Families of Staffordshire
Stoke-on-Trent and Cannock Chase, the Potteries, Lichfield's cathedral, and the surnames of the upper Trent.
Tap a region of the map to see who held it.
Families seated in Staffordshire
- WrightThe maker, every guild town shaped one.
- WoodBy the wood.
- HillOn the hill, and the Penny Post and the National Trust.
- WardThe watchman.
- TurnerThe lathe.
- CoxThe cock, youth and pride.
- DavisSon of David, one spelling among England's commonest.
- LeeThe meadow, and a clearing-name stamped on dozens of villages.
- BrooksBy the brook, every wet valley had one.
- ShawThe copse-edge, Lancashire loves it.
- PerryPear-orchard or Peter's kin.
- FordThe crossing, stamped on Shakespearian country.
- FoxThe fox, nickname that stuck.
- MatthewsMatthew's son, March and Welsh edge.
- LaneThe lane, hedge-bottom dweller.
- HayesThe enclosure, hedged common.
- WestonThe western farm, toponym epidemic.
- LoweDweller by the mound, a Marches hill-name.
- BurtonThe fortified farmstead, a name from a hundred villages.
- BradleyThe broad clearing in the wood.
Historic ties to Staffordshire
Families with historic but not core ground here.
Champions made here
Famous bearers whose lives or work root in Staffordshire.
- Sir Stanley MatthewsThe Hanley barber's son who played top-flight English football until he was fifty, was knighted while still playing, and won the 1953 FA Cup Final in a comeback the country named after him.
- Samuel JohnsonThe Lichfield bookseller's son whose Dictionary of the English Language (1755) defined the modern English vocabulary, whose Lives of the Poets (1779 to 1781) founded English-language literary biography, and whose nine-year conversation with James Boswell produced the greatest biography in the English language.
- R. J. MitchellThe Staffordshire schoolmaster's son who joined Supermarine at Southampton in 1916, designed the four Schneider Trophy winners of 1922 to 1931, and on his own initiative and against his own pancreatic cancer designed the Spitfire prototype K5054, the fighter aeroplane that on the production floors of Castle Bromwich in 1940 saved the country.
Stories told here
Legends set in Staffordshire, from any family that carries them.