ORIGINS OF THE TUPMAN SURNAME




This is a (very) brief summary of the origins of the TUPMAN name and some notes on the families around the world. If you want to go straight to the Families click here

Surname Origins

There are several possible origins of the name TUPMAN and two occupational versions have been considered in the UK:

  1. A tup was a ram or earth rammer dating from times when, in the construction of fortifications or dwellings, mud was mixed together with straw and rammed into place. A 14th Century building programme is described thus: "At York in 1365 men were employed in beating and ramming the earth and mud, strengthened with straw, with rammers (tupis) and great hammers." These men were called Tuppers or Tupmen and may have taken their surnames from their job.

  2. In Middle English tup was a ram, and a TUPMAN was specifically the breeder or rearer of the young rams, as opposed to a common shepherd (sounds good, eh?). A TUPMAN is described in the Midland Agricultural Glossary of 1790 as "a breeder of, or a dealer in, tups". Many names arose from the keeping of rams - Tupps, Tupper, Tupherd and TUPMAN. A tupherd tended the rams in meadows and woods while the word TUPMAN implied guardianship of the animals. Maybe.

One major difficulty regarding the origin of names is that for the vast majority of people in the UK pre-15th Century there was no need to record their names unless they were rich, famous, infamous or a mixture of these. It was only as a result of the Poll Tax Returns in the late 14th Century that ordinary people were first recorded in order to be able to tax them (nothing changes !), so it follows that we are very unlikely to encounter the name in written records before that date. I have had a look through a lot of the Yorkshire Poll Tax Returns of 1379 and have found 3 TUP families, 1 TUPHIRD but no TUPMANs. There are quite a few SHEPHERDs.

There is another possibility for the derivation of the name that most of us would like to ignore and that is a corruption of the name TUBMAN. Although there is no hard evidence for this we need to consider the standard of literacy some 600 years ago, so it could well be that a name was misinterpreted and recorded incorrectly.

We also need to recognise that the names may derive from different roots depending on what part of the Country they are in. It is highly unlikely that we are going to be able to prove the origin(s).

The first written occurrence of the name that I have found is in the Borthwick Institute records in early 1391 at Topcliffe in North Yorkshire, where one William Tupman was the Plaintiff in a Court case where he was questioning the validity of his marriage. Prior to this the earliest record was in 1478 in Derbyshire, in which year according to information contained in the Hardwick Charters, John TUPMAN (presumed to have been born around 1430), Alice his wife and their son William (who must have been an adult to be included) made a grant of land at Cutthorpe in Brampton, near Chesterfield, to Robert Eyre of Padley.

The spelling TUPMAN first occurs in Yorkshire at Snaith, where a John TUPMAN married there in 1562. Snaith is around 10 miles East of Knottingley along the River Aire.

For the US the assumption has always been that one or more TUPMANs emigrated from the UK and started the US families (although this has not been proven) so there has never been any attempt to find a derivation specifically for the US.


Families



Within the UK there are 4 major branches of the TUPMANs and, at the time of writing, there has never been a proven connection between them. The branches (named for their origins or where most lived in the early days) are:

  1. Derbyshire which can trace the ancestors back with reasonable certainty to Anthony TUPMAN born around 1545 and then to John around 1430 in Chesterfield.

  2. Yorkshire - earliest known ancestor was Thomas who married Jayne WILSON in Pontefract in 1612. John of Snaith who was mentioned earlier has not yet been connected with Thomas.

  3. Devon - earliest was John who married Ann RICHARDS in Lympstone Parish Church in 1756. Originally we thought he was a sailor and had travelled to the South West by boat from Yorkshire, but later information indicates that he was a gardener, so we have to rethink this one - also there are no Johns in Yorkshire who move elsewhere. Looking at the various John Tupmans who were born around the correct time (circa 1730), there is at least one from Derbyshire who "disappears" from there and could be the one who went to Devon. The resultant families from the John Tupman / Ann Richards marriage contain a number of seamen including Edward who was the first coxswain of the Exmouth Lifeboat.

  4. Birmingham - from George who married Sarah ALLSOP in Tamworth in 1819. It is almost certain that George was the child baptised as George TUCKMAN in Tamworth in 1797 to John and Ann TUCKMAN but we have never discovered their origins. My belief is that they come from the Derbyshire branch.

In the US there are 3 TUPMANs who are the ancestors of most of the families that can be found today - John born around 1755, Thomas 1759 and William in 1765, all of whom come from Virginia and who we believe to be brothers. There is a will executed in Westmoreland County, VA, in 1774 that mentions John's father as Francis TUPMAN but nothing earlier has been found on him - it is tempting to assume that he emigrated from England and started the US family but no records of this have been found so far.

John and William's families moved to Kentucky which still has the largest numbers of TUPMANs in the US, although as you would expect they are now spread over a number of States.

There are a number of TUPMANs who have emigrated to the US from the UK in the past 50 years or so and there has also been emigration from e.g. Russia and Germany where names have been anglicized to give TUPMAN. However, the vast majority descend from the 3 mentioned above.

Several families have emigrated to Canada from the Yorkshire and Devon branches in the UK and there are a few in Australia. And as you would expect with travel becoming so much easier over the past 20 or 30 years, you will find odd TUPMANs cropping up in other parts of the world.
To put this into some kind of wider perspective, TUPMAN is a rare name. In the UK today there are only around 430 living individuals - in the last 170 years there have been only 1,230 births. The most common name is as you would expect Smith, with over 650,000; the name ranked 250th is Barton and there are 27,000 of those. TUPMAN comes another 13,000 places down the list.

In the US there are around 200 living individuals, the 2000 US Census reputedly giving a total of 208.

Note that these figures represent those who currently have the surname TUPMAN - i.e. born a TUPMAN, married to one or adopted into a TUPMAN family. They do not include women who were born a TUPMAN but who have subsequently married and changed their name.

If you consider that the earliest reference was around 600 years ago then, assuming average "wear and tear", it wouldn't have needed many families around at that time to have produced the numbers seen today.

Alan Tupman.    Original upload in May 2007 plus later amendments

Mail me if you might be interested in more information on your own family.

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