Bottomore

Recorded in a number of spellings such as Butten, Button, Butner, Buttoner, Bottoner, and apparently the dialectals Bottomer and Bottomore (see below), this is a medieval English surname. It is usually job descriptive, but can also be locational. As locational it was possibly a misspelling from Bitton in the county of Gloucestershire, or from a now ''lost'' village called ''Buttone'' in the county of Somerset. The first recording from this source is John de Buttone in the records known as Kirby''s Questword in 1327. ''Button'' is arguably French in origin although ''buttons'' have been made in the British Isles since before Roman times, or at least one thousand years before the French arrived in 1066. Be that as it may the Norman Conquest was a milestone in that for three hundred years French became the official language of England. Buttons being very much for the benefit of the upper classes, it would have been p c to employ the ''new'' language to describe a maker and seller of buttons. Early examples of recordings taken from rolls and registers of the medieval period include Reginal le Botaner in the Hundred Rolls of the city of London in 1273, and William Boton in the tax rolls of the county of Sussex in 1296. Thomas Button was one of the earliest settlers to the Virginia Colony of New England, and was listed in 1623 as being ''resident in a plantation against James Cittee''. Unusual dialecticals from the surname as Bottoner appear to be Bottomer and Bottomore. It is unclear where the names originated from or why, but the first we have found is in the city of Nottingham with Thomas Bottomore and his wife Mary at the church of St. Mary''s on July 15th 1804, and at much the same time Rosetta Bottomer, who was christened at St Sepulchre, city of London, on March 24th 1810.