The Pierpont Family Name

I recently ran across the below article from a newspaper in 1921 (2 years before the founding of the Pierpont Family Association).

[Newspaper article]

 

This is evidently from a series of newspaper articles that traced family names. Let’s look at it closely, as there are a number of errors which we now know based on more recent historical research.

1)     “…the name is said to have been derived in England from Normandy.”

I’m not sure why the author makes this statement. What does derived in England mean? Is she referring to the fact that in Normandy it was “de Pierrepont” and in England they dropped the “de” part?

2)     “The founder was Robert de Pierrepont, a Norman knight…”

While Robert was the first of the family to come to England (with William the Conqueror), he was not the “founder” of the family. We now know that there were at least a couple of generations before him in Normandy.

3)     “Others say that the Pierreponts were not Norman at all, but that they came from Picardy at the time of the Conquest, having taken the name from a castle in Picardy.”

I’ve discussed the topic of the origin of the family name at length before (https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2022/01/origin-of-pierrepont-family.html), so I’ll not repeat it here. Please read this research if you are interested.

4)     “…the younger son of William Pierrepont, a younger brother of Sir Robert Pierrepont who was baron Pierrepont and Viscount Newark…”

I’ve also discussed this topic and charted it out before (https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2019/06/lost-dukedom-of-new-england-pierponts.html). William was not a younger brother of Sir Robert, rather he was a younger brother of Sir Henry, and an uncle of Sir Robert. This also means that the statement in the following sentence about John Pierrepont of Roxbury being a second cousin to Evelyn (duke) is inaccurate as he would be the second cousin, once removed.

5)     “The early members of the family in the new world usually spelled the name Pierepont, but almost all have gone back to the older English speeling, Pierrepont.”

There are three errors in the sentence. The first two are inaccuracies in the printing process as it’s obvious that “Pierepont” should be “Pierpont” and “speeling” should be “spelling.” The person who did the typesetting had a problem with using the “e” key. The third problem requires a bit more explanation.

The statement about “almost all” now using the English spelling of “Pierrepont” is based on where the author of the article lived. She had been born on Long Island in 1887 and, at the time of this writing, was living in northern New Jersey. As a result, the branch of the family she would have been most acquainted with would have been the descendants of Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont (1768-1838). (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezekiah_Pierrepont). Hezekiah was the great-grandson of the Rev James Pierpont of New Haven. He had been born in New Haven, but in 1790 moved to New York City and a decade later moved to Brooklyn, NY. It was there that he not only became quite rich by marrying into a family that owned considerable land (500,000 acres) in NY, but changed his name back to the English spelling – perhaps as a way of sounding most closely related to his distant titled cousins back in England. As the most prominent member of the greater Pierpont family at the time, that apparently was the basis for the author making this statement.

 

This has been a great exercise in pulling together my past research and being able to set the record straight on a newspaper article from over 100 years ago!