Henry Tupper

1. From Douglas Goff, correspondent.

"Landed Gentry", 4th Ed (1864), p. 1549: "Lineage"The Tuppers are descended from an ancient Saxon family, and according to documentary evidence, variously spelt Toupard or Toupart, Topffer, Toppfer, Topper, ets., especially in Germany, where the family still exists. From religious persecution, it removed to the Low Counties, and from thence took refuge in England, in the time of Henry VIII. Three brothers, Henry and Robert Tupper settled at Chichester, County Sussex, and William Tupper settled in London, acquiring lands by letters of patent from Queen Elizabeth, at Seaford, in Sussex, and had other grants from the Crown in County Essex. Another member of the family settled at Sandwich, County Kent, and he or his descendants emigrated, in the 16th [certainly, this must be the 17th century] century, to America, and became the founder of the numerous branches now existing in the various parts of the United States." (The article then follows the descendants of Henry's son, John, who settled in Guernsey and died there in 1601.)

From Rose Bean, a copy of "The Tupper History": The Tuppers are an ancient and honorable family deriving form Thuringia, and they flourished in Germany under such names as Toppfern, Toppherr, Töpfer and Tapfer from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Zedler the genealogist states that the original name of the family was Trefurth, but that the name Toppherr or Töpfer was assumed by Conrad Von Trefurth in 1270, when he changed his residence from Trefurth to Töpfer close by. Both places are not far from Eisenach. The family was strongly Protestant, and there is a tradition (of which our Tupper was extremely proud) that one of these early Teutonic Tuppers was a collaborator of Martin Luther himself. The name Martin has undoubtedly been common in the family since the fifteenth century. "As to my 'indignant Protestantism'," wrote Tupper to Gladston in 1867, "consider that I come of Martyr's blood -- of confessor's certainly according to our family tradition -- and that I must always deliver my conscience. In about 1522 certain members of the family were to be found in Hesse-Cassel. Thence Charles V exiled them for their Protestant opinions, and they removed first to the Low Countries -- where the name was spelt Toupard and Toupart -- and later either to the South of England, to Guernsey, or to America. Two brothers, Robert and Henry Tupper, settled at Chichester in the reign of Henry VIII. Another member of the family settled at Sandwich, and he or his descendants emigrated to America in the sixteenth century and were the forebears of numerous American and Canadian Tuppers. Two castles at Gross Töpferr and Klein Töpfer in Thuringia, destroyed in the Thirty Years War, were looked upon by Tupper -- and he had support from Zedler -- as the family's ancestral abodes. Their sites were faithfully ringed around by him on a German ordnance map in one of his scrapbooks. He also maintained a debatable theory that the two lakes in the Adirondack region of New York State, Great Tupper Lake and Little Tupper Lake, were "a remembrance of the German homes." Many of the American Tuppers have distinguished themselves. Members of the family fought on both sides at Bunker's Hill, and one was thanked by Washington in general orders, Sir Charles Tupper (1821-1915), the Canadian statesman, was a descendant of the loyalist soldier. The first Tupper to settle in Guernsey was John, son of the Henry Tupper of Chichester already mentioned. Voyaging to Bordaux, he was shipwrecked on Guernsey, and there met and married the heiress of the Signeur de Sark. His grandson, likewise John, at great risk carried news to Spithead on May 16, 1692, leading to the victory of La Hoge, for which service he received from William III a gold chain and medal which was since figured conspicuously in the Tupper coat of arms. The heroic John Tupper had a younger brother who held a naval commission under William III; this younger brother was the great-great-grandfather of Martin Farquhar Tupper. The Guernsey Tuppers have a gallant record of service in the Army and Navy. Lieutenant Carré Tupper, killed in action at Bastia, 1794; Lieutenant William Tupper, R.N., died of wounds received in action against Greek pirates, 1826; Colonel William de Vic Tupper, killed in action at Talca, 1830; Colonel William Le Mesurier Tupper, mortally wounded at St. Sebastian, 1836 -- these and others of the family are honourably remembered in Guernsey. Martin Tupper was proud to call himself a Guernseyman, and throughout his life took pains to preserve and strengthen his ties with the island. He believed in and lived up to the family motto: "L'Espoir est ma Force." [Derek Hudson -- "Martin Tupper -- His Rise and Fall." Constable & Co Ltd. London, 1949 pp 1-3. Preface written by Martin E. Tupper."] [3]

  1. [S85] Correspondent: Gibson, Helen, (Information attributed to Helen Gibson as a source have been developed through her research and through cooperative effort with her Aunt, Helen (Butler) Mazelow who produced most of the notes on the Butler line, the Tuttle line and the Peers line. ), Note of June 19th, 2002.

2. [S695] Correspondent: Goff, Doug.
3. [S346] Correspondent: Bean, Rose.

    Henry Tupper was a yeoman of Bury, Sussex, England, and the father of Thomas Tupper, the immigrant. He was a Puritan who followed the preaching of Robert Brown. Henry went with Robert Browne and Robert Harrison to Zeeland Holland in 1582. After a break between Browne and Harrison, he returned to England, settling in Lincolnshire, which was then notoriously Puritan in sympathies. Henry Tupper was not a fanatic Puritan, and maintained friendly relationships with families outside the Puritan circle. One such family was the Geere family who were neighbors in Sussex. Through William Geere, a merchant of London, Henry Tupper met Thomas Hampton, corwainer, of St. Sepulcher's, London, to whom he apprenticed his son Thomas from 1592-1599. For these seven years, Thomas Tupper, worked in the leather business and learned the trade of shoe-making. ******

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