Edward Dorsey, I - Hockley-in-the-Hole Located

Started by Private User on Saturday, August 23, 2014
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Private User
8/23/2014 at 1:12 PM

Edward Dorsey of Maryland['s] sons gave the peculiar name of 'Hockley-in-the-Hole' to their Anne Arundel plantation. The provenance of this name has been obscure, perhaps because no one was looking low enough.

There is a small village called Hockley Hole, on the Middlesex-Buckinghamshire border near Stoke Poges, and another such village in Bedfordshire. But a more likely origin is to be found in old London itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockley-in-the-Hole

Hockley-in-the-Hole was an area of Clerkenwell in central London where bull-baiting and bear-baiting and similar activities took place in the 17th century and 18th century.[1] It was roughly where the Ray Street Bridge stands today, north of the junction of Clerkenwell Road and Farringdon Road. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45102

Some sources trace the blood sports of Hockley-in-the-Hole back to Tudor times.

If *that* is where Edward Dorsey came from, he was as common as common could be.

8/23/2014 at 4:24 PM

As a Tudor "sport," bear baiting was not just a commoner's passion. No less a personage than Elizabeth I herself took great delight in the spectacle of English Mastifs taking on the "Great Ursus." According to one contemporary report, French Ambassadors: 'were brought to court with music to dinner, and after a splendid dinner, were entertained with the baiting of bears and bulls with English dogs. The queen's grace herself, and the ambassadors, stood in the gallery looking on the pastime till six at night.' (1)

So, while it might be tempting to conclude that such "low sport" meant Edward Dorsey was a "common man," I would not base my assessment of him based on this criteria alone.

(1) Mabillard, Amanda. Entertainment in Elizabethan England Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. (date when you accessed the information) < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/entertainment.html&gt;.

(Sorry, I deleted the original post because I hit "post reply" before the appropriate citation could be added).

Private
8/23/2014 at 4:55 PM

There are many many speculations re Edward Dorsey's background and non yet that I know of, or DNA to this point. Some guessed that he may have been a D'Arcy based on the stamp he used which hold question. There is a possiblity of spelling variations as well.

Perhaps checking and speculation re location etc in England and " good guesswork" well founded may be a good way to check our records in those areas. I have even seen Ireland speculated as well. To this point we still have no proof. Families that they intermarried with in the first generation may give a clue as people often continued marrying into the same social class as they had in England esp as in truth they were English outpost of culture.
My hope is that a breaktrhough will be made- these attempts and sharing them at least sound like points of promise--as more " cards are layed upon the table" perhaps a pattern will form, hopefully providing an answer. Religion, and perhaps names of other properties may help as well. Good searching, just keep it up. I doff my hat to both Helms and Leddon...cheers Philip

Private User
8/23/2014 at 5:02 PM

It's not the sport, it's the area - Hockley-in-the-hole was a rough, tough, rather dangerous quarter between Clerkenwell and Islington.

"Old and New London, volume 2" puts it bluntly: "This place was formerly one of those infamous localities only equalled by Tothill Fields, at Westminster, and Saffron Hill, in the valley of the Fleet. It was the resort of thieves, highwaymen, and bullbaiters." http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45102

The area has since been raised, drained, renamed (to Ray Street) and gentrified.

Private User
8/23/2014 at 5:38 PM

Actually, we *do* have some DNA information on the Dorsey vs. D'Arcy lines, and they DO NOT MATCH.

Edward Dorsey I and his male-line descendants fall under Y-DNA haplotype R, mainly R-M269. This haplotype is *very* common in Ireland and not exactly rare in England.

The D'Arcys of Meath (descended from the Norman D'Arcys) are haplotype E. This type is uncommon, but not unknown, in Europe, less rare in in the Middle East, and quite common in Africa. http://www.genebase.com/learning/article/2

============================================

https://www.familytreedna.com/public/DorseyDNA/default.aspx?section...

http://www.contexo.info/DorseyDNA/LineageI.htm

Private
8/24/2014 at 8:13 AM

Maven- thank you for the DNA information. I sense that in time with more DNA we will hone in on the correct lines of origin....you really checked this out and reported quite well- my compliments. I am certain a lot of people will be enthused by this... Maven take a curtain call- good work. Thank you, Philip

8/25/2014 at 11:14 AM

Or perhaps the name is a reminder of a lesson dearly learned in someone's past.

According to my research, not only did they do bear baiting at Hockley-in-the Hole, they also did a type of gladiatorial combat there as well. We can see an echo of that tradition in John Gay's work "The Beggar's Opera" wherein Mrs. Peachum tells Filch: "You must go to Hockley-in-the-Hole and Marybone, child, to learn valour, These are the schools that have bred so many brave men."

Although I can only speak for my own line (I am a Wells) It seems to me that there was no lack of courage in the Dorseys (or in the other families that allied themselves with them by marriage or association.)

8/25/2014 at 12:03 PM

What a fascinating historical tidbit this is! Bull baiting, and Colonial plantations named after London neighborhood's.

Did you run across a Hell's Half Acre by any chance?

8/26/2014 at 10:57 AM

The only context I have ever heard that expression used in was in conjunction with military reinactments. According to what I was told, "Hell's Half-Acre" (or more familiarly) "The Acre" referred to places like Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Antietam. I am told that later soldiers used it in WWI to refer to the "no-man's land" between enemy lines.

BTW - on the Hockley reference...does anyone else find it interesting that Hockley in the Hole also refers to a place where sword combat was practiced...and the "mysterious" Dorsey seal "An Por Peth" has a hand holding an unsheathed blade on it?

Maybe it's my very diluted Dorsey blood (Charles Wells/Sarah (Dorsey) Wells) but it seems significant somehow...

Private
8/27/2014 at 6:18 AM

Two things, one during my life many people in Maryland have had questions regarding Hoclkey in the Hole...and another odd thing is that the immigrant Dorsey used as his seal- the mark of the D'Arcy family which can be seen on their sheild.

I have had a suspicion that D'Arcy pronounced with an Irish brogue would come out as Dorsey...just an odd guess;however, I have heard the Irish Brogue change the sound of a word or name.

I sense that one day this riddle will be solved--the mystery of genealogy adds to the fun of the chase so to speak. A search- well done...

Private User
8/27/2014 at 7:52 AM

I think Edward Dorsey just swiped the seal design because he liked the look of it and it gave him an air of importance. There is virtually zero chance that he was descended from the D'Arcys (see Y-DNA findings), unless it was on the maternal side (which doesn't count for armorial purposes).

The whole reason for the Visitations series was that people had started giving themselves airs and laying claim to arms that they were not entitled to - so the heralds started going around checking up on families to find out who *did* have armorial rights and who did not (the latter were fined, as a rule, and listed with the College in case they tried it again). But the College of Heralds did not have, and never has had, any jurisdiction in the Colonies, and as soon as people figured *that* out, they went deuces-wild.

Private
8/28/2014 at 8:54 AM

Good point Maven...I was it seems trying to brainstorm- which is a technique for problem solving- glad you brought this point up as it reduces the pile of possibles... and I am in agreement with you. Given enough time- one day the answers will surface. All we need is a few correct DNA lines from Europe.

Have a fine day Maven, and thank you once again.

6/13/2017 at 11:35 AM

@ Would anyone be able to show a connection between this Edward Dorsey, I, and Caleb Dorsey, who deeded the land for "Old Brick Church", at Columbia, MD?

Private User
6/14/2017 at 11:13 AM

Edward Dorsey I seems to have lost a couple of sons - Caleb *should* be his grandson via Hon. John Dorsey. No doubt this occurred when his wife was dis-identified (she wasn't Anne Howard but was probably Anne somebody), and the lines were not properly moved and reattached.

5/4/2018 at 8:48 PM

I found this I going to check out their Referances

https://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=spot54&amp;id=I...

Billie

5/4/2018 at 8:55 PM

Here one of the Books that mentions the Parentages

Harry Wright Newman
To Maryland from Overseas. a Complete Digest of the Jacobite Loyalists Sold Into White Slavery in Maryland, and the British and Contintental Backgroun
ISBN-13: 978-0806311098, ISBN-10: 0806311096

Maybe it will have useful information
Billie

5/4/2018 at 9:05 PM

https://archive.org/stream/annearundelgentr00newm_0#page/3/mode/1up

Oh this book gives nice information on Dorcey family

Billie

Private User
5/4/2018 at 9:59 PM

We got it sorted out, thank you. Newman does a good job from Edward Dorsey I on down, but was just a teensy bit too willing to believe in the (disproven) D'Arcy connection. Also, he didn't seem to know about "Hockley-in-the-Hole" in London (a rough-and-tumble kind of place where you could find bear-baiting, swashbuckling, bare-knuckles boxing, gambling, and so forth - and would be lucky not to get mugged or pickpocketed).

5/4/2018 at 11:06 PM

Maven,
Didn’t Some English actully have origins in Ireland as they did have some wars in 1300-1500’s I saw or even earlier. I was looking at some history Documentaries they were going over battles migrations ect of Europe and Covered area throughly. They took each other’s people some made slaves of them during Roman times. This one thing I find fascinating with peoples assumptions on DNA if they had these practices you could almost come up with lots in England Scotland Ireland Area. They so close to one another. I saw where in Robert DeBruces times that he was in Scotland but his brother had Ireland then big war happened he ended up in England but they seem to count the lines as Scottish funny. Just thought I ask about that.
Billie

Private User
5/5/2018 at 8:23 AM

More like the other way around - some Irish families proved out as Norman (which for the most part they knew already).

Go back far enough and the Scots are Irish immigrants (don't make a point of it, they don't like to be reminded).

Let me see...the original inhabitants of the British Isles are now thought to have immigrated from "Doggerland" (an area in the southern North Sea that was flooded and sunk at the end of the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago). They may, or may not, have been the aboriginal "Picts". (If they weren't, the Picts were an early wave of conquering invaders.)

The next wave we know about included the "P-Celts" or Old Brythons, who took over everything south of the Firth of Forth. Whether they also reached Ireland is an unanswered question.

The Irish qua Irish came along later and may have invaded by sea from Galicia (in Spain), much as their legends tell it. Eventually they took over the whole island and branched out into western Scotland and northwest England, with some incursions into Wales.

By this time the British Isles were fully isolated from the Continent and the various peoples were left to themselves...for a while. (Mostly. There is some evidence of trade with the first-known of the deep-water sailing peoples, the Phoenicians, but they left little impact.)

Then the Romans went on an expansionist kick, grabbed off Celtic Gaul, and cast greedy eyes across the Channel. Julius Caesar is said to have been the first to attempt an invasion, but eventually it was repulsed. It was under Claudius that the Romans came in force - and stayed for four hundred years. (And since the Romans drew troops from everywhere within the Empire, they may account for some of the odder Y-haplogroups in Britain.) They knew enough about Ireland to give it a Roman name - "Hibernia", or "winter quarters" - but otherwise don't seem to have made much of an impression.

The last of the Legions left Britain early in the fifth century, and chaos promptly ensued. Angles and Saxons and Jutes, oh my! :-) And before the Romanized Britons quite knew what had hit them, they were being pushed into the corners of what had once been their own land. (Why Welsh differs from Cornish and from Manx - they were isolated Celtic refuges.)

The inhabitants of the lower half of the min island eventually settled down under their new rulers with a new name - "Angles", or "English" - but then the Norse started troubling everybody. They took over in the Hebrides and northern Highlands, they made major inroads into Ireland and taught the Irish to build settled towns, they grabbed off most of the eastern portions of England and lower Scotland (the "Danelaw"), and came close to shoving the English on top of the Welsh and Cornish. (Alfred the Great put a stop to that, and the English pushed back.) But the Norse didn't give up so easily - under Cnut (Canute) they forged a short-lived "North Sea Empire" that included England, Norway, southern Sweden, and Denmark. But after Cnut it all fell apart again.

Harald Hardraada wanted to re-establish the "North Sea Empire", claimed the throne of Norway, made incursions into Denmark (but was not able to secure the crown), and famously attacked England in 1066 - a few short weeks before William of Normandy had the same idea. If Harold Godwinsson hadn't had to face two invasions back-to back and march his men the length and breadth of England - twice - things might have been very different.

Anyway, William and the Normans. They wanted it ALL, and managed to get most of it. There were holdouts in Cumbria until the reign of Henry I, and the Scots managed to stand them off completely (but couldn't keep their cultural influence, and occasional immigrant families, out). This is probably when the Highland/Lowland dichotomy really took shape - Lowland Scotland became increasingly Normanized, while the Highlanders stuck to their (Norse-ified) old ways (and were increasingly regarded as backward barbarians by their Lowland cousins).

The Normans got control of Wales, eventually, but remained more-or-less nominal overlords with a restless and sometimes outright rebellious subject population who didn't even speak the same language. At their high point they also held the southeastern half of Ireland, but it was much the same story - and they had a problem that they didn't have in Wales. Some of the Norman conquering families decided they liked *being* Irish, and allied with the Old Irish against further incursions. (The "Geraldines", or FitzGeralds, as Norman as their name implies, are often cited in this context. But they were far from the only ones)

And so matters stood, more or less in dynamic tension, with pushbacks from this side and that, until the Tudors came along. (Don't believe that 1066 was the "last" successful invasion of England - it wasn't. 1485 was.) Henry VII and, even more so, Henry VIII cracked down on the Welsh, made them learn English and give up their patronymic naming habits, and in all things insisted that they become "proper Englishmen". But the Tudor dynasty failed with "Good" Queen Bess (who managed to scare a number of the Old Irish and Norman-Irish lords out of Ireland to the four corners of the globe), and rather than the English conquering Scotland (which they never did), it was the Scots (under James I) who got to rule the English.

James put the hammer to Ireland also, transplanting large numbers of Protestant Scotsmen into Catholic Ulster and laying the groundwork for centuries of trouble.

The Stewarts, unfortunately, were frightfully incompetent rulers, and James' son Charles was even more incompetent and pigheaded than he was. That led to open rebellion, civil war, Charles' execution, and the rise of one Oliver Cromwell. And no sooner had Cromwell secured his grip on England than he turned to crushing the Irish once and for all. And he almost managed it....

Private User
5/5/2018 at 8:31 AM

Whew! Apologies for the Wall of Text!

5/5/2018 at 5:42 PM

It was very good, Maven. The history of England according to the Mave!

Private User
5/5/2018 at 8:23 PM

It's a very broad-brush account, and mainly intended to describe mass movements of various peoples into and around the British Isles. And I forgot or neglected to mention that the Irish were "Q-Celts" - that is, their language was related to, but significantly different from, Gaulish and Old Brythonic. Details, details....

Private User
9/15/2019 at 3:51 PM

Edward was my 10th great grandfather.. I use to live in Brooklyn park Maryland. I would drive up and down Dorsey Hwy all the time. but never new anything about the Dorsey in my family until I did a DNA test. My Mother and father never was married, and she gave me her ex Husbands last name. kept me from seeing my fathers side of the family. Glad I can figure out who is who in my family..

9/15/2019 at 8:08 PM

I added him to few projects but there wasn’t a Province of Maryland project or Colonial Maryland Project I wasn’t able to find one. So I only added what I saw.

Billie

11/2/2021 at 12:48 PM

Wow. I'm 3 years late on this! Thanks, Maven, for all you do for all of us. Loved the history lesson.

I'm still hoping that there are new Dorsey DNA findings in the offing. I'm buying the Irish origin but it still seems to me that there should be some sort of record or other physical evidence of the Dorseys in Ireland. I have another "dead end" of the same kind with the Duvall branch of my family - can get Marin Duvall back to France but then i'l n'y avait rien.

Trying to get the Dorsey males in my family to do the DNA tests is like pulling teeth...Got one terribly irate relative (man I have never met) who was incensed that I took issue with the fact that the Dorsey's were royalty. He said that it was proven to his satisfaction and...that was that. Okay then.

Again, thanks.

Noël

11/2/2021 at 12:48 PM

Wow. I'm 3 years late on this! Thanks, Maven, for all you do for all of us. Loved the history lesson.

I'm still hoping that there are new Dorsey DNA findings in the offing. I'm buying the Irish origin but it still seems to me that there should be some sort of record or other physical evidence of the Dorseys in Ireland. I have another "dead end" of the same kind with the Duvall branch of my family - can get Marin Duvall back to France but then i'l n'y avait rien.

Trying to get the Dorsey males in my family to do the DNA tests is like pulling teeth...Got one terribly irate relative (man I have never met) who was incensed that I took issue with the fact that the Dorsey's were royalty. He said that it was proven to his satisfaction and...that was that. Okay then.

Again, thanks.

Noël

Private User
11/2/2021 at 2:31 PM

Part of the problem tracing the Dorseys seems to be that founder Edward Dorsey either bugged out from Ireland to London at a young age, or perhaps was actually born there to parents (or even grandparents?) who had done the same.

That he was familiar with Hockley-in-the-Hole, his choice of plantation name strongly indicates. I sometime fancy that he made a killing in the blood sports practiced there, and got out of town while the getting was good.

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