Carhart

Recorded as Carhart, and apparently in mid Victorian times also as Corhard, this is a very usual surname. It appears to be English, but may well not be so. In its present or modern form it appears to date from about the end of the 18th century, but clearly as surnames were created from around the 12th century in the British Isles, it must be derived from some other spelling. Surnames which suddenly appear in English records after about 1700 and have no apparent source of origin, are often later discovered and usually by accident, to have either a Gaelic, Celtic, or a French Huguenot origin. The records which do relate to these names has been studied, as has all known gazetters of the period, but no obvious origin has been proven. There are a number of candidate names including particularly the Irish Caraher, or perhaps even more likely, the Scottish locationakl surname Cathcart, first recorded in about the year 1200, but we have not been able to establish a definate and proven linking. What we do know is that recordings in the surviving church registers of the diocese of Greater London include Elizabeth Carhart who married Charles Rayner at the famous church of St Mary-le-Bone, on July 28th 1795, whilst William Leman Corhard, was a witness at St Thomas, Stepney, on May 16th 1869.