Having come to a point of diminishing returns (which is how I describe a wall) in investigating the origins of my line of Gilberts, I think it’s time to focus on the individuals. So much is lost about the people, themselves, when generations of friends and relatives move on to join our eternal ancestors, I find it a nearly urgent matter to preserve what we know about each of them for posterity. While there are no lack of anecdotes and facts I could write about my father, Bernard James “Jim” Gilbert, it is a bit difficult to just write a biographical blurb.

Of course, anyone who knew him also knew he had been a soldier, was a long-time volunteer in the Civil Defense, mostly worked as a cowboy hat wearing trucker, loved fishing, was a master archer and marksman, possessed movie star good looks, was a CB radio hobbyist, and could fix any car with a coat hanger and a hammer. Beyond those bare facts, I knew him to be a hard-working family man who was quietly dedicated to his children. Again, these seem mere facts to a boy trying to understand his father. There was something else about him, something a bit intangible and mysterious, that I could never quite grasp when I was younger. For example, I once saw him outdraw an angry man who already had his gun out – and the thing ended in a cordial conversation. On another occasion, a man who I knew to have been harassing dad at work ended up drinking coffee and laughing with him at our kitchen table one day. At dad’s funeral, the same man tearfully said “He was like a father to me.” Well, he was like a father to me, too!

I suppose I never really started understanding what my dad was like until I understood what it was to actually be him. While becoming a father myself helped this process, it wasn’t until catching a glimpse of my own shadow on a nighttime march during Army basic training that I was suddenly teleported into his skin. In an instant, I viscerally knew that he must have felt exactly as I did at that moment – once upon a time during his basic training. So, I wrote a story some time later that I think sums up what I knew my dad to be:

            I was six, and my dad had just purchased a beautiful, near-new station wagon.  I was too young to notice the make or model, but my mom was impressed enough, so that sufficed for me.  Growing up poor, I never really had much in the way of material things to be proud of.  This car, though, seemed to make my dad walk a little taller, and my mom seemed to dress a little prettier.  It was strange how such a simple thing as a car could make our family seem a little warmer- a little closer.  I remember that it was blue, with wooden trim, and was a lot shinier than anything I ever remembered us having before.  It seemed solid, like the strength in Dad’s arms, and as graceful as Mom’s hair.  I felt good about it because it made them feel good.

            We were into the second week of our newfound pride when Dad decided to take ‘the boys’ fishing.  I never really liked fishing, but it seemed to be how my dad bonded with my older brother.  I was always outside of that particular arrangement, but it didn’t bother me much.  I always occupied myself with excursions along the riverbank and into the woods nearby the Tippecanoe.  I had a fishing pole, but Dad or Brian usually took over the task of fishing with it as I became distracted by a snake or an interesting bug.  They were happy to have an extra line in the water, and I was happy to finally be free of the monotonous waiting.  It was kind of a little unspoken ritual that satisfied everyone in the expedition.  To this day, I cannot see the excitement found in staring at a bobber for hours on end.

            The fishing trip of this afternoon was to be, mercifully, a short one.  Mom needed us home for some reason or another, and dad was always loath to break-down the poles and return earlier than, say, eleven at night.  As it was, though, he was more loath to disappoint Mom.  At least, he was not willing to withstand her scorn.  (“Hell hath no fury…” etc., etc.)  Dad was always good at pushing the time envelope, though, having been a coast-to-coast trucker for some years before my creation.  I responded to his beckoning and watched the final moments of bobber-watching tick away.  The scene was always the same: Dad would crouch on the clay banks of the river, the three or four poles propped up on Y-shaped twigs, eagerly switching between wristwatch and bobbers.  He had the trip home timed to the second, and always held out for that “big one” that could bite at the last second.  Alas, the final tick-tock would come and the poles would, with much ‘gosh darn it’ regret, be broken down and stowed in our beautiful carriage.

            We children, too, would be stowed as fishing equipment.  Such is the way men transport their young.  I, as always, was first in the car.  This was not to hurry the others along, though.  It was only that the ride home was my favorite part of any fishing trip.  I loved the feel of the wind as the corn whistled past the open window.  The sun always shone on the way home, even if it had been raining during the actual fishing.  (This always upset Dad!)  Brian would be smiling at having once again out-fished the Old Man.  The Old Man, too, would be smiling- he loved to drive.  A certain peace would always come over his face as he took the wheel and hit the open road.  I would eventually learn the many reasons for this solace, but at age six I had no idea.  The feeling in the car would always be cheerful and positive on these rides home- in that quiet male sort of way. 

            This day I sat in the front, between Brian and Dad, because the back seat had been folded forward to accommodate the long fishing rods and the numerous boxes of worm-smelling tackle.  Mom always hated it when Dad put wet, seaweed-encrusted fishing stuff in her beautiful car.  The family car always became ‘her’ car somehow.  The family truck always became ‘his’ truck.  Things just worked like that.  Nothing, though, could spoil this warm afternoon’s whimsical ride through the country.  Dad took the long way home, and put extra petal into those little dips and hills that put the “tickle in your fancy”, as he called it.  There was a certain safe feeling with dad behind the wheel- the kind of feeling that only comes from knowing that your pop is in control of things.  Nobody else can ever quite equal this.

            There was a blue-gray mass that lumbered into the roadway from the left.  Before I could register what it even was, Dad was hard on the brake and spinning the wheel to the right.  Before I knew it, I was picking myself up off the floorboard, Dad’s firm hand helping me back onto the seat.  I had bounced off the metal dash, somehow, but my body had the resiliency of youth.  I reassured dad that I was fine.  I got a brief looking over, and he was out the door in a second.  I had seen my dad angry a few times before, and I knew that he would be angry this time.  Our beautiful chariot had been fiendishly smashed by the carelessness of another.  I could see through the windshield that we had gone off into the ditch and squarely crashed into a solid-looking telephone pole.  I looked for damage to the other people’s car, but strangely saw not a scratch.  My six-year-old brain was hard at work trying to figure out just what had happened.

            Tearing my unbelieving eyes off of the wrinkled hood, I saw Dad stride over to the other car.  He was not a mean person, and I had rarely ever been spanked or otherwise roughly handled by the man, but I feared his anger.  That’s not to say I feared him- it’s just that he had a masculine power that you knew lurked under the surface.  That power would be alien to me for at least another six years, so for the time being it only made him seem mysterious.  With mystery comes fear.  At that age, I only knew that Dad was somehow different than Mom on some profound, arcane level.  His masculinity stayed locked in a carefully guarded closet like some dangerous demon, which Dad could summon up at any time to smite those who would arouse his rage.  True, I had never seen the demon, and therefore had no proof of its nature, but I could sense it. 

            I watched the old couple get out of their still shiny car, which had appeared from out of nowhere to destroy our pride.  Dad crossed the last few feet towards them, and I awaited the demon.  I wanted to see it- to finally know what it was that fueled my apprehension.  What was this beast that made Dad, who was kind and gentle in all ways, so different from our kind and gentle mother?  Mom was tender through and through.  There was no secret closet in her mind.  Her temper was plain to see without any hidden source.  I could feel from her no tremors from any hidden fault lines.  She was like me, I thought to my age-six self, and I could understand that.

            The moment had arrived.  Dad was near the old couple, who were standing together with worried looks.  Their own ignorance had cost our poor family an irreplaceable $800, and we would never be happy again.  Dad loved that car- he finally had something nice to show for all his hard work.  He would be angry and the demon would be summoned.  Dad’s last steps were swift, almost a run, and his arms went out in a manner I had never seen before- this was it.

            Dad threw his arms around the couple and held their short frames to his chest.  I heard some sobs from the lady, who grabbed Dad about the body and repeated over and over again, “I’m sorry!  I’m so sorry!”  The elderly gentleman had tears in his eyes.  I could hear him explain that he had no insurance.  I didn’t know what that was, exactly, but I knew it was bad not to have.  I heard Dad’s deep, consoling voice over the other’s, “Don’t worry.  Don’t worry about it.  It’ll be alright.  Don’t worry a bit.  It’s just a car- everyone’s alright.”  He held them there for a long time- until the weeping stopped and the man decided that he’d better move the car out of the road.  Before the lady left, she kissed my Dad on the cheek and said, “You’re such a nice man.  You are such a good and nice man.”  He kissed her cheek in the same awkward and tender way he kissed us goodnight, and that was that.  All this I witnessed through the windshield of our ruined car.

            Dad walked back, pulled the fender away from the tire, and started up the car.  It worked well enough to take us home, but that was the last I ever rode in our magnificent set of wheels.  That last fishing trip, though, was the most important ride I had ever taken before or since.  I saw the demon, and it was no demon.  What Dad kept locked up in the closet of his mind was, indeed, a power he could summon at will, but I feared it no longer.  I saw it for what it really was.  It was the same power that made me feel secure when Dad was at the wheel- and when he tucked me in at night.  This was a power I still respected, for I knew that it could be dangerous, but I also wanted to have for my own someday.  I was beginning to learn what it was to be a man.

To this point, my genealogical studies have focused on the patrilineage from William Gilbert, the earliest suspected progenitor of the Gilberts of Compton, through my son.  However, this following of the male line is a vestige, a reflex (if you will), arising out of an interest in a surname – almost matter-of-factly passed through the male line.  However, this is only one way to see one’s heritage.  One’s father-to-son bloodline is virtually no more a contributor to one’s genetic makeup than one’s mother-to-son (or mother-to daughter, for that matter) line.  Indeed, any combination of relatives leading from the past to the present contribute roughly equally to one’s ancestry, regardless of the transmission of a name along with the DNA.  Therefore, it is time to look at the women who married into and contributed to the ancestral line I have been examining. 

In these times, it might be tempting to think that women have been marginalized, with great contempt, from the earliest times – an ugly outgrowth of our male-dominated tribal past.  However, my readings of medieval property records, along with other historical documents, suggests that this undeniable second-rating of women and their accomplishments has had most of its momentum in only the last few hundred years.  Speaking only broadly of the parts of Western culture I have studied, women often had central roles in society and government.  Tellingly, mentions of these women were not accompanied by footnotes of astonishment or exception, but in the ho-hum, common drone of any legal document of any epoch.  This hints at the common-place nature of powerful, influential, and important women.  For example, archeological evidence supports the idea that early Celtic tribes were routinely under the leadership of powerful women – Boudica of the Iceni comes to mind.  Famously, Viking women had a right to divorce.  In the Anglo-Norman times of my studies, it was the marriage of the obscure Geoffrey Gilbert to Lady Joan Compton that bestowed upon him Compton Castle and propelled his line into modest nobility.  This was not because it came as a dowry, but because in the 14^th century Lady Joan was an heiress.  Geoffrey’s great-grandfather, William, himself emerged from historical obscurity with his marriage to the high-born and well pedigreed Elizabeth Champernowne of Clist, who could trace her bloodlines back to King Henry I, William the Conqueror, and all the Dukes of Normandy.  A hundred years later, another William Gilbert would marry another Elizabeth Champernowne, this time of North Tawton, Devon.  Two hundred years after that, Katherine Champernowne would marry Otho Gilbert of Greenway (in a separate line), giving birth to notable explorers Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh. 

What follows is a catalog of all the women I am aware of who married into my line of Gilbert men, trying to account for their heritage based on surname and any actual genealogical data I have:

Elizabeth Champernowne, of noble Norman ancestry, having other Norman ancestors by the names of Valletort, Nonet, Dustanville, and Bret. Bret is an interesting name because it has roots in Old French, meaning ‘Breton’, or Celtic Bretons who likely escaped the early Anglo-Saxon conquest by coming to Normandy and ultimately helping to ‘reconquer’ England in 1066.

Lady Alice, with no record of her last name, but likely of Norman heritage based on the Old French origins of her first name.

Amy Thomas, with a last name that’s hard to pin down, but possibly Cornish or Welsh.

Joan Compton, mentioned above, she was heiress to the Norman family of de la Pole and of Compton, which may have been Anglo-Saxon.  Some of her ancestry includes Dalditch (probably Anglo-Saxon) and Peverell (Norman).

Elizabeth Champernowne of North Tawton, mentioned above, and likely the great-grand-niece of the previous Elizabeth Champernowne, of the same notable Norman family.

Isabel Gambon (Norman)

Elizabeth Hill (Anglo-Saxon)

Hanna Lacey, whose surname likely derives from the famous Norman de Lacy family.

Joan Hackett, where my Gilbert line diverges from the Compton line and into Somerset, is a Norman name nonetheless.

Jane Roberta Hayden, with her Anglo-Saxon surname, might be from the de Hayden family in Somerset.

Joan Pierce, corresponding to this Gilbert’s location in Somerset, is of an Anglo-Saxon family first mentioned in that place.

Margery Morken bears an ancient Welsh name that might even derive from Old Norse.

Elizabeth Bennett was the first Gilbert woman in this line to make the dangerous trip to America, likely following after her husband, Thomas, who had already arrived in Connecticut.  If this is true, she likely would have had the daunting task of caring for her young son, John Gilbert, along the way.  Elizabeth also had the children Ezekial, Josiah, Obadiah, Jonathan, and Sarah.  Judging by the sudden shift in first names from Norman to Biblical, and considering the time (mid 1600s near the English Civil War) we might surmise that these Gilberts were puritans fleeing persecution.  It’s hard to determine, but her surname seems English and is likely derived from ‘Benedictus’- common among people of Anglo-Norman descent.

Amy Lord has an ancient Anglo-Saxon name derived from ‘hlalord’ or ‘keeper of the loaf’, meaning ‘one responsible for feeding others’. 

Elizabeth Smith (Anglo-Saxon)

Lydia White, with a Norman surname, likely derived from Le Blanc.

Sara Bradshaw (Anglo-Saxon)

Sara Magruder, whose surname is an interesting one from Scottish Gaelic, derived from Mac Grudaire, a nickname meaning ‘son of the brewer’ – a name originating in Perthshire.

Matilda Todd, Todd coming from the Scottish Borders and northern Middle English.  Her last name and Midwestern location make a relationship to Mary Todd Lincoln a tantalizing possibility.

Isabelle Plew (Bavarian)

Sarah Jane Furrow (Ulster Irish)

Marie Tarant, wife of James Madison Gilbert, was my great grandmother.  Her parents were from Sadska, Bohemia, with Holem being her mother’s maiden name.  This Holem is likely a derivative of another Czech name.  Of great tragedy to our family, her nephew George Tarant, was a waist gunner on a B-24 liberator that was shot down over Denmark on June 21^st, 1944, by the Luftwaffe’s Lieutenant Woeske.   

Mildred Marie Scheetz, my grandmother, bore a surname from the Rhineland in Germany, with ancestors named Nickerson (Anglo-Saxon), Williams (possibly Welsh), Platt (also Germany), Klein (again from the Rhineland), Muckley (Rhineland still), and Daum (also German).

Gloria Jeanne Elliott, my mother, bore a spelling of the ‘Eliot’ name that may have been ancient Pictish from the personal name Aelfwald – said to have originated in Liddesdale, Scotland.  Mom had ancestors named Kahl (Germany) Krouse (Germany – my maternal grandmother’s maiden name), Pease (Orkney, Scotland), Schnider (Bavaria, Germany), Allis (back to Norman once again), and White (a second instance of this Norman surname, from le Blanc, in the genealogy).

Johanna Katherine Henbest, my children’s mother, bears a rare French Huguenot surname associated through DNA services and online sources with a single county in England whose refugee Huguenot population underwent a near wholesale relocation to Missouri.  Ancestors include Pfiefer (Austrian), Sparks, (a rare case of an Old Norse word coming to us from Old English), and Ennis (Cornwall).

Now it is down to my daughter, who is about to marry into an Italian family having an Anglo-Norman or Scottish last name!  She will carry with her a massively complex background of Anglo-Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Bohemian Czech, a whole lot of German, French, a touch of Congolese, and a myriad of other origins! 

Let’s take a moment to look at ‘Gilbert’ simply as a word, rather than as a surname.  As such, Gilbert has ancient Germanic origins as a combination of the words ‘gisil’ or ‘gisel’ and of ‘berht’, ‘behrt’, or ‘beraht’.  This first part is where we get ‘Gil-‘, and could mean pledge, hostage, or arrow shaft – basically some sort of issued or given thing.  The last part, the source of ‘-bert’, means famous or bright.  These kinds of two part names (a kind of ‘kenning’) were common in Northern Europe in the Late Iron Age and early Middle Ages.  This is attested to by such contemporary names as Beowulf, the hero, and Ulfbehrt, a famous type of sword whose name derives from the Frankish personal name “Bright Wolf”.  Gilbert, too, was a personal name, just like today’s John, Robert, or Donald.  Sometime in Western Europe around the 1100’s and 1200’s, when the idea of personal taxation started taking hold, it became necessary to more precisely identify landowners.  One strategy to do this was to identify people by adding their father’s given name to their own.  For example, it was not enough to say ‘William, living in Wiltshire, owed so-and-so some money’.  To more precisely identify that person, the records might say “William, son of Richard, owed so-and-so”.  This is where we ultimately get ‘Richardson’ as a last name – literally ‘Richard’s son’.  Likewise, you get from our earlier personal name examples ‘Johnson’, ‘Robertson’, and ‘Donaldson’.  These kinds of names, taken from the father’s first name, are a kind of ‘patronymic’ surname.  Gilbert, as a surname, is one of these, having been a very popular first name at the time.  This is why in addition to Gilbert, we see ‘Gilbertson’ and ‘FitzGilbert’ (from the Norman ‘fils Gilbert’, meaning ‘son of Gilbert’) as last names to this day.

Various spellings of Gilbert occur, not only in families having different origins, but within the same families on different documents at different time periods.  One of the reasons for this is that English spelling was not necessarily a standardized thing until surprisingly recently in history – less than 250 years.  So, even comparatively recent American ancestors might spell their names ‘Gilberde’ or something similar.  Adding to the confusion is that medieval records were usually written in Latin, so Gilbert was written accordingly, with adjective endings that tended to mean ‘of Gilbert’ or ‘Gilbert-ish’.  Thus, we see ‘Gilbertus’, ‘Gislebertus’, and ‘Gilberti’.  To be clear, these were not alternative spellings of Gilbert, but rather formal and legal spellings.  Notably, this affected first names, too, so we get Willelmus = William, Ricardus = Richard, Roberto = Robert, etc.  In yet another layer of obfuscation, we have to consider that the names they were Latinizing at the time were neither standardized in English nor strictly English!  As we mentioned, Gilbert has ancient Germanic origins and had various spellings across Europe and France at the time.  So, we start out with raw material such as ‘Gisilbehrt’, ‘Gisalbehrt’, ‘Gislebert’, ‘Guilbert’, ‘Gerebert’ and ‘Gileberte’ before even the beginnings of established last names, let alone standard English spelling.  Now, consider that my Anglo-Norman ancestors started out speaking a dialect of French and pronounced the name something like ‘Jil-bare’ before ‘becoming’ English, and you’ll see yet another source of variation.

It was from France that the name Gilbert really found its way to England.  Though the Domesday Book mentions at least one pre-Norman landowner as being named Gilbert (likely a single, personal name), the Norman conquest in 1066 ushered in the near-wholesale replacement of Anglo-Saxon names such as Aldwyn and Aethelwold with the French names that we call English today – John, William, Robert, Amy, and Joan.  This was at a time when the Anglo-Normans were just beginning to shift from the convention of using ‘fils-‘ or ‘fitz-‘ in front of the father’s given name to identify the child, to the use of true family names –kept and passed down through the male line.  It is shortly thereafter, in the very beginning of the 1200’s that we see the true English Gilbert surname start to be recorded, establishing the family that would come to be known as the Gilberts of Compton.  Interestingly, we don’t know if these forbearers were the first in their line to take the name.  They may have been inheritors of a family name established one or more generations earlier.  Also, we don’t know if these Gilberts even took their name from a progenitor named Gilbert.  It is entirely possible that they could have taken the name, instead, in honor of the then famous and revered Saint Gilbert of Sepringham who founded the Gilbertine Order in England in 1130.  It may even be possible that the name was taken in honor of Gilbert Universalis, Bishop of London until his death in 1134.

While looking into the French origins of the Gilbert name, I examined a few place names hoping for a lead:  Pregilbert, Moulins-Engilbert, Montgilbert, Chateau de Montgilbert, and Nesles-la-Gilberde.  Pregilbert, in Bourgone, is documented to have been named after the aforementioned Gilbert Universalis – demonstrating again the extent of cross-Channel culture at that time.  Moulins-Engilbert, also in Bourgone, has only scant information.  Most notably, it was in the territories of the Counts of Nevere at the end of the 12^th century, and Bonne d’Artois, widow of Philip of Burgundy, married Philip the Good at the castle of Moulins-Engilbert in 1424.  (Incidentally, the castle has been carbon dated to the end of the 10^th or beginning of the 11^th centuries.)  Another castle, the 13^th century Chateau de Montgilbert, is strangely not in Montgilbert.  Little information is available about either place.  Nesles-la-Gilberde, however, is known to have a 12^th century church.  Beyond the names themselves, there is little connecting any of these places to the Gilbert surname. 

One place of interest, however, is located in Normandy proper (unlike any of the above).  It is La Mesnil-Gilbert, the word ‘mesnil’ coming from the Latin meaning ‘a little dwelling’.  Today it is a tiny administrative area, akin to an American village or township, having a small church called Notre Dame du Mesnil-Gilbert.  According to “l’Histoire du diocèse de Coutances et d’Avranches”, Coutances 1878, page 379 (t. 2), this church was donated in 1082 to the holdings of the Collegiate Church of Mortain by one Robert, Count of Mortain, 2^nd Earl of Cornwall.  Another Robert, this one Count of Meulan, had (according to “Dictionnaire historique de toutes les communes du département de l’Eure histoire, géographie, statistique”) some dealings with a man called “Gilbert du Mesnil”, or ‘Gilbert of Mesnil’ around the 1170s or 1180s.  This Gilbert, however, could have come from anywhere, since ‘mesnil’ could refer to a number of locations in Normandy.  The bottom line is there is no solid connection between little Mesnil-Gilbert and the Gilbert surname so far, but it is interesting. 

As I mentioned in a previous writing, a surprisingly early use of Gilbert as a surname sprang up from my studies of French origins.   This was Guillaume (William) Gilbert, Bishop of Portiers from 1117 to 1124.  Records show his family included parents Gilbert and Elizabeth, a brother Geoffrey, and a sister Petronille.  They are, according to some sources, “from an old family of Parthenay”.  Nothing is known about the parents except that they had a house there, but with a father named ‘Gilbert’ it is nearly certain that this particular patronymic line starts with him.  Geoffrey Gilbert, however, was well known as one of the great Lords of Gatine, France, being a knight of Lord Lamaire, owning land all over, and dying childless.  Petronille Gilbert, however, married William Chabot around 1070, having children Briant Chabot, Guillaume Chabot, and Gilbert Chabot.  While clergy was not officially directed to celibacy until 1139, I can find no record of possible offspring from Bishop William Gilbert.  With his brother being recorded as leaving no heirs, and his sister marrying into the Chabot family, we lose sight of any further descendants. 

The best leads I have so far for a possible French (rather than purely English) origin of the Gilbert line that would become the Gilberts of Compton are the correctly-spelled and Normandy-located Le Mesnil-Gilbert (with its church from at least 1082), and mentions of a Richard Gilbert, Robert Gilbert, and a Walter (Galterius) Gilbert in Norman pipe rolls that predate the establishment of the Gilberts of Compton and possibly allude to holdings on both sides of the Channel.  Add to this a well-documented use of Gilbert as a surname in Western France as early as 1098 (the first mention of Bishop William Gilbert when he was Archbishop of Thouars), and we can say that it is certainly possible that a Gilbert line was created and continued to exist in Northwestern France from the late 1000s (be it of Bishop William’s descendants or not).  This line, or some branch, could have crossed the Channel sometime between then and the very early 1200s, establishing the Gilberts of Compton when the great grandson of William and Elizabeth Gilbert (again, not the only coupling of a William Gilbert with an Elizabeth Chambernowne), one Sir Geoffrey Gilbert, married lady Joan Compton – heiress of the Compton and de la Pole families.  It would be nice to make a definite connection to a well-known subject like Bishop William, but further insight at this point would be impossible without something like DNA testing – he is buried just to the left of the altar at Fontevraud Abby…