Jaggers

This most interesting surname is of early medieval English origin, and is a patronymic form of Jagger, i.e. "son of Jagger". Jagger is a peculiarly Yorkshire creation, and is an occupational name which means a pedlar, hawker, carrier or carter. The derivation is from the Middle English "jag", pack, load, and the agent suffix "er", a person or thing that performs a specified action. Job-descriptive surnames originally denoted the actual occupation of the namebearer, and later became hereditary. All or most present-day bearers of this surname are probably members of a single family, which originally came from a place called Staniland, in the parish of Halifax, Yorkshire. During the 16th Century it spread through the Calder valley, and thence to other parts of England. Katerina Jeggar is noted in the 1480 Register of the Guild of the Corpus Christi in the City of York. In the modern idiom the surname can be found as Jagger and Jaggar, and the patronymics as Jaggers and Jaggars. On November 17th 1757, the marriage of Robert Jaggers and Mary Smithies took place at Huddersfield, Yorkshire. The Coat of Arms most associated with the family is an azure shield, with a cross pattee throughout gold, cantoned with four red fleur-de-lis, the Crest being out of a ducal coronet a hand holding a sword proper. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Thomas Jager, which was dated 1379, in the "Poll Tax Returns of Yorkshire", during the reign of King Richard 11, known as "Richard of Bordeaux", 1377 - 1399. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.