The Marks Family Tree
Where Did We Come From?

The earliest record available for the Marks family so far is in Barnstaple, Devon, England where Richard Marks married Agnes Lang on May 24, 1540.  It was toward the end of the reign of Henry VIII and during a tempestuous period of British history. While there is no record of Richard's background all indications are that the family is as old as England itself.

The names Richard, George and William marking the early generations were common in England at the time and working class occupations listed against some of them indicate that the family were simple working folk. In the third recorded generation when the family moved to South Tawton, William Marks married Gertrude Wonston.  Her name and that of Johanna, given to their oldest surviving daughter suggest the possibility of a Teutonic influence in the early line.  This potentially dates from the Saxon invasion of Britain (400 - 900AD) and then absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon nomenclature.  

While William is also an old Anglo-Saxon name  of Germanic origin it became most popular in Britain after the Norman Invasion of William the Conqueror in 1066.  Many of the first names later attached to the family have a Jewish flavour and, as the name Marks is common also in that faith,  some earlier family researchers  speculated on a possible Hebrew background.   However, the early generations had very "Christian" names and from the earliest English records the Marks family worshiped in Christian churches in Devon and Cornwall. Some of their names remain visibly Anglican, inscribed on ancient gravestones at Saltash in Devon and Rame and Cawsand in Cornwall.   Therefore Jewish ancestry is rather unlikely. 

About the time the first Marks names were recorded, the Tudor queen Elizabeth I succeeded to the English throne, inheriting a country pulled apart by religious confusion as Protestants and Catholics struggled for ecclesiastical control of England.  Her father Henry VIII, who separated Britain from the papal supremacy of the Roman Catholic church had opened the way for protestantism to flourish in Britain.

Information supplied  by  Shaun Killerby, a maternal descendant of the New Zealand Hannibal, suggests that the early family was not too far from that historic religious action.  The home town of Richard and Agnes Marks was Barnstable, a port market town and agricultural centre on Devon's coast at the Northern end of the road to the ancient walled city of Exeter.  Shaun found that Exeter was prominent in the Western Rebellion of 1549, when Devonian and Cornish parishoners unsuccessfully stormed its walls in protest against the introduction of the first Common Book of English Prayer.

The surname Markes/Marks itself probably is a Latin derivation of the Roman name Marcus which could have survived any of the above routes to the 16th century and has emerged in Norman French, English, German and ancient English iterations. 

With certainty though, in the four and a half centuries which followed the birth of our known line the core Marks family was as English as it was possible to be, putting their roots deep into the West Country soil and as seamen sailing the world during the period of Britain's greatest influence as a seafaring nation.   Along the way, as in every family they, left a diverse trail of human experience ranging from piracy, smuggling and illigitimacy to heroism and high honour. In particular it is a matter of record that the tiny coastal Cornish townships of Cawsand and Kingsand were centres of lawless smuggling in the 18th and 19th centuries and although one of our ancestors is reputed to have been an officer on HMS Victory (which became Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar) many were likely to have had less civic minded occupations.

Now the Marks family has dispersed around the world and no one branch can have any idea how wide we are now spread, or how many descendants followed Richard and Agnes.  Of course, along the way they picked up thousands of new family names who are all just as much part of the geneology of this old family. I hope we can extend into some of these maternal links as well. One branch managedCaptain Hannibal Marks to establish links with Alexander Selkirk, a pirate and seaman of a simlar generation born at the other end of the British Isles. After time wrecked on a deserted and windswept atoll in the South Atlantic he became the real life inspiration for Daniel Defoe's classic novel, Robinson Crusoe.

This family tree includes a core trunk  from Richard, links to the Scottish Selkirk family, a Cornish branch which still lives in a two hundred year old family home on the Cornish waterfront, relatives across Britain, two New Zealand branches, and beyond to Australia, Canada, the United States and to other families yet to be discovered. Among them are former British Governor General Sir Bernard Fergusson and the rugged pioneer New Zealand sea captain Hannibal Marks who was reputed to have swum to New Zealand (too eager to wait for transport from an immigrant ship to the New Plymouth shore line), who became one of the first captains of a New Zealand war ship and an effective founding member of the New Zealand Navy. After a a lifetime at sea he was to drown after a boating mishap on Tauranga harbour.  

I will make additions and alterations in any direction provided a link is established with the primary tree.   Please contact me with relevant material or with any text history or links which will extend knowledge of the Marks family,  its descendants and its marriage links, regardless of their current surname. Ironically, were it not for a scandalous incident in 1697 by a young lady by the name of Polinare Marks many hundreds of us including Captain Hannibal (above) would have had a different surname!


Site co-ordinator -  John Marks