Families of Merseyside
Liverpool and the Wirral, the Atlantic gateway, the Irish-Sea diaspora, and the Cunard-built names of the western seaboard.
Tap a region of the map to see who held it.
Families seated in Merseyside
- WrightThe maker, every guild town shaped one.
- WoodBy the wood.
- HallAt the hall.
- TurnerThe lathe.
- HarrisonSon of Harry.
- FisherThe fisher, and the Bishop of Rochester at Tower Hill.
- RichardsonSon of Richard.
- HolmesThe holme, dry ground in the wet country.
- LeeThe meadow, and a clearing-name stamped on dozens of villages.
- BrooksBy the brook, every wet valley had one.
- BennettBlessed Benedict, Lancashire knots it tight.
- ShawThe copse-edge, Lancashire loves it.
- FosterThe forester's shortening.
- GibsonGib's son, industrial northeast.
- WaltonThe settlement of strangers, England mapped it eighty times.
- HayesThe enclosure, hedged common.
- WebsterShe wove, northern -ster craft name.
- BatesBartholomew's short name, northern genitive.
- ChapmanThe merchant, fair and street.
- MortonThe moor settlement, marcher villages.
- StanleyEarls of Derby, kingmakers at Bosworth, two Prime Ministers.
Historic ties to Merseyside
Families with historic but not core ground here.
Champions made here
Famous bearers whose lives or work root in Merseyside.
- Glenda JacksonThe Birkenhead bricklayer's daughter who won two Academy Awards in three years, served twenty-three years as a Labour MP, and came back to play King Lear at seventy-nine.
- Earl of DerbyThe Knowsley aristocrat who carried the abolition of slavery through the House of Commons, led his party for twenty-two years, and three times formed a government, crowning it with the Reform Act that doubled the electorate.
- Josephine ButlerThe Northumberland-born Liverpool clergyman's wife who led the seventeen-year national campaign that secured the 1886 repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and through that campaign founded the modern English-language women's-rights movement against state-licensed prostitution.
Stories told here
Legends set in Merseyside, from any family that carries them.