A Brief History of the
Eustace Families of Great Britain as it is Known:
The English Family has been in the
area southeast of
Oxford
since the 1200's. The family claims descent from
Eustace, Count of Boulogne,
chief ally of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings,
1066. However, the definite link has not been established.
The first to make his home in England was
Geoffrey of
Boulogne who appears in 1086 as holding manors from
the Boulogne estates and from his wife's family, the De Mandevilles. He had three grandsons and it is from the middle
one, Master Eustace, a lawyer in the service of the Archbishop of
Canterbury that the family and the name are descended. One of his
sons was seal bearer to Richard, Coeur de Lion, later Bishop of
Ely and with his brother and stepfather was involved in the
negotiations leading to Magna Carta.
The family name of FitzEustace was used during the
1200's but the `Fitz' was dropped about 1300 and `Eustace'
continued as the family name. There is a father to son record
until William who supplied stone from his quarry at Wheatley to
build part of Windsor Castle. He sold the quarry to Abingdon
Abbey in 1375. As there were no personal records at that time,
the trail becomes difficult but we know of a Eustace who fought
at Agincourt, another who was warden of the Queen's wood at Bray
and several who were university students at Oxford. From 1550 to
the present day there is a record of every generation including
branches in USA, New Zealand and Australia.
Successive generations produced leaders in the
community including lords of the manors of Watcome and Britwell;
one was mayor of the city of Oxford. There are records of a
continuous emigration into London and into Birmingham during the
19th century. One of the earliest migrations to the USA was in
1657 when William and Sarah went to Boston. They took the
spelling
`Eustis'
which
has remained to this day. There are at least three
Eustis villages
and
three townships in the USA named for members of the family. The
history of the Eustis family has been recorde by Professor
Lawrence Henry Eustis
Genealogy
of The Eustis Family
(1878) and
The Eustis Families in The United States by Warner Eustis
in 1968.
There have been three US ambassadors named Eustis and William
Eustis served as Governor of Massachusetts. Another
emigration was in 1676, when John Eustace, born in Bucks,
who went with his wife, Sarah, and her parents to take over a
property in the colonial Virginia. A Eustace of a later
generation married one of their neighbours, a member of the
prominent Lee family, who trace their roots to passengers on the
Mayflower. Members of the Bucks connection went to Kansas in the
late 19th century.
Considerable movement of Eustaces has taken
place along the line of the Chiltern hills into Buckinghamshire
and Bedfordshire to the north and into Berkshire and Wiltshire to
the south. Gravestones, memorial inscriptions and church bells
commemorate their part in the life of the community over the
centuries.
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