Shallow Roots — DAVID YARBOROUGH

When I saw the results of my DNA analysis a few years ago, my understanding of our family’s heritage was put in doubt. I had always thought that we were English, our forefathers having come to the colony of Virginia from the county of Lincolnshire in the seventeenth century. I was surprised to learn that my genetic material was much more Irish than English. In the months since, I have construed that the original oral history of our American family beginnings is still true. It’s just that — once in the new world — my male Yarborough predecessors either found the women immigrated from Ireland more attractive, or perhaps more available, than those from England.

A recent visit to the UK presented an opportunity to interrupt a train trip from London to Edinburgh for a 24-hour visit to Lincolnshire to see if I could find any interesting evidence of my English progenitors. Lincolnshire lies in the middle of England on the east coast. It is an agricultural and industrial area not often visited by overseas tourists.

The tiny village from which our family name derives

Our effort yielded meager results. Yarburgh is a place name that still exists. It is a tiny village of farmhouses. The population recorded in the most recent census is 158. The trend is not up. There is a very old church there, St. John’s the Baptist, dating to about the turn of the century—the twelfth into the thirteenth. In the interest of full historical disclosure, I must add here that the original church burned and was rebuilt, in 1405.

Back in those days surnames came into vogue. Many of the ones we are most familiar with were simply taken from a person’s profession, e.g., Baker, Cooper, Farmer, Fisher, Shepherd, etc. Others are toponymic, or based on the name of the place where a person is from. Those earliest Yarboroughs (and Yarbers and Yarboroughs and Yarboros) whose arrivals in the Americas were recorded were very likely from then larger area of Lincolnshire known as Yarburgh.

The largest estate in that part of England is Brocklesby which is the ancestral home of the Pelham family. In 1836 a new title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom was created for Charles Anderson-Pelham who thus became the first Earl of Yarborough. It is clear that those early Virginia settlers were employees of the Pelhams rather than their descendants.

The only part of the estate itself that we were able to visit is the Mausoleum. It is located in a 1000-acre part of the estate that was long ago set aside as a park. The Italianate structure was completed in 1794. The grounds were empty as we walked around the massive structure. Unfortunately, the remainder of the parkland was marked as closed for the hunting season and, not wishing to be overrun by the foxes or the hounds, we respected the signposts.

After our lunch at The Yarborough Hotel, Grimsby, site of the Yarborough Riot

In the scruffy nearby port town of Grimsby we had lunch at the Yarborough Hotel. This four-story building was constructed in 1851 in conjunction with the arrival of the first rail connection there. It was owned by and named for the second Earl who was a director of the railroad company. The most colorful story I could find about the place had to do with an incident that happened in the hotel’s first year of operation. During a hotly-contested election, a mob attacked the hotel to free two voters who were rumored to be held hostage inside. The police intervened, and injuries were incurred. The event is referred to as the Yarborough Riot though that may overstate the truth of the matter.

It was the second Earl of Yarborough who was responsible for my family name’s usage in bridge and other card games to describe an unfortunate hand of 13 cards with none having a value higher than nine. The Earl, clever enough at math to calculate that the odds of such a hand being dealt is 1828 to one, would offer to pay his opponents £1000 if any such hand were dealt as long as they paid him £1 if none were. Thus, with the odds heavily in his favor, he added to the earldom’s wealth. I found no reference to this part of our family’s legacy on my recent visit.

I located another pub called the Yarborough Arms in the quaintly-named village of Ulceby Skitter. Neither it nor the Yarborough Hotel is what would be called up-market establishments. Other than a youth center in the county seat of Lincoln, I did not find any other places bearing the name.

The Pelham family control of Brocklesby survives today (after 450 years!). Despite some necessary divestment of land from its original 50,000 acres, it now comprises some 27,000 acres, which support farming and logging enterprises. It is the residence of the current and eighth Earl of Yarborough, Charles John Pelham. One of the estate’s businesses is a recently constructed hotel called the New Inn. We spent our one night there and enjoyed a very pleasant dinner.

With little to show for the miles and hours invested, we continued on to Scotland, having satisfied my curiosity and marked visiting my family’s roots in Lincolnshire off my bucket list.