The relative rarity of the Fulton surname
1841 Scotland census: Only 7 in 10,000 people carry the Fulton surname
1790 US census: Only a little more than 1 in 10,000 people carry the Fulton surname
1790 US census Pennsylvania: Only 5 in 10,000 people carry the Fulton surname
Fulton as a surname is relatively uncommon. Therfore where ever multiple Fulton families are found living near to each other, such as in the same county or even more so if closer such as in the same township, the odds are very high they are closely related. The original home of the surname Fulton is Scotland. So it is logical that Fulton would be most common there. Even in Scotland, based on an analysis of the 1841 Scottish census, only 7 out of every 10,000 people carry the surname Fulton. In the first census of the US only a little more than 1 in 10,000 people carry the Fulton surname. Not surprisingly, since Pennsylvania was very heavily settled by Scots-Irish, the 1790 US census shows 5 of every 10,000 people in Pennslyvania carry the Fulton surname. All these numbers are small. Fulton doesn't even get close to being one of the top 100 surnames in Scotland. Since virtually all Fultons share a common Scottish ancestry, doing the math on the above stats would indicate:
14% of the total US population in 1790 carried a Scottish surname (19% of white only pop)
71% of the population of Pennsylvania in 1790 carried a Scottish surname
Prior to maturity of steamship navigation and railroads in the mid 1800's, travel over any long distance was difficult and and full of risks. Particularly when relocating your home, people most often traveled in large groups, usually composed of extended family members and/or members from same community. Today we take for granted that an individual or a small family unit can pick up and move across the country or across the world by themselves. In the 1700's when traveling across the ocean from Ireland to Pennsylvania and often becoming the first settlers in a area bordering possibly hostile Indian tribes, people traveled in groups, mostly of extended family and/or from the same community. For these reasons, I think it is a fairly safe, although certainly not fool proof assumption that where ever multiple Fulton families are living in close proximity in the 1700's or earlier, that they are closely related.
Genealogy Clues in the Use of First Names
Analysis of Male first names in Scotland
Based on frequency in Parish Register Baptisms 1553-1854
Any genealogist knows that first names given are very often repeated in Family groups. Most are aware that prior to the late 1800's a large percentage of Northern European heritage families followed the pattern of naming the first born son after the Father's Father, second, third and fourth sons after Father's Grandfather, Father, and Mother's Father, not necessarily in that order. After that, the names were still often after family members. These naming patterns are often similar for girls and can often provide important clues in determining parents and grandparents names.
The use of rarely used first names can also provide clues to Family connections. Some names are very common. If you has a room full of 100 Scottish men from the 1700's to leave the room if their first names are John, James, or William, the room will be half empty. If you then ask those to leave with first names Robert, Alexander, Thomas, George, David, or Andrew, 90% of the room is empty. Knowing the frequency of use of first names in a population can provide a strong clue to Family relationship.
Rare first names: Joseph, Richard, Francis, and Paul
As clues to connecting the Fultons of Lisburn to the American Fulton families, I suggest focusing on 3 first names, Joseph, Richard, and Francis. Each on has a frequency of use among Scots of about one in every 200. Pretty rare. Yet these names occur repeatedly among the Lisburn Family and they also occur in early Fulton Families of SE Pennslyvania. A coincidence? Probably not, but maybe. However, when added to the relative rarity of the Fulton surname and to other clues discussed elsewhere regarding place names, I believe the use of these first names add to the evidence of a close family link between the Fultons of Lisburn and the early Fulton Families of SW Pennsylvania. One other example is even more striking. The first name Paul is found in an adult Fulton in Lisburn in 1678 then disappears from the area. In South Carolina in the 1730's-40's we find a David Fulton with a first born son, a grandson, and great-grandson named Paul. How rare is Paul? A search of 28,000 Scottish baptisms recorded between 1553 and 1854 for the extremely common Scottish surname Wilson showed the first name Paul was NEVER USED. A similar search of several hundred Fulton Scottish baptism records also showed the first name Paul never used. Coincidence. I think not.
Clues to Ethnic Origins in First Name Usage?
English and French ancestry in the Fultons of Lisburn? The first names Joseph and Richard are much more commonly found among English than among Scots. And the first name Francis is slightly more common in England than Scotland, but much more common among French Huguenots than among either Scots or English. Could this mean it is likely that the Fultons of Lisburne intermarried with English and French? Seems likely enough in the the Lisburn area was settled by both Scots and English during the Protestant Plantation of Ireland, and we know a colony of French Huguenots was settled in Lisburn around the year 1700.
I think a similar analysis could be used if you are researching family lines with no known connection to Scots or Scots-Irish. If you see the first name Alexander or Hugh or even David used, it could well indicate a Scottish connection.
I performed a similar analysis on some of the names in England using the 1841 Census of England. The results showed that some first names are more commonly used in Scotland than England and others the reverse.
Following are some first names more common in England than Scotland:
Joseph: 9 times more common in England than Scotland
Richard: 7 times more common in England than Scotland
Francis: 2.5 times more common in England than Scotland
Thomas: 2 times more common in England than Scotland
Following are some first names more common in Scotland than England:
Alexander: 33 times more common in Scotland than England
Hugh: 10 times more common in Scotland than England
David: 5 times more common in Scotland than England
Robert: 2 times more common in Scotland than England.
Francis is an interesting first name. It is more common in England than in Scotland, but is quite rare in both countries. The first name is more common among the French. I searched a list of 750 French Huguenot immigrant names who went to Virginia, New York, or Boston. In that list 5% used the first name Francis (Francois). That would indicate that the use of the first name Francis is 4 times more prevalent among the French than in England and 14 times more prevalent among the French than in Scotland.
We know that people moved even prior to 1800 between England and Scotland. We also know that Northern Ireland had significant settlement from both England and Scotland. We also know that French Huguenot refugees came to England in large numbers in the 1600’s with some colonies being planted in Ireland and Scotland and specifically a colony of French settled in Lisburn, Northern Ireland.
The above analysis when compared to the common use of the first names Richard, Francis, Joseph, and Thomas among the Fulton’s of Lisburn might suggest that branches of the family intermarried at an early date with England and French Huguenot settlers.
Following is an analysis of the frequency of male first names in Scotland. I searched the existing Parish registers available online including dates from 1553 to 1854, a period of 300 years. I used the surname Wilson, as the base. Wilson is the third most common surname in Scotland and on a relative basis much more common to Scotland than Smith and Brown, the first and second most common surnames in Scotland. I searched on 48 selected male first names with the surname Wilson. The results ranked by frequency are below.
Total number of names cumulatively in searches: 28,799
Rank First Name Number % Cumulative %
1 John 5,846 20.3 20.3
2 James 5,081 17.7 38.0
3 William 4,307 15.0 53.0
4 Robert 2,575 9.0 62.0
5 Alexander 1,928 6.7 68.7
6 Thomas 1,748 6.1 74.8
7 George 1,578 5.5 80.3
8 David 1,478 5.2 85.5
9 Andrew 1,078 3.7 89.2
10 Peter 435 1.5 90.7
11 Charles 370 1.3 92.0
12 Hugh 356 1.2 93.2
13 Adam 244 0.8 94.0
14 Henry 224 0.8 94.8
15 Patrick 199 0.7 95.5
16 Joseph 184 0.6 96.1
17 Matthew (Mathew) 179 0.6 96.7
18 Samuel 124 0.4 97.1
19 Richard 118 0.4 97.5
20 Francis 101 0.4 97.9
21 Daniel 89 0.3 98.2
22 Edward 75 0.3 98.5
23 Allan (Alan) 68 0.2 98.7
24 Gavin 50 0.2 98.9
25 Donald 47 0.2 99.1
The total for the other 23 first names searched is less than 1%. The other 23 first names searched and the number found are: Arthur-41, Abraham-10, Benjamin-8, Brian-0, Bruce-12, Christopher-6, Craig-9, Isaac-10, Jeffrey-1, Jacob-36, Jesse-3, Jonathan-11, Kenneth-8, Louis-19, Luke-1, Michael-25, Nathaniel-16, Neil-10, Nicholas-9, Philip-16, Roy-4, Russell-13, Stephen-15.