Morston

Recorded in the spellings of Morston, Morson and Morsom, this is an English post medieval surname. Claims have been made that it is a dialectal variant of the surname Morris, originally an English form of the French personal name 'Maurice', or its patronymic Morrison, but of this suggestion we can find no positive proof. There are few straight lines with most surnames, and given the collapsed standards of education particularly during the 16th and 17th centuries, when England was often convulsed by civil war and religious strife, almost anything is possible. Our research indicates quite clearly that this surname is more likely to be locational than patronymic, and as such a variant spelling of either of the village known as Morston, and found in the county of Norfolk, or in the spelling as Morsom from Moorsholm, a village near Guisborough, in the county of North Yorkshire. The surname is first recorded as Morston in the London church registers of 1599, when John Morston appears at St James church, Clerkenwell. Shortly afterwards on February 29th 1623, Nicholas Morson was recorded at St Mary Whitechapel, Stepney. London recordings are usually earlier than in the countryside, and the first recording outside would seem to be that of Abraham Morson, whose daughter Bridgett, was christened at the church of St Michael's at Plea, Norwich, on April 8th 1652. This would seem to confirm the locational origin as Norwich, the county town of Norfolk, is only thirty miles from Morston. The surname is also recorded in Canturbury, Kent, in 1693, when Richard Morson married Mary Nutt, and in the spelling of Morsom, at St Georges chapel, Hanover Square, Westminster, when in 1784 Richard Toms married Catherine Morsom.