The Templeton family name originated in Ayrshire, Scotland,1 It derives from an ancient place name that, according to Dr George Black2, was the old Templar 'toun' that still exists near Dundonald [See map] in the historic district of 'Kyle'. There is another claimant to the distinction of being the fortified farm that originated the surname at today's Chapeltoun, near Stewarton in East Ayreshire (formerly known as 'Cunninghame') that is becoming more and more pursuasive as our research into early Templeton family members progresses.

Whichever Medieval settlement is, in fact, the ground from whence our name sprang, the name of his property holding was undoubtedly adopted as a surname by a knightly follower of Scotland's David I sometime after that king's ascession to the throne in 1124,3 probably well after the founding of the Papal order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon in 1129.

There are other similarly-called farms and villages in Scotland and also places named Templeton in Wales and other locations, including Massachusetts and California, but in all probability they derived their appellation from someone with the surname rather than the other way 'round.4

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The history of our old Ayrshire family may trace to a Strathclyde Briton, but more probably is of Norman descent. The family's earliest appearance in the historical record as "Templeton" (and its variants) that we've discovered is with Gilbertus de Tempilton, "rector of the church of Rothir'" (or Rothesay) in 1295. This educated and influential gentleman was probably the same Mestre Gilbert de Templeton "of the county of Are" that rendered homage to the invading English king, "Longshanks," in 1296. George Black tells us Gilbert's seal features the Virgin and Child, with a monk at prayer below.

One Jacobus de Templetone -- maybe Gilbert's older brother -- was a landholder in Ayrshire and perhaps time-out-of-mind tenant of Balliol or Hugh de Morville in Cunninghame or Kyle that, with the ascension of Robert the Bruce, became a 'sept' family of the powerful Boyd family that took over quite a lot of land in that area when The Bruce got around to dolling out the rewards of land, tenants, and mucho-income to his close friends.

During the reign of Robert-the-Bruce and his successors many tendrils of our family spread out through Ayrshire, Glasgow, and even Edingurgh: John Templeton was given a precept of remission for ceratain acts undertaken while he was the Steward of the Sheriff of Ayr when his pricipal was "sick" in 1491. A few years later, one David Tempiltone was sergiand [Sergand] and officer of the court of the burgh of Irvine in 1499 in a legal action of the shire.

In Edinburgh, come the beginning of the 16th century, there was a Tempiltoun in king's livery, and bureaucratically important, that oversaw the Royal pack horses and muleteers who maintained the royal stables [you can book a romantic getaway] between 1535 and 1546. Your editor's namesake, Roger Tempilton, took and education at law, perhaps at Saint Andrews' or more likely on the Continent, and became influential enough a "man of law" to be not only appointed Sheriff of Edinburgh principal through 1550, but to eventually pass that office on to his son.

It seems that Templetons had an aptitude for administration and an attraction to the law that the rich and powerful in government appreciated right from the beginning.

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We have not confirmed who was the first Templeton in our line to make the transit from the British Isles to America, much less located our first ancestor that inhabited the isle of Britain, but family lore says that William Templeton was one of "three brothers of that name came from Scotland to this country and all took part in the Revolutionary War."13

While we try to find documentary evidence to support that family story, we're aware that there were two sources of immigration that may have swept our First Forebear to these shores:

First was the general migration of economic and religious colonists from Great Britain seeking economic opportunity and theological/communal haven away from the intrigue and Official depredations against reformists of the State-sanctioned Church in England, running up to the Civil War of Cromwell's Round Heads in the mid-1600s — some sailors, some 'Adventurers,' and possibly, some convicted of crimes that chose "transport" over harsh goal-time -- came to America on fragile ships, seeking their way, away from the harsh treatment of political and religious factions that seemed to rule Britannia, then.

The "Great Migration" started after the Leiden Pilgrims (See also: Thorne) found their way to Plymouth, in ships destined for New England, in Massachusetts Bay and into the Virginia Plantation, and continued to find their way to the Colonies throughout the 17th Century.

It was the word-of-mouth excitement about the opportunity provided by the inexpensive land in the New World and bearable terms of indenture, along with glowing reports in letters back home that induced a steady stream of Scots to America through the 1600s. Then, of course, there were the cyclical (and Parliamentary-induced) fluctuations of the economy of household industry's rewards, along with years of bad harvests, that induced many economic refugees from Scotland to make the voyage.

One William Templeton, filling out his immigration papers as he disembarked in New York in 1774 gave his reasons for coming to America from Scotland as, "for poverty and to get bread."5

Scots were a not-insignificant number of Anglo adventurers throughout the 1600s, possibly inspired by stories of returning seamen to Glasgow, which grew rapidly as a major port for trade in tobacco and sugar from the Colonies6, not to mention trade to the other Scottish coastal harbors.

This long wave of immigrants, both English and Scottish, continued right up to the Revolution.

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The Second major source of Scottish immigrants came via Ireland. Northern Ireland (as we know it today), to be exact. Through the 1600s and 1700s, the English Crown had an uneasy dominion over most of Ireland, and when James I siezed Northern Ireland at the beginning of the 17th century following a nine-year war and the flight of the Irish Lords from Ulster, the crown Government immediately began settling Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots and English "dissenter" Protestant adventurers on lands confiscated from the former Irish-Gaelic lords and their tenants.

The great preponderance of these settlers hailed from the Scottish Lowlands, particularly Ayrshire.

Intolerance of these newcomers in Catholic Ireland meant continual civil strife, and Parliament in London passed laws that disenfranchised Presbyterians and other dissenters of the Scots and Irish heritage from holding civil offices and even legal marriage in their own faith. Over the 17th Century, many of these settlers tired of persecution and hardscrabble farming and left for the New World. The emigration accelerated to a flood after 1717 when 30-year leases ended and landlords demanded intolerable "rack rents" on farms that Ulster Scots had toiled upon and improved over decades.

Londonderry, Belfast, and other smaller ports saw the embarkation of scores of shiploads of "Scotch-Irish" to America in five great surges of emigration, 1717-18, 1725-29, 1740-41, 1754-55, 1771-75, as well as in the intervening years. These settlers first concentrated on the frontier west from Philadelphia, around Chester, Pennsylvainia, and beyond.14

From there, they moved up the Susequehanna River and across the Allegheny Mountains, and down the great Virginia valley into the interior of the Carolinas. In the mid-18th Century the hills of the Carolinas became the destination of many more through the port of "Charlestown."

By 1775 there were some 250,000 "Ulster Scots" in the colonies.7

Read the Biographies for more on Frontier Life and glimpses into the saga of the Templetons and associated families that helped build America.

Here are some Significant Dates
and notes on what Family ancestors were doing at the time.

NOTES:

1. Hall of Names International, Inc., website 1999
2. The Surnames of Scotland, Their Origin, Meaning, and History, George F. Black, Ph.D.; New York Public Library, N.Y., 1946.
3. See "'Templeton' as Surname" at Gilbert de Templeton.
4. ParsonsTech.com - 1999, now "The Learning Company", authors of "Family Tree Maker" software, family info found at www.genealogy.com.
5. Emigrants from Scotland to America 1774-1775; and Dobson, David, Directory of Scottish Settlers in North America, 1625-1825; Vol. I, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore; 1984.
6 Kyntire Magazine, ed., "Early Scotland", Kintyre Antiquarian and Natural History Society, 2001
7 Frontier Cultural Museum, "The Scotch-Irish (Ulster) Historical Background", www.frontier.state.va.us/ulster.htm#2, 2001.
8 Gunn, Robert, "The Breton and British Celts", http://members.aol.com/Skyewrites/breton1.html -- 2003.12.18.23:44, © 1997-99. Gunn says, "Gaelic Celtic and Brythonic Celtic are the main types of Celtic language; but that is truthfully an oversimplification, as their were so many forms of Celtic languages."
9 Kennedy, Billy, Faith and Freedom — The Scots-Irish in America. ©1999, Causeway Press, 1999.

"The 'Pictish Chronicle', compiled before 997, knows nothing of Scotia as applied to North Britain; but Marianus Scotus, who lived from 1028 to 1081, called Malcolm the Second 'rex Scotiae', and Brian, king of Ireland, 'rex Hiberniae'. The author of the 'Life of St Cadroe', in the eleventh century; likewise applied the name of Scotia to North Britain."

10 Foreman, Amanda, Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, Random House, Inc., New York, 1999, and Rutherford, ibid.
11 A History of Britain, Programme 8, "The British Wars," Simon Schama; BBC, 2003.
12 Document 0078a "FHT-GLT Papers", collection of the Editor.
13 Document 0014 "FHT-GLT Papers", colledtion of the Editor.
14 Leyburn, James G., The Scotch-Irish – A Social History, The University of North Carolina Press, ©1962, p. 196.