Wem
One-Name Study

Topics

• About the Wem One-Name Study
• Variants
• Origin of the surname
• Historical occurrences
• Frequency of the name
• Distribution of the name
• Data
• DNA project
• Contact Details

About the Wem One-Name Study

I started my journey into Family History as a result of my younger daughter asking her maternal grandmother about her family. I had earlier explained the relationship, or lack of it, between her and her siblings and the various adults they called Aunts and Uncles, As a result of that conversation one of her siblings bought for me a rudimentary Family History Computer Program. I worked my way through several programs before settling for the last few years on Roots Magic, now in its 4th edition

I was able to get a good start as my father in law's cousin had already started a Lynas study and the youngest of my 5 cousins turned out to have started a Wem study. I had recently acquired my own PC as I had started a consultancy company on retiring from paid employment and one of my purchases was a CD set with UK names phone numbers and addresses. That enabled me to find the 40 of so addresses at which all of the 'Wems' on England and Wales electoral rolls could be found. Until then I knew of only two other families with our surname, one called WEM and the other WHEM. After writing to each of the 40 addresses I found that there were then no more than 5 family groups ie descended from one known ancestor and had found some called WEMM also, who seem to comprise one group

Variants

Wemm, Wemme, Whem, Whemm,Whemme

However I have also received mail or found data on line where the name was written or transcribed as

Wern, Webb, Wein, Mew, Hew to name just those which occurred most fequently

I have ignored the names Wenn, Wems and Weymss all of which are likely to be shown when using a Soundex search. Wenn in particular appears to be an East Anglian name and the one WEM I found there is probably a mistranscription

Origin of the surname

One website asserted that Wem or Whem was a derivation of Weymss, a place name from the Firth of Forth East Weymss or West Weymss on the Firth of Clyde I have found no evidence to support that assertion. The one Wem family I found in Scotland are descendants of a West Midlands family

My own group has used Wem Wemm and Whem. The 15 Whem's in the 2001 Census are part of the group to which I belong, with proven descent from about 1729 in or near Atcham and probably from Richard Wem of Atcham near Shrewsbury in about 1650

Numbers from 'the Geanologist' website show that in the early part of the Victorian period more that half of all occurences were in Shropshire and more that half of the rest in adjacent counties which leads me to believe that it is derived from the town of Wem (formerly Wamm)some 10 miles North of Shrewsbury on the Shrewsbury to Crewe railway line. The name of Wamm was of Saxon origin, meaning marshland, referring to the area either side of the River Roden that passes through the town. William the Conqueror gave most of Shropshire to Roger de Montgomery who, in turn, bestowed the barony of Wem upon William Pantulph. It remained in the family for 150 years. The 1086 entry in the Doomsday Book (Folio 257 Shropshire) is short and describes the area as being wooded

Historical occurrences

I have found no great names associated directly with the surname. John Jeffries, the Hanging Judge took the title of Baron Wem when raised to the peerage. He later became Lord Chancellor. At the battle of Wem in 1643 50 roundheads held off a much larger enemy horde of 5000 A more recent claim to fame for the town of Wem is that it is the Sweet Pea capital of the country. The Eckington Sweet Pea Society Show in Wem claims to be the premier Sweet Pea event of England

A rhyme dating from the Battle of Wem says

The women of Wem, and a few musketteers

Beat the lord Capel, and all his cavaliers

Frequency of the name

I also found from Victorian Census Records that there appeared to be no more than 100 people, with any of these names, alive in England and Wales at any one time between 1841 and 1891. The number crept up to from 41(Wem only) in the 1841 Census to 135 in the 2001 Census with Wem (106) as the 31959th oF 290,000 surnames, Whem (15) 109436th and Wemm (14) in 114673rd place.

Those numbers 5237 apart show that there must be a lot of groups with only 14 or 15 members alive in 2001

Distribution of the name

The the main groupings now are two in the West Midlands and one on Teesside but all may be traced back to Shropshire. The groups in Australia are almost wholly descended from the ancestors of the Teesside group with one other family in Western Australia descended from one of the West Midlands groups. A group in Canada from a West Midlands group has now no male descendants.

I have not yet started recording the US names but have seen it noted that they 'came from Britain by migration' One of my correspondents purchased a book of worldwide Wems about 10 years ago so I have some data to start on

Data

All England and Wales BMD data from 1837 to 2005

All IGI data

All England and Wales census data 1821(Shropshire only) and 1841 to 1911

Correspondence with Wem(m) relatives right across Australia from NSW to Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia

DNA project

I have not stated a DNA project

Contact details

For further information, contact:

Mr James W Wem
3 Whernside,
Marton-in-Cleveland,
Middlesbrough
TS7 8PJ
UNITED KINGDOM
E-mail:
Telephone: 01642 319270

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Profiles of other one-name studies registered with the Guild may be found here.