Drake One-Name Study

(Click on picture to enlarge) Harry Drake

Drake
One-Name Study

Topics

About the Drake One-Name Study
Origin of the surname
Historical occurrences
Distribution of the name
Data
Links
Contact Details

About the Drake One-Name Study

If you are interested in family history and your name is DRAKE (or you are descended from a family with the DRAKE name) I shall be delighted to hear from you and will be pleased to share what I know about your ancestry.

As a child, I was intrigued by my grandmother's statement that we were related to Sir Francis Drake. My Drakes were from the West Riding of Yorkshire, confirmed back to Joseph Drake who married Margaret Holt 18 Sep 1674 at Elland. My collection of Drake information has grown out of a study of this Yorkshire family.

The photograph is of Harry Drake who was killed 30 March 1918. His line can be traced back to Isleham, Norfolk, in 1736.

Origin of the surname

In 'Yorkshire Surnames - Halifax & District' George Redmonds writes of DRAKE:

'No doubt a nickname, possibly from 'dragon' (see Reaney) or the male of the wild duck. The by-name was widespread from the twelfth century and Guppy identified significant concentrations in Devon, Dorset, Norfolk and the West Riding.'

Historical occurrences

Reginald le Drake owned land in Tiverton, Devon in the reign of Henry III

William Drake of Shibden, Halifax, Yorkshire is mentioned in 1275 in the reign of Edward I

Drake of Ashe is an old Devon family traced to the 14th century. A prominent Drake family (Tyrwhitt-Drake from the 19th century) has been in Buckinghamshire since 1603. This line originates from the Drake of Ashe family in Devon, and a male line can be traced back to the 15th century.

Ralf, John and Richard Drake are the first of the Tavistock, Devon family to be mentioned in the reign of Edward III

A Drake family was in possession of Horley Green, Northowram, Yorkshire, from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century. These Drakes were said to have come from Devon by Francis Drake, the eighteenth century antiquarian (see below). The arms of Drake of Ashe (the Devon family) were carved on the centre gable of the north side of the house at Horley Green.

Sir Francis Drake (c1540-1596) - the famous explorer and Admiral who later lived at Buckland Abbey, Devon

Captain Nathan Drake - a Royalist in the Civil Wars, he kept a diary of the siege of Pontefract (1645)

Samuel Drake - Vicar of Pontefract, a Royalist who served the King at the Siege of Newark (1646)

Francis Drake (1696-1771) was a surgeon, antiquarian and author of 'Eboracum' (1736), which has the following list of Drakes among the 540 subscribers:

Sir Francis Henry Drake Bart

William Drake Esq of Shardeloes, Bucks

William Drake Esq of Barnoldswick Cotes

Rev John Drake, Vicar of Smeeton, Vicar of Pontefract and Prebendary of York

Rev Samuel Drake, Rector of Treeton and of Holme on Spalding Moor

Rev Thomas Drake, Rector of Norham, Northumberland

Rev Nathan Drake, Minor Canon of Lincoln

Rev Samuel Drake, Minor Canon of Lincoln

Rev Joseph Drake, Rector of Burleigh

Rev Francis Drake of East Hardwick

Rev William Drake of Hatfield

Captain William Drake

Thomas Drake of Halifax

This Francis Drake, who owned the property at Horley Green, Northowram, for a period, also produced a Drake pedigree which can be seen in 'The History & Antiquities of the Parish of Halifax' (1775) by John Watson, who adds 'The above pedigree is such as, for antiquity and authenticity, will not often, in private families, be exceeded; it begins before surnames were in use, and it is extracted from ancient deeds, and other evidences, which are still preserved, and collected together. Tradition says, that this family came originally from Devonshire, where was lately an opulent family of the name of Sir William Drake, which had been long settled there, and of which the famous Sir Francis Drake was a branch.'

Roger Drake (d 1765) - Governor of Calcutta during the Black Hole incident in 1756

Nathan Drake (1766-1836) - author of 'Shakespeare and his Times' (1817) and 'Memorials of Shakespeare' (1828)

Ashday Hall, Southowram, Yorkshire, long in the possession of the Holdsworth family, came into the possession of Thomas Drake through his wife Phoebe (nee Holdsworth) in 1792. Ashday Hall remained in Drake possession until the late 1800s, and was then owned by Sir Gillery Piggott, and in her widowhood by Lady Piggott (nee Frances Drake).

Elizabeth Beatrice Fuller Eliott Drake of Buckland Abbey (1862-1937) - author of the two-volume 'The Family and Heirs of Sir Francis Drake' (1911)

Sir John Henry Eugen Vanderstegen Millington-Drake KCVO (1889-1933) - was British Ambassador in Montevideo in World War II, when his false intelligence trail was key to the eventual scuttling of the German raider ‘Graf Spee’ in the River Plate. Contact Paul Millington of the Millington ONS for more details on this family.

Distribution of the name

In the nineteenth century DRAKEs were most abundant in the West Riding of Yorkshire, mainly in the Northowram area of Halifax, but also in Thornton, near Bradford, as well as in Huddersfield, Leeds, and Sheffield. In other parts of England, the main accumulations were in Devon (predominant areas being Plymouth and Newton Abbot), Dorset (Dorchester and Blandford), East Anglia (Norwich and Ipswich) and many were in London (especially the East End) and Essex.

Data

I have most of the General Registration BMD entries for the DRAKE name from 1837 to 1910 (identified into families, and full names of spouses ascertained for many). I have extracted DRAKEs from the 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901 UK Census. Prior to the start of General Registration in 1837, I have more on the Yorkshire DRAKEs than others.