GRANBERRY

Paternal ancestry of Agnes Granberry Chalker starting with her father, James Asaph Granberry, Sr.

Links to Additional Resources

1. The Granberry Family and Allied Families, compiled by Edgar Francis Waterman
   This a thorough compilation of Granberry family geneology that includes some Granberries in our family line

2. John Granberry:  Virginia
   This is another thorough document. While it focuses on families related to John Granbery (not in our line), it includes information on the earliest members of the Granbery family - the very beginning of our line that's been documented.

Origin of Granberry name - some suggestions:

• One version is that the Granberry/Granbury name is derived from an old English place name crana-byrig. The first part crana means a crane or heron and byrig means an earthwork or fort. Thus an earthwork or fort frequented by cranes. Early Saxon farmers living near an old Neolithic or Roman fort would have noticed the connection and attached the place name to their name i.e. Jon Cranabyrig which eventually took on the derivation Cranberry. As these English settlers sailed to America in the 1600's their names took on different spellings based on how it was recorded -- Cranberry, Granberry, Grandberry, etc.

• Probably an Americanized spelling of Granberg.  In Swedish: ornamental name composed of the elements gran ‘spruce’ + berg ‘mountain’, ‘hill’.  In Norwegian: habitational name from any of several farmsteads so named, from gran ‘spruce’ + berg ‘hill’

• Variations to spelling include Granbery, Granbury, Grandberry, Grandbury, Cranberry, Cranbury, and Crambury.  The name is found in 1551 in the parish of Cranburye in Hampshire, England.  The first person in some written records is found in 1280--John de Crennebere--in Devon County.  The first Granberries found in the United States are William and John, both adult males in the 1650's. 

• The adoption of a consistent and uniform method of spelling English words was developed in the publishing houses of Edinburgh and later in London. It was followed by the publication of Nathan Bailey's dictionary in 1730 and by Samuel Johnson's in 1755. The variations in the spelling of the surname Granberry may usually be traced to one of two things, the laxity of the recorders who often spelled the same person's name in different ways in the same record, or; what is quite noticeable in the originals; the difficulty in distinguishing between C and G not only in the early Latin manuscripts but even more markedly in the old English script and the Court Script. The latter was subject to many changes in itself and there are numerous cases in both where G was clearly intended that have been read and printed as C and vice versa. The character used for C and the like characters are especially subject to this misinterpretation for the inclined and horizontal strokes are similar. In some cases, a person would just choose to change the spelling of their name. An example is Hiram Granbury 1831-1864 (Granbury, Texas is named after him). He was born Hiram Granberry and changed the spelling to Granbury as an adult.