as Australia and the USA. There is also a leading food and drink business in India called Mohan-Meakin, claimed to be the oldest brewery in Asia but the name itself and several of its lines all seem to  derive from a quite distinct region along the River Trent in England's midlands. There is still an old 'Meakin Maltings' in the brewery town of Burton-on-Trent, which strongly suggests that a member  of that brewing dynasty of Meakins emigrated to India and teamed up with Mr Mohan, an Indian businessman. 

Until very recently (June 2021) the geography of Meakin settlement, principally along the River Trent, suggested to me that they were originally Vikings.  Not so, it turns out. Much more thorough investigation done in the USA by the diligent academics who invited to me to join in research based on DNA-sampling (see below) has now come up with a quite different ancestry.

It transpires the Meakins (these lines, anyway) belong to the "Ivanhoe" group of surnames and families, now traceable back to 100BC and geographically to the Scottish borders. They were principally Saxons, not Vikings. 

This Tree traces early Meakins to (a) the west and north of Derby - Mackworth,  Duffield and then Derby itself as the town grew in the industrial revolution.  Next, another line (b) stems from places closer to the Trent - Chellaston,  Repton, Spondon, also from Duffield and spouses from Aston-on-Trent and Castle  Donnington. All of these places are close geographically and these two Meakin  lines have at least one later link, William Meakin (a) married Mary Meakin (b)  in the early 1840s. I have a photo of them (my g-g-grandparents) taken c.1865.

Line (b) also leads to a large LIVERPOOL-born clan of Meakins who are all  descended from # Joseph Wright Meakin (1824), brother to the four brothers and  sisters who went to Australia, see below.

Some excellent parallel research has been done by Chris Bartlett on Meakin  origins in Staffordshire villages around (c) Stoke-on-Trent, and I am in intermittent contact with Chris who lives in New Zealand ( woodcom@ihug.co.nz  - when last heard of) about that. It is the Staffordshire Meakins who founded  the POTTERY FIRM J & G Meakin. So far no shared ancestor has emerged linking  these Derbyshire with the Staffordshire Meakins even though they all originate along the River Trent. See the following note on DNA links.

There is clearly another group of early Meakins (d) around GREASLEY in  Nottinghamshire, again not far distant from (a) and (b) above. Look at the  Guest Book of this site for several researchers beavering away at that, and it  would be interesting to learn the name and dates of the earliest known. More recently (Summer 2021)  I have learnt they also trace to Burton-on-Trent which now strongly suggests they are the same line as (b) above.  The profusion of just two men's names - William and Henry - in both families lends further weight to the idea. 

There are numerous Meakins in the LONDON area (e) but I can't help on that,  yet. However DNA testing, see below, indicates a fairly close match to male  Meakin descendants of Derbyshire line (a) above. So here, too, the name and  dates of the earliest known London Meakin could prove very interesting.

The Guest Book now reveals another group of Meakins around WESTON-SUPER-MARE. Once  again the key is to trace the EARLIEST KNOWN and then see if that ties in with any of  the other lines known here.

A commercial American website has invented a Meakin 'Coat of Arms' and an origin of the name in Ireland. Nice try. As shown at the head of this page, there is a genuine Meakin Coat-of-Arms (he was a Prebendary of Worcester cathedral) properly approved by the Royal College of Arms which looks nothing whatever like the American concoction.

PATRIARCHS -  or EARLIEST KNOWN

Only by clicking up successively through "Ancestors" in the Tribalpages  software can you find where lines actually begin, so to simplify matters:

Line (a) traces back to # William Meakin (c1753) possibly born in Mackworth  but raising a large family seemingly in Duffield. 

Line (b) traces to # Henry Meakin (earliest known) most likely of Chellaston. I date him to the 1640s, possibly earlier. I have found no link deriving Line (a) from Line (b).

In May 2015 I was contacted by a researcher who, using parish records, may have broken through  the "Civil War Barrier" when essential records were deliberately destroyed. That would take the  history back into Elizabethan times, at least. I do also know there are plenty of sixteenth century  Meakin hatches, matches and despatches in the Derbyshire County Records Office in Matlock - it's  just that no-one has yet done the jigsaw puzzle.

Some AMERICAN Meakins, those tracing to California anyway, could well find they  descend from # William Meakin (1847) who emigrated, briefly via Montreal, in I  think 1886. His father descends from Line (a) above and his mother descends  from Line (b) above. I have some of William's many descendants in the USA, but  by no means all. There are also more American Meakins on the East Coast in  earlier and quite separate line(s); possibly Chris Bartlett could help there.

Many AUSTRALIAN Meakins will find they descend from # Henry Meakin (1792) four  of whose children (Sarah, Henry, Emma, Charles) emigrated to Australia, I  believe initially to Geelong, in the 1850s. I would greatly welcome some more  details on their descendants. These Californian and Australian lines trace back separately to different sons  of # Henry Meakin (earliest known).

HOW THE SOFTWARE WORKS

Choose one of the family names on the list below and click it. That shows a  list of all family members known here; click any of them to extract them from  the family list, then click on their name again to enter the Tree itself. To  start with, just click on their father, or on their spouse's father, to get a  broader view of their family where I have it. Thus you can explore up or down  the Tree, also using the ANCESTORS or DESCENDANTS and other buttons, at the  top, for each main person you have centrally on your page. To move to someone  different quickly, look in the DROP DOWN LIST of all the names at top right.

Generally you will find the FAMILY view for an individual contains the most  detail - that alone includes space for a box in which I can record details of,  for example, their addresses and other helpful detail from the Censuses. As I  discover the data, it also proves an ideal place for detail about WILLS.

                     RULES OF THE GAME FOR THIS VERY PUBLIC TREE

I have deliberately not protected this Tree with a Password, so it is not  appropriate here to reveal precise ancestral links right down to people still  living. If I did that, and showed the highly accurate details I typically have  of their parents and in some cases living grandparents, the Tree would be 3-4  times its present size, which is not helpful anyway. So do not be disappointed  that you do not appear yourself. The focus of interest here is on people born  before or around 1900 - most of us can easily work out where we relate to  people of the twentieth century.

DNA LINKS : WERE THE MEAKINS ORIGINALLY VIKINGS?

In 2004 I was contacted by Family Tree DNA, the American research foundation  pionering DNA sampling to trace very early family links. A first cousin and I  joined in to help test an American theory that Meakin is cognate with Meate,  Mates, Meates all hailing from the same villages in Staffordshire, England. Had that been the case then the family origins of the name would have been definitely Viking and in DNA terms could have been traced back to 800AD.

In the event there was not sufficient of a DNA match, not for our male branch anyway, which is origin (a) above. Pity. However the DNA did trace more generally to north west Europe, in other words Viking, which of course points in much the same broad direction as the best conclusion based on clustering of earliest-known Meakins along the River Trent.

There are several different spellings of the name, and I put most of these down to routine mistakes by priests, and others, filling in such documents as Marriage Certificates. Often they just took the line of phonetic least resistance. The spelling preferred here seems the most commonplace.

The following information is standard material inserted centrally by Tribalpages and  not all of it is relevant to this site.