Heatherington/Hetherington Ancestors

When completed, this page and its links will contain the known lore and history of our Heatherington/Hetherington ancestors. It is a work in continual progress, and will be updated and modified as research uncovers new information. Please be aware that right now I am still in the process of "downloading" all the scattered information contained in notes compiled by my mom, myself, and others, so new pages, details, and references will be added as I work on compiling what we have.
The information comes from a variety of sources, some more reliable than others. I have tried not to over-interpret the raw data, and in a few cases where I have gone out on a "speculative limb", I have tried to make it clear that that is what I was doing. If anyone discovers any blatant errors or knows something that should be added, please contact me (Ann L.). For privacy reasons, this history will not include information about any living members of the family.

The earliest ancestor that we know of was named John Hetherington. Yes, that's "Hetherington", without the "a". Two centuries ago, literacy was not ubiquitous as it is today, and even among the literate, spelling patterns were fluid. Illiterate people could not spell their names out to a parish priest or census enumerator, so these record-keepers simply wrote down names as they heard them. I have seen the surname spelled "Heatherington", "Hetherington", "Hethrington", and even "Etherington" on old records for members of the same family unit. "Hetherington" is by far the most common form in both Britain and the U.S.. The transition in our family from "Hetherington" to "Heatherington" appears to have been rather recent, and was made with (or possibly deliberately by) Alexander Heatherington, son of Thomas Alexander Hetherington.

If you would like to read some really early history concerning the Hetherington/Heatherington clan, go to this page on the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers. It is rather interesting...

For starters, here are biographies of our immigrant ancestor, John Hetherington, and his son Will: