Copyrighted by John B. Chesnut, Jr.
The following is from a book by
John B. Chesnut, Jr., 4045 Raymond Rd., Livermore, California 94550. The
book follows many of the descendancy lines of a Chesnut that I will call
"William of Bucks Co., PA." The text below is quoted from John's book.
Reprinted with permission of the author.
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"The first Chesnut of the family
branch in this book, to come to America is said to have come from Scotland,
but other origin details are shrouded in mystery because of the passage of
time and the lack of documentary evidence. Several Chesnut immigrants
(relationship uncertain) came to America in the early and mid-1700s; some
of these came from Ireland and some came from Scotland. Those coming from
Ireland were called Scots-Irish, since their fathers or grandfathers immigrated
to northern Ireland from Scotland during earlier times of distress in Scotland.
All Chesnut branches and families of the 1700s that were found during research
for this book were either Scot or Scots-Irish, leading us to the conclusion
that the ultimate origin of all branches of the Chesnut family was probably
in Scotland. In general, most Scots and Scots-Irish
pre-Revolution immigrants came to Philadelphia and the Delaware River area,
where Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is located, because of the promise of religious
tolerance in the Pennsylvania colony in the 1730s and 1740s. From eastern
Pennsylvania, these immigrants generally migrated in a south and south-westerly
direction, particularly into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where eastern
Augusta County was located and where the earliest documented member of our
Chesnut family settled in the 1760s. A primary reason for the Scots and
Scots-Irish migration to the Shenandoah Valley was that land there was
considerably cheaper than in Pennsylvania. Also, the Scots and Scots-Irish
were not received well in eastern Pennsylvania, due mainly to their numbers.
These people were mainly Presbyterian (Church of Scotland), i.e., non-conformists
to Episcopal edicts. The 1730s and 1740s in Scotland
were characterized by oppression by the English government which backed the
Church of England (Episcopal) at that time. Also, evictions were rampant
by Scottish landlords seeking to increase profits by grazing sheep and
eliminating tenant farmers. Many of these oppressed and evicted people of
the working, or yeoman, class went to America. Our Chesnut ancestor was very
likely among these. After arriving in America, most Chesnut descendants continued
to be farmers, as were most other immigrants in the 1700s. In fact, it was
found that very few Chesnuts were not farmers before 1900. In virtually all
cases, the occupations of Chesnuts in this book was farming unless noted
otherwise. The origin of the Chesnut name
is uncertain, but several possibilities have been commented on in reference
books as likely origins. For example, a Mormon book, Surname Book and
Racial History, says the name Chesnut means "the sign of the inn," indicating
that inns in old times were identified by chestnuts since most people could
not read, and the original Chesnut family head may have been an innkeeper
in the very distant past. Another book, Surnames as a Science, by
Robert Ferguson, comments briefly on the Chesnut name, saying: "There is
a present Friesic (northern Holland and western Germany area) name Tsjisse,
which...I take to have the sound of Chissa. Chesson may be taken to be from
the ending in "en" (a common phonetic accretion), and Chesnut might be from
the ending "noth," bold, frequent in Anglo-Saxon names." The same source
also comments that surnames from trees, including Chesnut, are the result
of the proximity of the original person who acquired the name to the grove
or forest of such trees. For example, "John of the chesnut grove" might have
become "John Chesnut." As to the correctness of spelling
of the family name, we note that the spelling of "chesnut" occurs twice in
the King James Bible as c-h-e-s-n-u-t, in reference to the tree. The King
James translation of the Bible was first published in 1611. Public records
after Revolutionary War times have usually misspelled the family name as
either "Chestnut" of "Chesnutt." In order to trace the correct spelling,
only ancestors' written signatures have been relied upon. In each case, without
exception, the signatures found were spelled as we spell the name today:
CHESNUT. The earliest signature found was that of 1William1 who died in 1783,
the first Chesnut in this book; the signature was on a 1779 document. The
"s" in Chesnut was sometimes written much like a cursive "f" in those days
and was written that way on the 1779 document."
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