Chester

The last series of posts [Monday, March 11, 2013 - Monday, November 18, 2013] have presented the Jones surname that first appears in the counties of Wales.  I thought it might be of interest to continue this theme into the counties of England.  It will begin with the counties that border Wales [Marches], and in later post move east, northeast, south, and southeast.

The first county along the border is Chester.  It was one of the earliest counties to be organized along the Norman feudal system. [Palatine of Chester].  The map is that of England and Wales, to show the general geographic locations.  The county of Chester is colored blue.

John Jones was the first to appear in the English legal records. [1558 - 1579 : Bundle 99/ No. 94]
The case involves a Robert Fletcher with the reasons being "tithes".  The location is given as "Bromborough".  Of course, it would have to be a John Jones.

English Border Counties and The Surname JONES

The English counties that border Wales became a center of activity for the JONES surname.  The figure below shows the number of legal cases involving someone with the surname JONES from 1500 AD to 1700 AD.  The counties in Wales have been discussed in previous posts, and they are shown by the slanted blue lines.

Salop heads the list with 41 cases. [This county becomes important in my own JONES family.]
Hereford and Gloucester share roughly the same number (33), with Somerset coming in at 35 cases.  Wiltshire is a close forth with 29 cases.   As one moves further east, the number of JONES seem to drop off dramatically indicating the legal conflicts for the JONES families are pretty close to Wales.  There are several counties in England during this time period that had no JONES families involved.  These are yet to be discussed.  At any rate, the border counties had their share of the JONES surname.