Fay Sampson’s Family History
This site is a work-in-progress. There is a massive amount to cover. I have included both male and female lines, and some go back 30 generations. Keep coming back for more.
I have numbered the generations working backwards from my own as (1)
EARLY PRODHOMES (26)
The family is believed to have come to England in the train of William the Conqueror, from the Valley of the Rhone in France, when the name bore its most ancient form of “Probushomo”. They were thus French, rather than Norman. [1] The name does not feature in the Battle Abbey Roll of those whose families claimed that they fought at Hastings in 1066.
The surname occurs in many forms, including Pridham, Prodham, Prudhomme, across England and Scotland. It means an upright or honest man, and was used to distinguish the ‘wise’ or ‘lesser folk’ from the ‘greater folk’ or mass of common people.
The earliest known record in this country is in 1170, when an almshouse called By St Alex Cell was founded in Exeter, by William, son of Ralph Prodom. Ralph and William may be the ancestors of William Prodhome, who held the manor of Upton Prodhome in 1235.
The family motto is “Prudhomme et loyal”. The arms, recorded in the Whiting chapel of Kentisbeare church, are: Azure 3 lions heads erased Or langues Gules.
The Pr0dhams were believed to have been wealthy and owned much property. When the male line died out in East Devon, Margaret Prodhome took a substantial inheritance to her marriage to Nicholas Whiting in the 14th century.
[1] http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/p/r/i/Howard-N-Pridham/FILE/0002page.html
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