Nicholas Trask, Sr.

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From: Juel M. Trask

"Our" resident Trask Family Historian, my "Pardner" and good friend.

"At first I only did research on the American branch of the family. There were four of us that were doing research together on the Missouri Trask branch. We operated in somewhat of a vacuum. Over the years I began to shift my research from the genealogy of the Trask family to the history of the family. Researching the history of the family is somewhat different from studying the genealogy. Most of my research on the history of the family uses different resources than that of genealogical research. The type of resources I have researched for the early history of the family, are located in good University libraries. I had spent years as a graduate student doing research in University research libraries and I just changed my focus to studying the origin of the Trask family. At first I was just stumbling in the dark, but as I worked, I began to see ways to find a research path to follow. I never run across genealogists in my research, only graduate students and professors inhabit the musty stacks of a University research library.

Doing research on the middle ages is a very unique area to research. There are many problems to over come. One of the biggest stumbling blocks I ran up against, was the information blackout caused by the Black Plague in the mid 14th century. It took me several years to find a way to resolve that issue and I still find it a research block for the 14th and 15th centuries.

The possibility of the de Thresk family being of Norman origin is one of the main hypothesis that I considered. In recent years that has been a persistent rumor in the family. I think the primary basis for this rumor is the prefix de with the Thresk name. I kept this in mind during my research.

The surname of our family has undergone many changes through the years. Sometime in the 14th century the "de" was dropped. During the 15th and 16th centuries it evidently evolved from Thresk into Traske. The "e" was dropped off the name some time after the family came to the Bay Plantation. The family in England also dropped the "e" off Traske at some point. I don't remember ever seeing anyone spelling the name Traske today. I think there was a practice of ending many English names with an "e" until a couple of centuries ago.

Christian Trask has good point about what an unusual name Osmund is and how it might be a marker. I have seen Osmond's names spelled several ways in the records. Osmond, Osmund, Osmand, and Osman are some of the variations I have run across. The word osmund is from Middle English and is derived from Old French. It refers in modern English to a species of ferns that have fibrous roots and is sometimes used as a potting medium for cultivated plants. The use of Osmund as a christian name within the Traske family at East Coker was common during the 16th and 17th centuries.

By the way, my research is still in progress. My paper is only a work in progress that I wrote to let my family know what I had found so far in my research. I doubt that I will finish my research in my lifetime. I began my research on the Trask family in the early 1970's - "Origin Of The Trask Family".

After years of consideration I lean toward the theory that the origin of the de Thresk name is the result of the family coming from Thirsk. The name of the town of Thirsk appears to be of Danish (Viking) origin. It is well known that the region was a Viking stronghold for many centuries before the Norman invasion.

Thirsk is a part of England that was controlled by the Danes (Vikings) and Saxons during the last of the first millennium and the first of the second millennium. After William the Norman's defeat of the English King at the Battle of Hastings, the region was given to William's Norman supporters. The Danes and Saxons who had occupied the region for several centuries were made landless by William. I suspect that the predecessors of the de Thresk family were Danes who were left landless by the seizure of Yorkshire by the Norman's. My conclusion is that if the de Thresks had been Norman's, they would have held a higher position in the social structure of Norman Yorkshire. They appear to have held a lower status than the Norman's of 12th century Yorkshire. The reason for choosing a Viking background for the de Thresks rather than a Saxon heritage is the long held idea within the English branch of the family, that the Traske family's origin was Viking. Thanks for that information, Lawrie!

My most likely scenario for the rise of the Traske (de Thresk) family is that the family overcame the Norman suppression of non Norman families by becoming deeply involved in the Catholic Church. There were two sources of power in the middle ages, hereditary and ecclestaical. The common thread that I have found from the 12th century on for the de Thresk family is ecclesiastical. We were church people. The families of hereditary background often despised the church people because they saw the church as a threat to their hereditary wealth and power. Of course people of hereditary background also became church people."

"1. Origin. Some have supposed that this church owes its origin to the labors of John James who was martyred October 19, 1661. President Daland goes back as far as about 1580. In 1617 (or 1616) John Trask came to London from Salisbury and held revival meetings. One of his disciples, named Hamlet Jackson, was the means of bringing Trask and many, if not all, of his congregation to the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath in about 1617, and Elder William M. Jones says that this Traskite congregation was the origin of the Mill Yard Church. All the records of this church, prior to 1673, were destroyed in the fire of 1790; the Old Church Book,' dating from 1673 to 1840, refers to an older record. The New Church Book' dates from 1840 to the present time.--

"2. Place of worship. From the beginning until 1654 they worshiped near Whitechapel'; in 1661 their meeting place was in Bull Stake Alley, ' and in 1680 they were at East Smithfield -- for from here they addressed a letter to the New Port (R.I.) Church, dated East Smithfield, London, Dec. 21, 1680. From 1691 to 1785 they worshipped in Mill Yard Goodman's Fields, County of Middlesex, a part of London, now in the heart of Metropolis. Their chapel there was burned in 1790, and in September of the same year the first stone of a new edifice was laid by John, Joseph and William Slater, the only trustees for some years.