The Essex Stock Clans

My name is Derek Stock. I don't know why. Some say it's because my ancestors lived near a tree stump somewhere - which tends to fit because my family background shows no hint of wealth whatsoever, and I doubt whether my ancestors could get a mortgage on a cave or a mud hut and so had to huddle by a low-rent tree stump.

I am an Essex Stock.

There are 3 major "clans" of Stock in the UK. The largest is the Essex clan, followed by the Somerset Stocks. Then there are quite a few in the Lancashire area. Instinct suggests that the three major clans are unrelated and adopted the surname independently.

The big question to me is are all the Stocks in Essex related? Answer: I don't know. If the surname developed independently in other parts of the UK, then it could well have done so within Essex itself.

What I do know is that in 1841, there were almost 200 'family units' with the surname Stock living in Essex. Research into my own particular lineage proves that about 15 of these belong to me. [By 'family unit' I mean a unique address containing a resident with the name Stock. So father mother and 5 children is a family unit. So is a single Stock living in as a servant.] From this I deduce that if we were to identify which other 1841 family units can be "sewn up" as belonging to the same family, then we might be talking of between 10 and 20 'Essex Clans'.

Logically, many of these Essex Clans are in fact related further back. The answers to this lie in Parish records which we all know are incomplete, difficult to read, eaten by mice, ambiguous, and defy all attempts to create an audit trail of births marriages and deaths. But I would love to make the attempt, however long it takes, to understand the Essex Stocks and see how few clans there really are. Maybe DNA testing will assist this process over time. Meanwhile I would like to think it's possible to narrow it down by continued research, the interchange of family trees, and the free exchange of information.

I have ancestors active in the late 1600's until 1841 definitely giving birth to male Stocks but up to now I still don't know what happened to them. Almost certainly they migrated to nearby villages, married, and set off other local Stock clans. As a way of assisting this research, I have spent hours downloading census data for the Stock families from 1841 to 1901, attempting to reconcile them with intervening Births, Marriages, and Deaths.

Although this is useful information for any Essex-based Stock, it doesn't provide any pre-1841 answers. However, if only we could concentrate on the known 200 family units around in 1841 and tie as many of them together into as few as possible local clans, then we might get somewhere.

So what I would like to do, and this blog is a start, is to create a central point of contact for (what I will call) "The Essex Stock Clans". We probably cannot post family trees here. But maybe we can co-ordinate a series of trees on Genes Reunited, or on Ancestry etc. which, together, might narrow down the true number of Essex Stock clans.