ALL THE KITTO NEWSLETTERS

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A first KITTO Newsletter. July 2001

To answer the often asked question of why I got into the One Name Study.

My mother was a KITTO from South Australia. Her family origins were in Breage, in the South of Cornwall. They migrated around 1850 to Adelaide. I went seeking my KITTO family roots in South Australia.

First of all I sorted out South Australia to determine that there were three main KITTO families with several hundred in each branch. From this I went to Cornwall records to find their origins, two of them being in Breage, and one from Redruth. In trying to sort out the numerous KITTOs in this Cornish Town of Breage, I spent several hundred hours putting the massive family tree together, helped by the input from many others. It didn’t help when of the 200+ early males there were only five Christian names – James, John, Thomas, Richard and William – and they married only Elizabeth, Jane, Mary or Margaret. Other names were rare, but these often helped to pinpoint family groups. By the time I had “solved the Breage tree problem” I had collected bits and pieces from many other parishes in Cornwall.

Having collected all KITTO registrations from the GRO Indexes (Government Record Office) for 1837 to 1851, and since Breage had over 31% of all KITTOs in Cornwall, I figured I had sorted out the main line, so went looking for the sidelines. Little did I realise then that the Breage inhabitants were just a migratory branch from elsewhere. I still have yet to find the “seed”, but it seems to be from somewhere in the Central North of Cornwall, perhaps around Bodmin or perhaps around Launceston.

The following tables show some of my first attempts at analysis of the origins of KITTOs in the early 1800’s.

KITTO registrations in local registry offices throughout England between 1837 to 1851
CORNWALL/DEVON	Births	Marr	Deaths	TOTAL	% of Con.	% of all Eng.
Bodmin	9	2	6	17	4%	3%
Falmouth	2	2	4	8	2%	2%
Helston	73	24	34	131	31%	26%
Holsworthy	3	0	2	5	1%	1%
Launceston	13	10	9	32	7%	6%
Liskeard	17	3	13	33	8%	6%
Penzance	11	3	4	18	4%	4%
Plymouth	2	3	2	7	2%	1%
Redruth	25	7	9	41	10%	8%
St Austell	15	16	18	49	11%	10%
St Columb	8	3	1	12	3%	2%
St Germans	4	2	2	8	2%	2%
Stoke Damerel	4	2	3	9	2%	2%
Truro	28	12	12	52	12%	10%
others	5	0	2	7	2%	1%
TOTALS	219	89	121	429	100%	84%

NON CORNWALL
1-4. Lnd, Mdx, Sry	20	5	6	31	6%
5-8. Southern	12	4	9	25	5%
10-16. Central	4	4	7	15	3%
17-25. Northern	8	2	1	11	2%
26-27. Wales	0	2	0	2	0%
	44	17	23	84	16%
ALL ENGLAND	263	106	144	513	100%

I still am seeking to find as much as I can of the earliest families in Cornwall, but also continue to fill in the other trees in the various parishes around Cornwall. It was found that 84% of all KITTOs were in Cornwall and nearby Devon in the GRO Indexes between 1837 to 1851 indicating it was a Cornish family. Since these early discoveries, most families outside Cornwall have usually been traced back to a Cornish Parish. However some of the London and Lancashire “drifters” have proved difficult to pin down because they had less family ties or few “family” records

The pattern begins to change quite markedly after 1851 as the effects of the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions take over. The KITTOs begin to move in their hundreds to the mining and industrial centres of Great Britain and overseas to mineral discoveries in the New World. Most of them moved among the wave Cornish Miners, the “experts” who pioneered the opening up of mines everywhere.

Very few KITTOs are left in Cornwall today.

More later.

Ken STEWART

1 July 2001

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The second KITTO Newsletter. February 2002

I have just been forwarded a document by Lorne KITTO from the "Hallmark Hall of Names" giving the origins of the KITTO family name. It is a scam company that mass produces "A History of your -------- Family" with a prescribed format. You get attached to a Scottish surname and given their potted history. They even send you a crest for your money.

The scam made me stop and think about how far I myself had progressed with the KITTO origins, and led me to prepare this second newsletter. I believe that the KITTO family has its origins deep in the origins of early Cornwall.

The most common held belief is that it is a patronymic name based on a son of a father called Christopher - son of Christopher - son of KITT - became KITTO. Similarly the island in the West Indies, St Christopher is now known as St KITTS.

The early parish registers of Cornwall date back only to the early 1500s and as these registers begin there are KITTOs being married and baptised in the Central Cornwall Regions, so the family is there around the beginning of the sixteenth century. There may not be just one single KITTO source, but that is a good possibility as most are centred around Bodmin. But this could be because the Bodmin records began earlier than most and were better preserved.

From Bodmin they have apparently radiated out from there, and spelling variations include KYTTO, KITTOW and KITTOE with several other minor variants. Because it was the parish priest who recorded the names in early times, it was his choice of spelling that was used in the registers. Only with growing education and more formalised spelling after the 1850's did the spelling of surnames become more fixed. The "Y" variations are more of the Olde English spelling and has been totally replaced by the "I" in more recent times. The KITTOW variant held the "W" in the parishes around Launceston and even today there are descendent families using this spelling. The KITTOE variation began in early Cornwall but was phased out. It then seems to have become mainly a London variation used solely by one well-to-do family descended from Captain Robinson KITTOE, R.N. of Leafland, Middlesex. He and his descendants have kept that spelling into modern times. The use of the simple KITTO is now the main form commonly used everywhere else.

In the early 1600's the KITTO families are now being noticed beyond Bodmin, in several other main areas - either now coming into notice in the more preserved registers or as a wave of expansion - into Launceston and its surrounds, Mevagissey, Padstow, and Breage. Their occupations are not yet stated in parish registers but early wills suggest that many are yeoman / farmers. I assume the non-willed individuals would be tradesmen or general labourers. One large KITTOW family with extensive estates originated from the Launceston & North Petherwin area and have been centred around Linkinhorne for over 300 years.

By the early 1700's some of these generations are moving from the land to the Ports of Falmouth, Devonport and Plymouth, while others are moving into the early mining centres of Cornwall - like Redruth-Illogan, Breage-Germoe, Calstock-Callington, Cardinham, and Kenwyn-Perranzabuloe. This movement preceded by 100 years the Agrarian / Industrial Revolution, that affected the rest of Britain in the 1800's. When new mines began later in Wales, Lancashire, Cumberland, and the rest of Britain, the Cornish were the experts who were called on to expand them. When the new worlds opened up and mines were built to harvest the new wealth of USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Chile, then the Cornish miners went there too. The KITTOs were Cornish miners, and moved with that wave to the New World.

There were a few other KITTO families who moved from the land as tradesmen, farmers and labourers to the New World, but usually it was the call of rich goldfields which initiated their move.

Because the KITTO families were usually concentrated into certain areas, moving at specific times, it has made my tracking their origins a little easier.

Now of the Hallmark Hall's thoughts on KITTOs.

This article gives a detailed history of the CATTO family and then assumes that KITTO is one of its variants. That ancient family CATTO did settle in Scotland, but if there were KITTOs where are their descendants now. There are no KITTOs in modern Scotland, save for perhaps a few members of a family descended from a Cornish miner who married in Australia and took his large family of children there while he captained a mine at Prestonpans. Most of them moved on again and are found in New Zealand. Also a check through the indexes to the Old Parish Records of Scotland shows absolutely NONE of KITTO baptisms prior to 1855 when official Scottish registration records began. My conjecture is that the ancient family of CATTO / CHATTO is not the same family as the KITTOs of Cornwall, and only a few spelling variants of CATTO to CITTO has possibly thrown up the occasional KITTO spelling from this family in ancient times. This spelling and pronunciation did not last into documented Scottish history.

The Latter Day Saints in North America link CATTO, CATO and KITTO in their IGI because the "soundex" form is alike. But on closer analysis of all KITTOs in this index they are all confirmed to have Cornish origins. CATO seems to also have some Japanese origins. I have yet to find non-Cornish KITTOs among the earlier settlers of North America, but I am still looking.

In the 1881 census of the British Isles there were 584 individuals named KITTO, KITTOE or KITTOW. This indexed census is the best published snapshot of all the KITTO families in Britain. I have been able to establish the Cornish Origins for 523 (or 90%) of them, including all the Scottish KITTOs. Of the remaining 61 unidentified individuals, there were 52 who are from either London or Lancashire families that I have not yet established their backgrounds. The remaining 9 are singles, servants or drifters, whose particular origins are difficult to pinpoint.

There are also at least 18 people among the 269 recorded as KITTS that I have identified as properly KITTO family. This is a common occurrence as transcribers have difficulty separating the script "s" from the script "o" on the end of KITT, so KITTO and KITTS are often interchanged in modern indexes.

Incidentally the noted Biblical Illustrator, John KITTO, that Hallmark Hall mentions, was of a London family which had its roots in Gwennap, Cornwall. His grand-daughter was Elizabeth Margaret KITTO, the renown Canadian historical painter of Victoria B.C., and his uncle was William KITTO, the Cornish engineer who embanked the Laira River in Plymouth.

There are no modern Scottish KITTOs.

If the family was "seeded" from Scotland it would need to have been an implant into Cornwall before 1542. My earliest record so far is the marriage of John KETTOW in 1542 in Trevalga on the Central North Cornish Coast.

Now for a small change of tack.

One of the family folklore stories to reach me during the many years of my research was one that mention a lone sailor named KITTO being washed ashore in Cornwall, and the family grew from there. (Just who told me this I cant remember, and has anyone else come across this tale, and who did you hear it from?). He may have been one of the dozens of Scots en route to Ireland and was shipwrecked in the Irish Sea. From the mid 1400s, Clan Donald controlled much of Western Scotland, the Islands and Northern Ireland so there were many travellers frequenting those waterways. However this early migration was well before the organised Ulster Plantations from 1605 onwards, that produced thousands of mobile Scottish migrants. Another alternative is that he may have been shipwrecked from one of the many French or Spanish fishing fleets that frequented the area, intermingling with the Cornish population, nearly a century before the Spanish Armada of 1588. The arrival of the Protestant French Hughenots and Spanish Wallaroons fleeing from Catholic oppression began in the 1560s but even this is a little too late for KITTOs to originate from them.

So the KITTO family of Cornwall were part of Cornwall before the Scottish migrations or the early Hughenot or Wallaroon migrations.

To continue this vein. The earliest KITTO marriage is found in 1542 in Trevalga, a sea port of Western Cornwall. Just over twenty years later there is a multitude of marriages in Bodmin, inland from Trevalga. And then the escalation is noticed. I have not been able to determine if this could be the possible single seed, but it would need those Bodmin families to splinter into dozens of groups throughout Cornwall within that next generation or two. This seems unlikely for this 1542 generation but could have been from a generation or two earlier. The Trevalga Registers only began in 1538, so there may have been quite a family there before this.

Now to complete a circle of arguments.

Dr John KITTO's ideas on his family name origins looks at two possibles. The Phoenicians of the ancient Mediterannean period had a word for a species of cassia - which becomes Quito in Spanish, Chetto in Italian and Cato in English, and since the Phoenicians in the period B.C. were the "sea people", they had early trade for tin in Cornwall, so the name was introduced through trade. Another alternative is the Celtic word "coitach" meaning "left handed" in Ireland, and likely similar in the early Cornish and Scottish Celtic dialects. So the Hallmark analysis may have some truth in the origin of the word, if not the family in Cornwall, but back in the time BC.

I had a recent contact with a "KITTOS" family who has Mediterannean origins, and he was not from a KITTO family. He feels his own name origins are from "Kittos (of Cyprus) which is actually a variant of Kittim. Kittim was the progenitor of Cyprus". A few of this family drift into London after 1950 but there are no KITTOS in my earliest records before that. But at least the Phoenician ideas may have some origins too.

More later.

Ken STEWART

1 February 2002

Postscript - March 2006 - from a KITTOW correspondent.

"Not long after I sent you the last email I read your two newsletters on your work into Kitto family history. Regarding the lost sailor washed upon the beach.
I had this story told to me just over 30 years ago. But not by a family member. A woodwork teacher at my school recounted the story to me. He had flatted in London with a Bobby Kittow who's family came from Cornwall. This Bobby had told him the story pretty much as you described in your notes. The reason I spell Kittow with a "w" in this story is that when my teacher was creating the class role in the first lesson of the year, when he came to "K' and I said "Kitto" he said "Is that spelt 'Kittow?' ". When I said yes, he then proceeded to give me the family history lesson in front of the whole class. While 14 year old boy's aren't always to keen to attract attention in the classroom, I have always remembered much of what he said." Regards, Allen Kittow of New Zealand

Postscript Two - May 2010 - from a KITTOW correspondent.

I am descended from a John Kitto ... also known as Christophers who married Elizabeth Barnacott at Mawnan in 1686. Their son Thomas Kitto alias Christophers was the last to use the name Kitto and all future generations were Christophers (with the s). My grandfather Albert Christophers Mills (the name is carried by at least one boy in each generation ... all proudly with the s on the end) believed very firmly that his family had originally been Spanish and had been shipwrecked off the Cornish coast in Tudor times. I don't know where he had that information from ... but in a time before computers I'm guessing it was a story passed down through the generations. However, there is evidence today that he could have been right .... and that still exists in some of the women in the family who have negative B blood groups and struggle with babies that are born 'yellow' ... a Mediterranean trait. From Gaynor Crayden of West Sussex, England

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The third KITTO Newsletter. July 2006

There have been many additions to the KITTO tree over the last few years. I thank the many correspondents who have continued to contribute their branches to this World Wide study. Most are now on the KITTO web pages, and these now are attracting further interested connections. It is a growing set of trees, but alas I have still not identified the unique trunk of an original family.

A few more interesting stories to relate.

Firstly from Gary KEETER in USA, who has compiled a massive KEETER family tree. It is a KITTO family, just differently spelled.

“A written history of the Keeter family, to which I am directly related, begins with William Kittowe, born 13 Sep 1640, in the Parish of Padstow, County of Cornwall, England. His father was Michael Kyttowe, born 4 Sep, 1614, in the same place as William. Michael’s father was William Kyttowe, probably born about 1590. William born in 1640 is the Keeter immigrant to North America.”

This would be among the earliest KITTO migrations to USA, so is probably the biggest USA family of KITTOs and Gary’s written KEETER history is found at KEETER HISTORY

The KEETER family tree is at < http://members.iinet.net.au/~kjstew/keeterUSA.htm > [link]

Secondly, from correspondence with Rebecca KITTER and Gerry SHIMBATH, we are becoming convinced that a KITTER family of Portsmouth is a recent arrival around 1900, possibly from Russia. They have expanded the family name into other parts of Hampshire.

But there are other references to KITTERS in scattered parts throughout England. Nothing definite but enough to be a problem to me with this one-name-study.

Thirdly, while assembling the KITTER data, there seems to be another distinctly separate family – the KITTIERS of Kensington, London. They may have earlier origins in Hampshire with a family being noticed in around 1800. A George Joseph KITTIER is in Kensington by 1856, and his scattering of family has not yet been fully consolidated.

Fourthly, a very interesting continuation to alternative origins of the KITTO surname comes from Ian D KITTO of the Greenwich, London family.

“On re-reading your second Kitto newsletter I remembered one of my history teachers referring to Coll Kitto MacDonald when he heard my name for the first time. I thought this reference might add a little to the possibility of the Celtic ‘left-handedness’ origin of the Kitto name. Not being a Celtic speaker I found it strange that the near universal ‘English’ version of ciotach was spelt kitto! Here is a snippet of one of the many tales of Coll Kitto MacDonald:

The Piper’s Warning

James Graham, fifth Earl and first Marquis of Montrose, was a brilliant military tactician who in 1644 defeated Campbell of Argyll and his Covenanting Army at Inverlochay after ravaging his territory. When Glen Noe was spared because of the relationship between the MacIntyres and the MacDonalds, the MacIntyre Chief's favorite piper was permitted to go with Montrose' celebrated commander, Alexander MacDonald, better known as Coll Ciotach or Coll Kitto. He was known by the nickname Col Kitto, which means left-handed, even though he wasn’t left-handed. It was his father's nickname and he was called that in honor of his father.

In 1645, The Earl of Argyll commissioned Campbell of Calder to expel the MacDonalds from Islay, where Colkitto had retreated with his depleted army. Calder levied troops from all of the branches of Clan Campbell and assisted by the MacDougalls of Lorn expelled Coll's smaller forces from the Castle of Dunadd, which was then razed to the ground. Coll Kitto retreated again to the Castle of Dunyveg, where he was again attacked.

Under the cover of night, Coll escaped by boat to seek assistance in Kintyre and Ireland, leaving Dunyveg in charge of his mother. Discovering this, Calder likewise left for reinforcements. There is a tradition that a woman commander should be opposed by another woman, so Calder left his troops under the command of the Lady of Dunstaffnage. While both male commanders were away, the Lady of Dunstaffnage discovered that a wooden pipe that supplied the Castle with water and forced a surrender by cutting off the supply of water. With no outward sign of the change in command, a perfect trap was laid for Coll's return.

In those days, piping was a greatly respected profession and so, while others were kept as prisoners below in the Castle of Dunyveg, the MacIntyre piper was granted freedom within the castle. Recognizing a galley in the distance as belonging to his master Coll, he asked permission to play a piece of music, which he had composed on the misfortune of his party. The request being granted, he stood on the battlements of the castle and played a Piobaireachd just as Coll was entering the bay. Coll, hearing the tune and recognizing what had happened, at once put about and escaped. This tune, now high, now low, and full of menace, is known as Piobaireachd dhun Naomhaig or `The Piper's Warning to his Master'. MacIntyre was a master piper and his deliberate mutilation of a known tune was sufficient warning to Coll Kitto MacDonald that something was wrong -- in fact that Dunyveg Castle had been captured.

There are many other stories regarding Coll Kitto MacDonald scattered about the Scottish Clan pages (he apparently was not to friendly and upset a few!). Regards from Ian D Kitto

More another time.

Ken STEWART

27 July 2006

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The fourth KITTO Newsletter. September 2007

Another possible source of the KITTO surname

This history comes from John KITTO of California. He writes:-

“I have a question regarding the Kitto name origin. While "son of Christopher" is very likely, have you ever considered we might be of Kit Hill. I assume you have heard this possibility, but in case you have not, here is the background.

Kit Hill is about three miles from Callington in Cornwall. It is now a park and gained some level of fame. Prince Charles donated it in recent years to become a park in honour of his son Prince William who was born in the area.

The hill has been a site of human habitation for thousands of years. A number of Neolithic graves have been discovered on the lower slopes. These stone age people lived here starting about 4000 BC. Other Bronze Age artifacts from people living here date to about 2000 BC.

Kit Hill is rich in tin and copper and was mined extensively during the bronze age. Kit Hill became centre stage in the year 838 AD when the Cornish Celtics build a fort on Kit Hill to guard against Saxons. The Cornish were attacked and defeated and many in the region killed.

The earliest known history of the name Kitto that you have located comes from the towns near Kit Hill, and spread from there. Do you think any real possibility exists that Kittos could be of Kit Hill. If so, it would make for very interesting speculation that Kittos might actually go back to the bronze age or Neolithic age of cave men who then blended with the later arriving Celtics. If DNA is available from the early sites of people on Kit Hill that could be compared, we might find our history back to being cave men.

Unlikely perhaps, but I find it interesting.”

And I do too. Thanks John.

The Evolution of New Kitto Families.

After a few months subscription to ‘ancestry.com’ I have extracted all references I could find in both the UK and US census materials. Some interesting factors arose, and these are my interpretations of them..

Transcription Errors

New variations of KITTO arose depending upon how the census was taken.

The early census were by word of mouth, with an enumerator questioning the head of the household, or whoever else was there instead, and then writing down the answers using his own interpretation from hearing the answers and using his own guess about the spelling. This is how early parish church records were documented so these census have similar variations to the parish papers. So Kitto was recorded variously as Kittoe and Kittow and sometimes like Kytto or Catto.

Then the change into giving householders papers to fill out, and an enumerator would then copy the details into the Enumerators Summary Books. Spelling varieties multiplied, but some Kitto families took responsibility for their own spelling of their name, so usually kept that form for the following generations. But enumerators then imposed their own variations as they interpreted the householders writing, and then later transcribers of the enumerators used their own ideas about reading more obscure writings.

So, with the flick or wobble of a pen when writing Kitto, the ‘o’ became ‘s’ or something else happened elsewhere in the name. Kitto became Kitts and vice versa. Or Kitto, Kittoe and Kittow became Kittor, Kitton, Kittos, Kilto, Ketto, Kitte, Ritto, Hitto, or combinations of many of these. Some families I have yet to find in some census because they have been camouflaged so well, but I got pretty good at searching them out. It didn’t help when there were actually families of these names that were from different origins in time and place than the usual Cornish Kitto family. Even a large family of just ‘Kitt’ began to be recorded as Kitto as writers ended with a flourish which then became a new letter in the eyes of the transcribers.

When the 1901 census was taken to the Indian Sub-continent to be digitally transcribed for the public release in 2001, it went through all these problems and many more. At least 25% of the Kitto family were recorded as Kitts. The ‘ancestry.com’ transcript had far less errors and by using both indexes to then cross checking against the photocopy of the original enumerators documents, I made my own transcript. I can see how the wrong decisions were made, and even now about 5% of the names I am still uncertain whether they are Kitto or Kitts, or even something else. Only when I check against the known families will I be more certain.

The Sioux Indians

A letter sent to me some ten years ago explained how a part of the Sioux Indian Tribe assumed the Kitto name as a mark of honour for a Doctor Kitto who did so much for their families. I was unable to follow this up to find out who the doctor was, but I can only assume it was Edward D Kittoe of Illinois. As part of the London Kittoe family, he had arrived in Pennsylvania USA before 1840 and I assume he worked among the Indian Nations. In 1860 he enlisted in the Union Army as a surgeon, and by the end of the war had been a General on the staff of both Grant and Sherman. He had a big family that spread through Illinois and beyond. His brother Kirby Kitto, also a doctor, arrived in USA by 1859 and had a large family in Wisconsin.

The Sioux Indians were a little difficult to identify in the earlier US census. They may not have been counted in the first few enumerations. But they are visibly quite numerous in 1900, especially around the Dakota area in where the Santee Normal Training School was set up to train Sioux children as preachers, teachers, interpreters, business etc. to help develop their own people.

More another time.

Ken STEWART

2 September 2007

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The fifth KITTO Newsletter. June 2009

Another new KITTO family – the spiral continues

This family history comes from Mike NICHOLLS of Leicestershire. He descends from a KITTO family who became CATO. But his research confirms that his family have no links to the various other CATO families found throughout England. They are definitely KITTOs of Cornish origins.

These two parts of the one article were originally published in the Journal of the Leicestershire and Rutland Family History Society in December 2005 and March 2006. We are thankful for their permission to reproduce the article here. Mike Nicholls & Ken Stewart

From Cornish Kittos to Coalville Catos. (Part One)

John M Nicholls

My mother Joan, nee Cato, was born in Coalville, Leicestershire, in 1921, the only child of Joseph, and Doris, nee Gimson. Joseph Cato, after being a coalminer for a short time, had set up a small window cleaning business in Coalville, but sold up before the outbreak of World War II and moved to Coventry in 1940, where he worked as a clerk at the Armstrong Siddeley aircraft factory. Joan had married my father John Nicholls in Hugglescote, Coalville, also in 1940, but he was soon off to the war in the Royal Navy and Mum moved with her parents. Due to the bombing of Coventry, Mum was evacuated to Bidford on Avon, in rural Warwickshire, for my birth. Dad did not see me until he returned from the war, by which time I was three years old, and grandfather Joseph had played a considerable role in my upbringing. This is partly his story.

The Kitto Mystery

In 1969 Joseph and Doris moved back to Coalville. Joseph decided to trace his Cato ancestry. His reason for doing so came as a surprise to his family. He said he had been told, earlier in his life, that the family name wasn't Cato, but that his grandfather was born William Kitto and of Cornish origin. The name Cato was a rarity, and a treasured one: the prospect of it being "wrong", in some sense, was not a comfortable one. And Cornwall was about as far away as you can get from Leicestershire, and there was no material evidence of a Cornish origin. His only material piece of information was his grandfather's death certificate, which gave William Cato's age as 68 when he died, in nearby Whitwick, in 1907. So Joseph enlisted the help of the Coalville District Registrar; Marjorie Woods, to trace the birth, around 1838/9, of a William Kitto from Cornwall. A visit to Somerset House in London, by Mrs Woods' son, in 1970, revealed four possibilities in the birth registers. There is no indication that Joseph pursued the matter any further.

Armed with modern day resources, also helped by living near to the Family Records Centre and to the National Archives in London, could I solve the Kitto mystery? Well, almost; and what an intriguing journey it has been.

Joseph and James Cato

Joseph was born in 1901 to James Cato, a coalminer, and Mary Ann, nee Hook. He was the sixth child of eight, born in the period 1889 - 1910. The family lived at The Colliery, Spring Lane in Swannington in the parish of Whitwick, but by 1911 had moved a few miles to Crescent Rd in Hugglescote, occupying a substantial terraced house. The children's upbringing was very strict.

Joseph was athletic, became a good soccer player at local level, and a Sunday school teacher. He continued to advocate moderation and restraint in many aspects of life, and practised what he preached -though not without exception. The fairground photograph, taken in Great Yarmouth, shows Joseph, aged 35, at loggerheads with himself, the authoritarian confronting the drinker. In real life the authoritarian's victory was clear. He died

in Coalville in 1979, followed by his wife Doris in 1984.

Joseph Cato-1936

Joseph's father, James Cato, was born in Whitwick in 1867, son of William Cato, a collier, and Fanny, nee Wardlc. He was the second of five known children, born between 1861 and 1876. By 1881 James was a brick maker, then by 1889, when he married Mary Ann at St John the Baptist C of E in Whitwick, he was a collier. He remained a hewer below ground for most of his working life. The photograph shows a rather upright and independent man; however, unlike his son Joseph, and myself, he was not tall about 21 to 22 courses of bricks, say 5ft 5”.* Mary Ann was a sought-after dressmaker and a stocking maker. James died in 1931, and Mary Ann in 1934, their estate including six properties in Hugglescote and Donnington le Heath. In due course, I inherited James's gold cufflinks. James had been a shrewd investor, as were all my mining grandfathers. * It was later found that irregular bricks were used in the wall of depth 3 ¼ inches (not 3”). Thus James height was 5 ft 11”

James Cato-1901

William Cato or Kitto - Picking up the Threads

The 1861 census shows William Cato, Joseph's grandfather, as a 24 year old coalminer living with his wife Fanny in North St in Whitwick. There were no other Catos in the area. The family moved house three or four times around the village by 1901, when William's recorded age was 65. He was still an active miner. Fanny lived for 21 years after William's death, passing away at the age of 87 in 1928.

But what about the Kitto story ? Three things became obvious from the census data. Joseph's grandfather, William, was, throughout his married life, named Cato; he was born in Loughborough in Leicestershire, not Cornwall; and his age consistently indicated his year of birth as between March 1835 and March 1837, and not two years or so later, as indicated by his death certificate. Also, on his 1860 marriage certificate, William's father was named as William Cato, although anyone entering the father's data would keep the surnames the same. The story looked very shaky.

What next? Well, lets proceed on a bumpy ride through calligraphic corruption, Catholic conversion and India.

The Mystery Unravels

Working back from the 1861 data, the Leicestershire census index for 1851 should contain a William Cato, about 14 years old, born in Loughborough. It didn't. But it did have an Elizabeth Kettoe, who turned out to be a widow aged 48, born in Thorpe Acre and lodging in Loughborough. And back in the 1841 census there was a William Ketto, aged 55 to 60. a framework knitter, living in Loughborough with his wife Elizabeth and son William, aged 4. So was this four-year old William Ketto the same person as the 24 year old Loughborough-born William Cato, a coalminer in Whitwick, 20 years later?

The 1851 data being crucial, a detailed search for the young William Cato, or Kitto, was needed on the original census data, starting in North Leicestershire. Loughborough yielded nothing. Microfilmed Whitwick pages were faint. But what was that at the bottom of the page just scanned? Wind back the film - nice handwriting, I can make out age 14, born Loughborough, lodger, framework knitter, William - magnifying glass out over surname - Kitto. So where was it in the county index? It had been read, and included in the index, as Hills. The reason lies in Victorian calligraphy. Then, a K could be written almost exactly as an H. The faint crossing of the "t"s led to many instances of them being read as "l"s. And the final "o" is very similar to the closed "s" that I was taught at school; indeed half the Cato population of the country, including one of the two families then in Coalville, were converted into Cats in the official transcription of the 1901 census!

The evidence for the Kitto to Cato change was now looking better, for there was now consistency of place of residence as well as age and place of birth. But there was still one discrepancy to tackle. William Kitto had been baptised in 1837 at Loughborough All Saints, C of E. 23 years later, in 1860, William Cato, age 23, married at the Holy Cross Roman Catholic chapel in Whitwick. Had another kind of conversion occurred? Roman Catholic archives confirmed this to be so. William Ketto, son of William and Elizabeth (nee Brooks), born in January 1837, was conditionally (re-)baptised at St Mary's Roman Catholic church in Loughborough in July 1844. His father William had likewise been converted on Christmas Day 1843.

After research on other Cato families in the country (few in number), as well as a Cater family in Loughborough, there could be little doubt that William Cato, grandfather of my grandfather Joseph, was indeed the William Kitto or Ketto of Loughborough. But what explains this change of name? From the later research into William's father, variations of the spelling of his name were common - Kettow then Kitto then Ketto then Kettoe then Keto. It should be no surprise if an uncommon name, when spoken, were spelt differently by a variety of scribes, some having "the King's English", others accustomed to the dialects of their own localities.

And, moving temporarily into the realm of speculation, is it just possible that the first written record William had, and kept, with his name on it, was his certificate of marriage in the Roman Catholic church where the Latin-trained priest may have been familiar with Cato, the ancient Roman censor, and spelt a sound-alike accordingly? All of which still leaves us to investigate, in Part 2 of this article, the Cornish connection.

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From Cornish Kittos to Coalville Catos. Part Two.

By John M Nicholls

In Part One of this article I looked back through the history of my Cato ancestors in Coalville and Whitwick in Leicestershire, and showed that the family name had changed, around 1860, to Cato from Kitto or Ketto. This was during the life of my Great-great grandfather, William, and in accordance with a story passed on by his grandson, and my grandfather, Joseph Cato. That story also placed William's origins in Cornwall, but in fact they were much closer to home Loughborough. Part Two goes back two more generations in a quest for the Cornish link, starting with William's parents, William and Elizabeth Kitto.

William Kitto Senior - a Military Man

So what information exists on William Kitto senior, the father of William, and great grandfather of Joseph? Well, his occupation given on his death certificate, in April 1850, reads ''Out Pensioner of Chelsea Hospital from the 34^th Regiment of Foot". So the answer to the question is, literally, volumes - at least for the twenty years spent-in the Army during the period of the Napoleonic wars. Army pay books, and, later, records of pension payments, held at the National Archives show where he was, and sometimes what he was doing, every month.

William senior's Roman Catholic conversion record states that he was born to a William and Catherine in 1784; other records indicate a little earlier. His military discharge papers, in 1817, give his trade as a weaver and place of birth as Hatham in Leicestershire, assumed to be a corruption of Hathern. But the 1841 census record says he was not born in Leicestershire, and original parish records for North Leicestershire and South Nottinghamshire have no Kitto births, deaths or marriages for the twenty-year period from 1780 - 1800. However he did return from the Army to marry a girl from Thorpe Acre, which was the next village.

William was recruited to the 16th (Bedfordshire) Regiment of the Foot in October 1797. He would have been, at most, 15 years old. The Regiment had returned from Jamaica in the West Indies the previous year, having sustained big losses in jungle skirmishes. Uprisings and war all over the world were about to escalate even further and the Regiment had been authorised to recruit boy soldiers. In 1798 the decision was made to replace the boys by county militia men and to transfer 25 boys to two other Regiments - which were under orders for India. So William moved to the 34^th (Cumberland) Foot Regiment in October 1799.

Private William Ketto (his service name), age 17, pay 30 shillings a month, sailed in January 1800 for the Cape of Good Hope. He was not to set foot in England for another 17 years. In 1802 Dutch authority was re-established in the Cape colony and William's Company embarked on the vessel “Henry Dundas” for Madras, in southeast India, where he landed in February 1803. By then a huge area of Indian territory had come under the administration of the British East India Company, and its securement against local unrest and Napoleonic intervention was the task of the 34^th. For 14 more years William was on "protection duties", often under canvas, sometimes in barracks, moving very large distances around Southern India.

Surprisingly, considering the extremes of heat and humidity, William had a good health record until his last three years of service in India, when he was hospitalised frequently. He returned to England in early 1818 due to an enlargement of the spleen, and in August his pension of 1 shilling and threepence a day commenced. It was to continue for another 32 years! William's discharge papers give his height as 5ft 4", which came as a surprise until that of his grandson James was determined from the garden wall!

William married Elizabeth Brookes, 18 years his junior, at Loughborough All Saints in 1820. No record has been found of their whereabouts between then and 1832, when their son James was baptised in the same parish. James died in 1834, over two years before the birth of William junior. In 1841 the family lived in Dead Lane in Loughborough. and William senior was a framework knitter. After his death there in 1850, Elizabeth initially lodged with her twin brother George in the town, but then, a pension-less widow, moved to the Loughborough workhouse, dying there in 1863.

Cornish Connections

Although Joseph Cato took the information he was given to mean that it was his grandfather William Cato, nee Kitto (the son of military William), who was born in Cornwall, it could have meant, more broadly, that the family had its origins there. There is no doubt the further back you go towards the sixteenth century, that Kittos, and the few Kettos, are found only in Cornwall. The commonly accepted derivation of the name Kitto is the "son of Kit" (a diminutive of Christopher), the "o" at the end being the Cornish equivalent of "son". A check of Kitto marriages for 1760-1800 on the IGI (direct extracts from the parish registers only) showed about 65 in Cornwall, 4 in Devon, and three more in southernmost counties. This was a period of development and prosperity for mineral mining in Cornwall, and not the time to leave; shortage of housing, and famine, did not cause mass emigration until towards the middle of the next century. Even in the 1881 census, about 90% of people named Kitto, or a close derivative, were born in Cornwall.

But there is no IGI record of the initial baptism of Joseph's great grandfather William Kitto, or Ketto, born to a William and Catherine anywhere at all in the 1780s and 90s. Is there a candidate couple of this name for his parentage anywhere? Yes, just one. A William Kitto, a yeoman of Gwennap, a parish in the district of Redruth in Cornwall, and a Catherine Wilson of Truro were married under license in Truro, at St Mary's church, in 1769. No other William/Catherine marriages, using all variants of the surname, were found on the national IGI, or in Cornish Quaker records, or in the original Cornish C of E parish records up to 1785.

By 1776, the located William and Catherine had five children, without a male child having been baptised as William. Thereafter, there appears no trace of this family or of the deaths of either parent before at least 1785. Could William have been their son, born about 1783? This period saw John Wesley lecturing thousands, sometimes tens of thousands at a large amphitheatre in Gwennap and the Methodist church grew rapidly in the county, but few records exist of its early baptisms or burials. So it is possible that William was their son and had a nonconformist baptism, but without a record of the birth the degree of confidence is not enough to make a firm claim.

My Conclusion

My grandfather Joseph Cato was correct on most counts. His granddad was William Kitto, or Ketto. Kittos generally came from Cornwall, but whilst his grandfather did not, his great grandfather may have.

PS. Whither the Catos

The manuals on surname origins contain little or no reference to the surname Cato. In the 1881 and 1891 censuses there were close to 400 individual Catos in the United Kingdom, most of whom lived in the "home counties". Tring in Buckinghamshire remained the centre of the Cato population into the 19th century. Noting its proximity to one of the main Roman cities in England, Veralanium (now St Albans), and the historical connection of the Cato name with Rome, might this name have somehow seeped through the centuries from Roman times? And the final twist in my story, though not a turn in its conclusion, derives from a definition from the shorter Oxford English Dictionary: abbreviated - "Catonian, adj., Latin from Cato, cognomen of Cato the Censor, 234 -149 BC and Cato of Utica, 95 - 46 BC. Severe in manner, stern, austere." Now that sounds something like my grandfather Joseph.

Acknowledgement

My thanks are due to Ken Stewart of the Guild of One-name Studies for some detailed information on the Kittos of Cornwall.

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The sixth KITTO Newsletter. July 2009

Beginning a sixth newsletter with an appeal from a KITTO who has descended from a KITTO family of West Africa (Ghana). She is only able to track back to her grandfather there, but I have no records of any KITTOs in this region. She wrote “My full name would be Phoebe-Agnes Awo Okoma Kittoe from Ghana West Africa, the town where we are from is Winniba, but we also have family in Suredru” Agnes KITTO [mailto:Agnes.Kittoe@forces.gc.ca]

Can anyone help me or Agnes with Central African KITTOs.

Another email on the origins of the KITTO surname, this time from Bill WOODS. He has discovered a few entries in the IGI that refer to a family as “CHRISTOPHER or KITTO”. It is a family in Mawnan in Cornwall. There are very many families throughout England, and even through Cornwall, of the CHRISTOPHER family, but this is the only family to be noticed using the dual surname. On checking the source for these dual names it comes from a patron source of the LDS, so likely is an assumed alias, and has not originated from the registers. But it still begs the question about the earlier origin of the KITTO surname.

More to follow

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