Origin of the Name Gatton
The ancient history of the name
Gatton was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives. The Gatton and 'de Gatton' families are of Anglo-Norman origin and settled in County Surrey in England after the 1066 invasion by William the Conqueror. The earliest of the name was Hemfrid de Gatton who was born in the year 1094. A notable early bearer of the name was Robert de Gatton (1147-1190), a Knight of some renown and who was succeeded by his son Hamo de Gatton (1170-1216), who served in the office of Sheriff during the reign of Edward I. An Alicia de Gatton is recorded in the 'Poll Tax' of the West Riding of Yorkshire in the year 1379. Names were recorded in these ancient documents to make it easier for their overlords to collect taxes and to keep records of the population at any given time. When the overlords acquired lands by force or gifts from their rulers, they created charters of ownership for themselves and their vassals.
In Ireland this name and its variants were introduced into Ulster Province by settlers who arrived from England and Scotland , especially during the seventeenth century. It was the 'Plantations of Ireland ' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that marked the end of Gaelic supremacy in Ireland . While the influx of settlers in the wake of the earlier Anglo-Norman invasion of the twelfth century resulted in a full integration into Irish society of the new arrivals, the same never occurred with the Ulster Planters who maintained their own distinct identity.
The Gatton coat of arms came into existence centuries ago. The process of creating coats of arms (also often called family crests) began in the eleventh century although a form of Proto-Heraldry may have existed in some countries prior to this. The new art of Heraldry made it possible for families and even individual family members to have their very own coat of arms, including all Gatton descendants.