Ping.
Heh heh, heh heh, he said 'Glasscock', heh heh.
A lot of Cornishmen came to California as well and could be found in mining towns such as Calico, now a ghost town near Barstow. They were known as "Cousin Jacks" because they all seemed to be related, and a good many were named Jack.
The Upper Midwest is largely populated by Germans and Scandinavians, mostly because the climate is similar to their homelands, and because so many of them were farmers and land was free for the homesteading in the latter 19th century.
I'm sure there are other ethnic pockets around the country that can tie their existence to some historical event. Large parts of the Dakotas, for example, are peopled by refugee Germans who had immigrated to South Russia under Catherine and were exempted from military service. Later, during the wars of empire that wracked Europe in the 19th century, the Czars reneged on their agreement and began to conscript these displaced Germans. They fled wholesale and tended to stick together in the New World.
It isn't Cock is it?
400 years ago(1588) : the battle of the spanish armada : England wrested control of the oceans from the spanish, portuguese, dutch, french(re-proven at trafalger, nelson's victory-in-death). Thus all the coasts of the world became british trade zones, the english language naturally followed. Thus ENGLISH is the world's language because of that long ago naval battle...it's a variation of the golden rule. In this case it was ownership of the oceans as the "gold" and he who owns the gold makes the rules...did you know the Union Jack is part of the Hawaiian State Flag?
Try playing with possible spellings. My mother's maiden name shows up with an alternate spelling.
So do I....and their are pages and pages of people in the phone book with my name in Vancouver, BC......(I lived there for awhile). It's such a basic name I thought for sure it would be on one of those lists....
So true about Yorkshire. Husband (and therefore I as well) has a verrry British name, almost unheard of in the US.
But go to the West Riding of Yorkshire, you can't throw a brick without hitting someone with that name.
A great tool for genealogy.... Bookmarking it. Thank you so much Blam!!
Now THAT'S shrinkage....
Not to pile on or anything, but I think the Cock surname was shortened sometime in the past.
Personally, I'm still childishly amused by foreign surnames which are hilarious in English. I'd post some Asian ones, but I don't wanna get banned again. ;')