ORIGINS OF THE SURNAME "OSGOOD"

The Derivation of the Name of Osgood

The name Osgood is of Saxon or Norse origin and in derivation. The syllable "Os" meaning, in Anglo-Saxon, "God". The other syllable (good) meaning simply "good". The name is found in several forms (most before the Norman Conquests), such as Osgod, Osgot, Osgotus, Osegod, Ossgood and Osgood.

Early References of the Name "Osgood"

It is said that "Hardicanute died as he stood at his drink in the house of Osgod Clapa at Lambeth," at a marriage feast there in 1042.

"Two Saxon monks, Osgod and Alrik, deputed by the abbot of Waltham, demanded and obtaineed permission to transport the remains of the benefactor (Harold) to their church" after the battle of Hastings in which William the Conqueror obtained his decisive victory in 1066.

A number of Osgoods are mentioned in the Domesday Book as holding lands in a number of counties, and in Wiltshire, Osgot was a "tenant in capite," that is, he held his lands direct from the King ans probably a person of consequence.

From this point on, the family mostly in found in Hampshire and Wiltshire. In 1295 Robertus Osegod was returned a burgess from Chippenham in Wilts.

Note: The Osgoods for a century or two before the emigration of John Osgood belonged to the yeomanry (i.e., farmers), a class which has been called ‘the backbone of England', but it is one which did not make much noise in the world and history and deeds of its individual members are not often recorded in the annals of the time.

"HOSGOOD" (submitted by DTilford@compuserve.com (Derek Tilford))

I think it's actually the other way round - Osgood changed to Hosgood.

A couple of years ago I set about searching my mother's genealogy to produce a 'family history' for her 80th birthday. Her maiden name was Hosgood and tracing her ancestry back I was able to track quite quickly back to the late 1700s using our state registration system back to 1837 when compulsory registration first started, then via parish registers.

I have copied part of our family tree that covers the period of the change.

James OSGOOD
m.07 Nov 1780 in Limpsfield SRY Hannah COLEMAN
+Mary OSGOOD (14 Jan 1783)
+John OSGOOD (14 Mar 1785-09 Mar 1790)
+George OSGOOD (04 Apr 1787)
+William OSGOOD ALSO HOSGOOD (08 May 1790)
¦m.26 Jun 1825 in Newgate London Eliza AUSTIN
¦ +William OSGOOD (03 Jul 1826)
¦ +Charles HOSGOOD (16 May 1829)
¦ +Thomas HOSGOOD (16 Apr 1832-06 Mar 1914)
¦ ¦m.29 Apr 1855 in Clerkenwell Margaret THOMAS (1829/30-03 Jul 1898)
¦ ¦ +William Thomas HOSGOOD (Q3 1856)
¦ ¦ +Charles Henry HOSGOOD (Q1 1858-05 Jul 1916) m.(1) 26 Jun 1883 in
¦ ¦ ¦Woolwich Ellen Mary MONTGOMERY (Q4 1862)
¦ ¦ ¦m.(2) aft.1893 Jane
¦ ¦ +Thomas Francis HOSGOOD (Q4 1859-1871)
¦ ¦ +Georgiana Alexandra HOSGOOD (Q2 1863-1865)
¦ ¦ +John Travers HOSGOOD (08 Jan 1872/3-26 Jul 1936)
¦ ¦ m.1904- BEARD
¦ +Henry HOSGOOD (11 Apr 1835)
¦ +Mary Ann HOSGOOD (29 Aug 1836)
+Charles OSGOOD (10 Mar 1793)
+John OSGOOD (28 May 1796)
+Harriet OSGOOD (23 Sep 1799)
+Sophia OSGOOD (08 Dec 1802)
+Jemima OSGOOD (08 Dec 1802-16 May 1804)
+Anne Maria OSGOOD (02 Jan 1805-20 Feb 1805)

As you will see in 1780 James Osgood married Hannah Coleman and they had 10 children. All the baptisms were at a place called Limpsfield which is south of London, in the area now known as Croydon. At this time, Limpsfield would have been real countryside and life would have been hard as some of the children were registered as paupers at their baptism, which meant that their father was probably unemployed.  William Osgood, who was born in 1790, the third son, married Margaret Thomas. The marriage took place in 1825 at Newgate which is in the East End of London, the area where Cockneys live, so he was probably living in that area at the time. To be a Cockney you must have been born within the sounds of Bow Bells (a church in the East End of London). If you have ever met a cockney, the first thing that strikes you is the way they talk - it is almost a complete dialect. Thomas in 1826 was a baker and had a bakery just over the Thames (on the south side) near the site of Vauxhall Bridge. His first child was born in 1826, but the surname registered in the parish register was given as Ousgood. So from this it can be assumed that Thomas did not speak with the same accent as the locals, otherwise there wouldn't have been any confusion with the name. One of the characteristics of the cockney dialect is that they drop a lot of the consonents so hat becomes 'at and a hatter would be a 'a'er. The next child Charles was born in 1829 and this time the surname was registered as Hosgood. I assume that in trying to get over their surname in their accent from Surrey where they had grown up they were still having difficulty in getting people to pronounce their name properly and so they accentuated the first syllable of OSgood
which made the locals think that they were dropping the 'H' and that it was Hosgood. It obviously stuck as all the following children were baptised as Hosgoods and the name has stuck ever since.  The third son, Thomas, was born in 1832 and was my 2xGt Grandfather. He was a professional soldier serving with the Royal Artillery at Woolwich and later became an engraver - a craft associated with the making of guns at the Woolwich Arsenal. He married a Margaret Thomas whose father was also a soldier at Woolwich, but after their marriage they were back close to the East End of London. In all of the records I have found the family name was registered as Hosgood for this generation - so now the family name had changed conclusively to Hosgood.

Charles Henry Hosgood was my mother's grandfather and was a publican who had two sons - who later in life both ran public houses for their father and each inherited their public house when their father died. One was very close to the present site of Tower Bridge, ie still very close to the East End of London, whilst the other was at Battersea, on the south side of the River Thames from the centre of London, which was where my mother was born.

The other branch of the Osgoods here in England who definitely originate from the Wherwell Osgoods migrated south and west ending up in Devon, Cornwall and Wales. Again I suspect that there was a problem with their dialect as they migrated westwards and in a similar vein their name changed from Osgood to Hosgood - although I have not researched those lines too extensively as there is another researcher who has concentrated on this line. Whilst I have not yet established the connection between the Wherwell Osgoods and our Osgoods, with such an unusual name I feel it must be there somewhere.

Whilst researching the name, I came across the Osgoods in the IGI and found the records somewhat confused, hence my researches into that part of the family in trying to sort out some of the confusion where identical events are recorded as taking place in up to three separate locations eg Wherwell, Salisbury and London. It became obvious that as yeoman farmers in the Wherwell area, they were known extensively in the area and as such their events were recorded in duplicate, or even in triplicate - hence the apparent confusion when researching the early records..