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FROM ENGLAND . . . .
Somewhere in England centuries ago, there was a shallow river crossing. People called this crossing the ‘rum ford’ and those who lived closest were known as being from Rumford. What exactly it was that the people were describing when they talked about this particular ford has been lost to us. Unlike the transparent compounds Blackford, Redford or Longford, Rumford remains difficult to analyze. Some say that the ‘rum ford’ was known for its wideness and originated in the Old English adjective rûm, which survives today as ‘roomy.’ Others say that this is doubtful, since the regularities of language change would have produced a present-day ‘Rumiford’ or at least a mediaeval ‘Rumeford.’ These people point to two other words as possible origins: hruna meaning ‘a landslide at the bottom of a hill’ or ‘fallen trees’ and run meaning ‘council, discussion.’ So, the ford may have been known for the fallen log that marked its spot until it rotted away, or it may have been known for an important meeting that had once taken place there. Not only has the original meaning been lost to us, but also the site of the ‘rum ford’ - at least, that site which gave rise to the surname. This is not because there are no villages called Rumford on English maps, but because there are no records of any Rumfords having lived near these villages. This is unlike, for example, the Rainfords, who, at one time, lived around Rainford, a small village in western Lancashire. Throughout English history, there have been five places called Rumford. Three survive today on British maps: Rumford, Cornwall; Rumford, Sterling and Romford (pronounced Rumford) in Essex and named for the wide ford it offered travelers. The other two place names survive today only in legal documents. The Manchester Court Leet Records for the year 1610 mention in connection with the will of George Hi[u]lton a manor called Rumford. The manor may have been named either after a relative or after the nearby village of Rumworth. The Roll of the Pipe [1188] records the present-day Rufford in Nottinghamshire as Rumford. Either the recorder miswrote Rufford, meaning a ‘rough ford’ or confused it with Rainworth, a village a few miles downstream. Rainworth was of Scandinavian origin: hreinn vath, ‘clear ford.’ A partial English translation would have produced ‘Rainford’ and local pronunciation a possible but short-lived Rumford. But which of these places gave rise to the surname? Perhaps all of them did at one time or another as a man living near one of these Rumfords came to be called de Rumford or ‘from Rumford.’ There is a Warren de Rumford from the town of Romford in Essex, also a Willelmus de Rumford, who was called upon to be knight for Havering in Northhampton in 1220, and an Enkeyn de Rumford, who lived in Windsor in 1251. These are early instances of the place name being used as a surname, but there is no evidence of these people being progenitors of the Rumford family. There are also instances of Rumfords with no known connection to a place. Sometime between 1100 and 1115, Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, granted some land in Edeltorp [?present-day Addlethorpe] to Rumfar, also written in some records as Rumsaro, Romfare, Romphare or Romfard. For the next hundred years mention is made of men designated as filii Romphar, sons of Romphar’Š a bailiff in 1178; Alan, son of Rumfar; John, son of Rumfar and landowner; and in 1202, Augustinus and Willelmus, sons of Rumfer or Rumfard’ and plaintiffs in a Lincoln murder trial. Several centuries later we find Rumfords living around Boston, fifteen miles from Addlethorp: Rd. Rumforth [1506], Nicho Rumford [1520], Margaret Romford 1532. Could these be descendants of the filii Romphar’? It is difficult to say. Too many years of war and pestilence intervened to weaken the link between the twelfth century and the sixteenth, when records become more reliable. And as the sixteenth century opens up, we find a picture much different from the one we would expect. There are no Rumfords in Essex or are there any Rumfords living around any places called Rumford. Except for the Rumfords already mentioned living in Lincolnshire and a John Rumfford, whose will was read in 1557 in Worcester County, there are no other Rumfords living in England until we reach the County Durham. Here we find not one or two Rumford households but a dozen or so scattered throughout the northern half of the county. There are Rumfords, Rumbats, Rumfets, Rumfitts, Romfoths, Romfoots, Rumphatts, Rumpets, Rumpforths, Rumpharts-Rumfords all, living in an age when spelling was not fixed but at the mercy of court and parish secretaries. It is curious that in the sixteenth century there are so many Rumfords in Durham, where no Rumford village exists. Did a knight from the south known as de Rumford settle there? Did the filii Rumphar’ move there from Lincolnshire? Or was there, as suggested in the opening paragraph, a place in Durham known as Rumford which defined for a time a family living nearby-a family that flourished long after the place name was forgotten? Surely one of these possibilities is correct, for this county was, if not the ancestral home of the Rumfords, the home of its largest branch.
. . . TO AMERICA
From Durham, then, came the Rumfords to Northumberland, Yorkshire and perhaps to Worcester and Lincoln. From Durham, too, we suppose, came the earliest Rumfords to America: John Rumford [1697], whose descendants make up the greatest part of this genealogy, and William Rumford [1713], a close relative of his. Unfortunately, the origin of other immigrants to America is not as easy to determine. Such is the case with a Reverend Rumford or Rainford, who baptized African Americans in North Carolina in 1711, and with William Rumford, who came to Maryland in 1775 as an indentured servant, fought in the Revolution and disappeared after 1790. By the nineteenth century, as the Industrial Revolution began to uproot the English people, point of origin is no longer an indication of one’s ancestral family home. Other than George Rumford who was born in Yorkshire in 1796 and who arrived with his family in New York in 1842, the rest of the Rumfords who immigrated in the nineteenth century, seem to appear out of no where. Charles Rumford immigrated with his family to Boston, Massachusetts around 1874. Ann Rumford and her children landed in Philadelphia in 1883. A spinster Sarah Rumford, and a Thomas Rumford from Ireland, also arrived in 1883. And sometime at the close of the century, came Charles Rumford, who died in South Dakota in 1954. Some of these later immigrants left descendants while others died in obscurity. Once the name came to America, it no longer remained the property of white Englishmen but passed on to people of other races. Records show an African American Rumford family living in Chester, Pennsylvania around 1815 and another living in Waterford, Connecticut just before the Civil War. There is a Burmudan woman, Emma Rumford, living in Florida in 1900. And in the winter of 1862, a glimpse is caught of a part Indian, Malina Rumford, held in confinement at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, with the rest of her Sioux relations.
American Towns With The Name Rumford
As the surname came to America so came the place name. In 1692, a Nathan William willed a hundred acres, which he called ‘Rumford Division’ to his heirs. In 1780 a Thomas Whiting bequeathed Rumford Plantation in Gloucester County, Virginia, to his sons Henry and Horatio. In 1733, colonists, many who were from Romford, Essex, incorporated Penacook Plantation in New Hampshire under the name Rumford. Thirty years later the name was changed to Concord. That Concord was once called Rumford would have remained an obscure note to history, if it had not been for Benjamin Thompson, who turned Rumford into a household word in the nineteenth century. In 1772, Thompson married a wealthy widow from Concord, New Hampshire. When the Revolution broke out, Benjamin Thompson sided with the British and was knighted for loyalty. After the war, Sir Benjamin went to Bavaria, where he rose high in the government as a civil servant, inventor and scientist. His work resulted in improved fireplaces and a new, more accurate theory of thermodynamics. His inventions included a kitchen stove, the drip coffee pot and ‘Rumfordsuppe’, a soup of barley and potatoes, which he tried unsuccessfully to feed to the poor of Bavaria. In 1791, Thompson was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. For nostalgic reasons perhaps, he chose the erstwhile name of his wife’s home as his titled name. Thus, Sir Benjamin became Count von Rumford. As his fame quickly spread, so did his adopted name. For a time, Rumford became a household word and ‘to rumfordise’ meaning ‘to improve a chimney on Count Rumford’s system,’ entered the dictionary. There are several towns in America which owe their names to the Count. Rumford, Maine was settled by former inhabitants of Concord, New Hampshire and was first known as New Penacook Plantation. Because Count Rumford owned property there, the town was renamed Rumford about 1800. Rumford, Rhode Island was probably named for the Rumford Chemical Works of Providence (now the Rumford Company of Terre Haute, Indiana). This company produced a special all-phosphate baking powder from a recipe invented by Professor Horsford, who held the Rumford Chemistry Professorship at Harvard, a professorship established by the Count himself. Rumford, Virginia, which no longer exists, was named after the Rumford Academy. This school, probably named in honor of Count Rumford, was begun in 1805 by John Roane as a preparatory for William and Mary College. Its doors closed after the Civil War and the building was turned into a private residence and eventually torn down. All that remained was Rumford Post Office, which too disappeared about 1970. Rumford, South Dakota, a town of some thirty people in 1970, was named in the 1880s by an employee of the railroad after, it is believed, Rumford, Maine.
What began as a name for a wide, shallow ford somewhere in England has become, a thousand years later, a surname of some seven hundred people world wide and the place name of a half dozen villages and towns. It is an uncommon surname, and yet, thanks to Count Rumford, people say that they have heard of it. It has lost its original meaning, yet some wits are quick to point out that drinking rum and driving Fords do not mix. It is a name like any other, a mixture of geography and history, folklore and myth.