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The name Prouse or Prowse and their many other spellings take their name from the village of Préaux 20 minutes or 16.2 km north east of Rouen, France. One of the most interesting and well known ancestors of the Prowse/Prouse family is Rollo the Viking chief who Charles the Simple ceded Rouen and Normandy. The name Prowse, Prouse, Preaux, Prowz and numerous other spellings came from the village of Preaux mentioned above.
The Prowse family has a long and illustrious past. Three Prouse brothers assisted young Duke William (later the Conqueror) escape from pursuers. The Prowse or Prouse family came to Devonshire, England around 1066 with William the Conqueror. They were early residents of Chagford in Devonshire. Chagford was an old statuary town for assessing and stamping tin. It lies on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. Today the ruins of Gidley Castle which was home for the Prowse family. My good friend and Prowse family historian of many years, Susan Prowse Tako, wrote a book many years ago about the Prowse family and its notables.
The Prowse coat of arms of three silver lions, rampant, on a black field adorned the walls of Gidleigh Castle from the mid 12th Century into the 15th and 16th centuries. The Prowse/Prouse family were found in Devonshire, Somerset, and Cornwall.
If you have Prowse/Prouse ancestors we welcome you to join our Prowse/Prouse Project at FTDNA. When my sons and I got the results of our Y-DNA tests we discovered that we have multiple nulls or missing DNA. We have round others with the same missing DNA sequence, but with different surnames. Our project is now working to try and connect all the Prowse/Prouse families in the U.S. to a common ancestor. If you would like to be part of this undertaking we welcome you. If you have multiple missing DNA in your DNA tests, we would also like to hear from you. A few of the surnames who have similar nulls are Winters, Gaskill, Gascoigne, Lippincott, Hatcher, Richrds, Chappell, Wells, Tuscan and Hicks.