Study Papers

The Drakeford name and origins, The ‘Drakeford Manor' in medieval Devon and 'Drakeford Bridge'. The 1206 court case for the Drakeford brothers in Staffordshire. The Drakeford family crest and shield, an important letter from John Drakeforde to Edward Drakeforde dated 1594, Hearth Tax, Land - Purchases and Sales, DNA Testing.

This area includes Cheshire, and parts of Staffordshire, excluding Stafford and its environs. The Drakefords were well established and in Congleton became civic dignitaries including Mayors, Aldermen and Councillors. Their jobs were varied including Yeomen, industrialists in the cotton and linen industries and clockmakers.

Edward Drakeford my three times great grandfather, and his brother John, produced many clocks and watches from sophisticated 'apprentice pieces' to standard 'North country longcase clocks' which we now know found their way to all corners of the world. This is my story of tracing some 47 timepieces of their making since initiating the search in 2005.

It is amazing that there are Drakeford wills dating back as long as 1537, during the reign of Henry VIII's. The Tunstall Manor Court papers go back a long way and in the 1400s mention the Drakefords. All this is long before church records. This Study Paper seeks to examine information about the Parish of Wolstanton, the Tunstall Court and the wills to see if the Drakefords were of one family, and as the name in 1206 was 'de' Drakeford, thus indicating those holding the name were from a place of that name, where that place was.

Over the centuries there have been many smaller groups of the Drakeford family, apart from those in Congleton, Stafford, Wolstanton and indeed North America. It would be a shame not to include these individually and this Study Paper is where they will be found. Initially we will start with just two, which are firstly 17^th century Surrey, featuring mainly Abinger, and secondly Little Horton in Northamptonshire.

We hope to attract more settlements relying not just on our current authors but new contacts, who are reading about the Drakeford Family and would like to add their knowledge about a Drakeford family group.

Learn how a descendant of an out-of-work Warwickshire ribbon weaver became a government minister and civil aviation pioneer, was given a state funeral and had a road named after him.

The British along with the French attempted to colonize North America. In the mid-1660s, members of the Drakeford family became settlers. Initially, while forming this paper, we focused simply on the name and used an American contact with family members who had researched in considerable depth. This work resulted in a book titled ’Drakefords in America’ by Lavonne Sanders Walker.

Using our knowledge of the English family around Staffordshire, we have been able to trace direct links to American cousins from 1660 to the present day. Any concerns about the strength of the link has been assuaged by the use of DNA. We have tried to present a story showing how the family managed during two American wars, and the growth of this enormous country. This enables us to show the strength of the family over this period and how they became a significant part of the American dream.

Thus, the current Drakeford family in the UK is linked to that in the USA, and here is the fascinating history we uncovered.

A lecture presented at the 2012 Drakeford gathering in Congleton museum on 7^th June 2012.

Every 2 years, our UK group shown under this website heading of 'Who are we Today?' aim to meet in either Congleton, Cheshire or in Stafford, Staffordshire so that we can update on our research work and present papers on the most recent discoveries about the Drakeford name. One of these meetings took place in June 2012 in Congleton, where Roger Hall presented a paper, titled 'North American Drakefords' recording the most updated detail that he had at his disposal on the early Drakeford settlers in America.

The intervening years have presented us with the remarkable YDNA testing capability, and most of our group have been tested; there have been exciting revelations which now enables us to provide an updated 2020 status recorded in Study Paper No: 8 written by Michael Drakeford with assistance from our American contacts, entitled 'The Drakeford Family Land in America 1660'.

We strongly recommend that you read both this Study Paper No: 9 written in 2012 fully recognising where our research had reached without the YDNA capability, and then to read the 2020 Study Paper No: 8 to see the enormous progress that has been achieved with the new information available for all to see.

There are so many Drakefords in Paraguay that you would be more likely to meet one there than you would in England. Find out why.

How the daughter of an illegitimate Warwickshire boiler maker came to be married to the Professor of English at Yale University (there's a tiger in the story).

(Extracted from chapter 5 of the book - 'It's a Rough Game but Good Sport: The Life, Times and Personalities of The Shanghai Rugby Club' Earnshaw Books, Hong Kong, 2014.)

Thomas Drakeford travelled from Liverpool, England to Shanghai, China in 1907. He died in Sydney, Australia in 1943. Between these years, he forged a successful career in Shanghai, married, raised a family and established himself in the upper echelons of Shanghai society. This is his story.

Many of the Drakefords in Australia are descended from Samuel Finch Drakeford (1854 - 1933) who arrived in Australia from Coventry, UK in 1858 with his parents, Henry Finch Drakeford (1826 – 1869) and Elizabeth Williams (1831 – 1886).

Samuel and many of his children subsequently made their home in China and the Philippines from the early 1900s to 1949.

This paper examines their lives in Asia which includes details about their regular lives, punctuated with stories about a spy, Chinese warlords, attempted murder, a corporate scandal, imprisonment by the Japanese, escape from the Japanese and a vulgar parrot.

The tale concludes with an explanation of where the family members ended up after leaving China, notably the United States of America and Australia.

By drawing together the contents of three previously separate family archives, the story of Bill Evans can be told. Bill worked and played in China between the World Wars, was caught up in an extraordinary capture and escape from the Japanese during the war, before meeting his untimely end in South East Asia in 1950.

By drawing together the contents of three previously separate family archives and setting them in the context of their times by reference to contemporary newspapers and memoirs, Bill's amazing and ultimately tragic story can be told.

While in China, in 1924, Bill met Edmund Jupp when he arrived in Shanghai who, as described in Study Paper 12, married Faith Drakeford. Edmund had previously been engaged to Irene Lebas, Bill's future wife.

In the late 1920s the young men's paths diverged, only to converge in Hong Kong in December 1940, a year before they were both captured by the Japanese at the fall of Hong Kong. They spent the next nine months imprisoned by the Japanese before their final parting during the horrors of the sinking of the Lisbon Maru.

For Bill, his story was not yet over, having already lived a remarkable life, his life became even more extraordinary…

Note: An edited version of this essay has previously been published in the 2019 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society China, Volume 79, pp185 - 208.