Marriott


Select Marriott Genealogy

Male personal names generally provided the base for patronymic and pet-name surnames.  But there were exceptions.  Mary was not a common medieval name (although of course there was the Virgin Mary).  It is thought that the pet-name Marriot emerged from Mary as a surname.  

Select Martiott Resources on The Internet
Select Marriott Ancestry

England.  The Marriott name was mainly to be found in the Midlands counties of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.  It cropped up most frequently in the records of Mansfield and Sutton-in-Ashfield.  There were also early references in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire.  Marriotts in London in the 17th century included Ben Marriot, the lawyer with a prodigious appetite, and John and Erasmus Marriott, apprentice clockmakers.  James Marriott came into the manor of Horsmonden in Kent in the 1720's through marriage. 

A Marryat line in England had come from Huguenots who had taken refuge in England following the St.Bartholomew's Day massacres in 1572.  The line included Thomas Marryat, a somewhat eccentric 18th century physician, and Joseph Marryat who became an MP and a British agent for the West Indies in the early 19th century.  His son, Frederick, made his name as a writer of sea stories.

Marriott emigrants from England in the 19th century included:
  • James Marriott, the London theatrical impresario who set up his stall in Wellington, New Zealand in the 1840's.  He was the father of the actress Alice Marriott.
  • William Marriott, the Manchester lawyer and politician who emigrated later to South Africa.
America.   The Marriott name is not that common in America.  It first surfaced in the 1650's with Major William Marriott in Surry county, Virginia and then in the early 1700's with Augustine Marriott in Anne Arundel county, Maryland.  Quaker Marriotts from Northamptonshire settled in New Jersey in the 1680's.  The Marriott name appeared most prominently in the 19th century in North Carolina (Nash County), Ohio (near Cincinnati), and in Utah.  Some of the Marriotts in America became Merritts.

John Marriott was one of the original pioneers of the Mormon church in Utah.  His son Hyrum ended up scratching out a bare living as a sheep farmer near Ogden.  So his son J. Williard Marriott, the second of six children, set off for Washington DC in 1927 to try and better himself.  He opened a root beer stall there with his wife Alice.  This business expanded into a restaurant chain and, later, into hotels.  His son J.W. Marriott, like his father a Mormon, is the present CEO of this giant international hotel chain.  

Select Marriott Miscellany

If you would like to read more, click on the miscellany page for further stories and accounts:


Select Marriott Names

Captain Frederick Marryat
, a contemporary of Dickens, was a pioneer of the sea story.  He is best known today for his children's story The Children of the New Forest.
Alice Marriott was a well-known actress on the London stage in the mid 19th century.
J. Willard Marriott was the founder of the Marriott international hotel chain.
Steve Marriott was the mod face of the English rock group Small Faces in the late 1960's.

Select Marriotts Today
  • 17,000 in the UK (most numerous in Derbyshire)
  • 2,000 in America (most numerous in Missouri)
  • 5,000 elsewhere (most numerous in Australia)



Select Index of Names 

Adams Chisholm Harding McCarthy Rooney
Armstrong
Clinton
Harris McDonald Sawyer
Baldwin Corbett Hayward Meredith Shelley
Bannister Crowther Henderson Mitchell Sheraton        
Bartlett Driscoll  Hepburn Moore Spencer
Bennett Ellis Higgins Nash Sykes
Booth Fleming          
Hilton Nightingale      
Todd  
Bowles Foster Hopkins          
Palmer Tucker
Brett Fox Hudson Pascoe Vaughan
Burden/Borden Fry
Jackson Pertwee Wade
Carter Fuller Jefferson Pratt Wallace
Cassidy Gallagher   Jenner
Probyn Washington
Cavendish Gould Maloney Reynolds Webster
Chapman Grant Marriott Richardson Witherspoon

The Origin/Spread of Surnames