SCARGILL

This brief sketch is adapted from Russell Stephen Smith, The Scargills of Sheffield, available online at http://www.geocities.com/ieldrensecan/pdf_files/SCARGILL.pdf, and from Stuart Hill, Hill-Froggatt-Whittington … Family Tree, available online at http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=sah1717. The name of the family under discussion usually appears as Skargell in the Sheffield parish registers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it is also found as Skargill, and the most prevalent modern farm is Scargill, which is the one we have chosen for the title. This family had developed so many branches at Sheffield by the late sixteenth century that near the end of the year 1565, there were three Skargell children, surely not siblings, baptized on three different days but within a span of nine weeks of one another. The incessant repetition of the names William, Thomas, Robert, and George creates some very intractable identification problems.

The Warren Skargell with whom we end our pedigree (intending only to cover so much of this lineage as belongs to the ancestry of the Whittingtons) was definitely the son of a George Scargill, being designated as such in his baptismal record. But the two authors cited above offer discrepant views as to the identity of this George Scargill, and the evidence does not seem to be decisively in favor of either theory. Russell Smith tentatively equates him with the George Skargell who married 2 July 1584 at Dronfield, Derbyshire, Margaret Treeton, while Stuart Hill makes him a son of a presumably older George Skargell who married 26 April 1562 in Sheffield parish church, Grace Fisher. Russell Smith’s reconstruction of the family fails to incorporate a number of children mentioned in the Sheffield baptismal register, thus overlooking significant onomastic and chronological evidence (and incidentally, it must also be noted that many of the dates from parish registers are quoted incorrectly). Stuart Hill’s version evinces a more persuasive pattern of name-inheritance (since Warren Skargell named a daughter Grace), but between the baptism of Thomas Skargell on 4 March 1570/1 and that of Grace Skargell (perhaps a sister to Warren?) on 14 April 1584, the baptismal records of the various Skargell children either fail to name the father or else show a father with a name other than George, leaving a gap of over twelve years in the proposed family of George Skargell and Grace Fisher. Therefore, at this time we must consider the parentage of Warren Skargill to be undetermined.

A third version of the pedigree of Warren Skargell is, we believe, probably wrong. Richard Ricks, of Cedar Hills, Utah, in a submission to the LDS Pedigree Resource File, offers an unconvincing compromise between the theories discussed above, claiming (with Russell Smith) that Warren Skargell was the son of George Scargill and Margaret Treeton, but additionally making him a grandson of George Skargell and Grace Fisher. The Sheffield baptismal records contain only two children named George Skargell old enough to have been the husband of Margaret Treeton: one baptized on 22 March 1561/2, the other on 18 March 1564/5. The latter would have been scarcely 19 years of age if married in July 1584, which while not impossible would not be typical for a male of his social class in this place and period. On the other hand, the former of these two Georges was born more than a month before the marriage of George Skargell and Grace Fisher, and had he in fact been their son he would have been illegitimate, a fact which no English parish register of the sixteenth century would fail to note. (In particular, not only are bastards frankly indicated as such in the Sheffield baptismal registers of this period, but their baptisms are always recorded under the mother’s surname, never that of any putative father.)

1. George Skargell, of Sheffield. He may possibly have been the one of this name who married 26 April 1562 in Sheffield parish church,^[1] Grace Fisher. However, if she was the Grace Skargell (no further information given) buried 21 September 1569 in Sheffield church or churchyard,^[2] she cannot have been the mother of Warren, below.

2. Warren Skargell, of Sheffield, yeoman and cutler, was baptized 6 May 1587 (as Warren son of George Skargell) in Sheffield parish church,^[3] and was still alive in 1629. He married 17 January 1614/5 in Sheffield parish church,^[4] Joan Bright, baptized 6 November 1586 in Sheffield parish church,^[5] buried 19 March 1655 in Sheffield churchyard, daughter of Henry Bright, of Whirlow Hall, Ecclesall, yeoman, by the latter’s wife Anne ____.^[6] According to Russell Smith, Warren Skargell leased Bellhagg Farm from the manor of Sheffield in 1637, and served as a witness to a mortgage on land at Greystones to Thomas Bright in 1649. A local history makes reference to his cutlery at Abbeydale: “Bartin Wheel … also known as Skargell Wheel … built as a cutler’s wheel, by Warren Skargell (or Skargill) just before 1631. It was still in use for cutlery grinding in 1830, when William Bartin was the tenant. By 1850, the wheel had closed down.”^[7] Issue (all baptisms in the parish church of Sheffield):^[8]

1. Elizabeth Skargell, baptized 31 March 1616.
2. Grace Skargell, baptized 30 November 1619. She married 29 June 1640 in the parish church of Ecclesfield,^[9] Henry Whittington, of Barnsley, a chapelry in the parish of Silkstone, in the West (now South) Riding of Yorkshire, born say 1615, buried 1 March 1695 [i.e. 1694/5?] in Sheffield churchyard. See WHITTINGTON.
3. Anna Skargell, baptized 8 April 1621.
4. Henry Skargell, baptized 19 December 1624.
5. Gertrude Skargell, baptized 19 July 1629.

Notes

From the Genealogy Page of John Blythe Dobson
URL = johnblythedobson.org/genealogy/ff/Scargill.cfm
This page written 24 August 2006
Last revised 4 July 2017