North Glos Pitmans

The Pitman /Pittman families of North Gloucestershire

Having been born and bred in north Gloucestershire, we often wondered if we were related to other Pitmans in the area. Our father thought not, but we were not convinced and decided to see what we could find out. Were some of the Pitmans and Pittmans in and around our home town of Tewkesbury our distant cousins? How far back could we trace our own Pitman family? Were the Pitman and Pittman families once one?

We started with very little knowledge of our father’s ancestry. Sadly we didn’t begin investigating our family tree until after his death so what we have recorded on this site is based on careful research at Gloucestershire Archives, census records and other data on the internet, purchase of certificates and wills, and so on. We discovered that our own Pitman family was in Didbrook in the mid-18th century and moved via Moreton-in-Marsh and Prestbury to reach Cheltenham in the early 1860s. We then turned our attention to the other Pitman families in Gloucestershire and South Worcestershire of whom we had become aware and began looking at the Pitman families in Stow-on-the-Wold, Tewkesbury, Longhope, Cirencester, Pendock and Eldersfield to find out whether there was any evidence of a link with our branch.

We imagined that we might find a connection to the Pitman family of Stow-on-the-Wold as this lies close to Didbrook but so far we have found nothing to connect these two families. However we have discovered a firm link to the Pitmans from Longhope in the Forest of Dean: our 8xgreat grandfather, Richard Pitman, was a blacksmith there in the late 17th century. We have beeen unable to establish where he came from, but the name Richard also features in the Stow family, so there may yet be a link.

This site does not set out to give a complete family tree, rather to highlight some of the Pitmans (and Pittmans) we have come across during our exploration of three centuries of the name in and around north Gloucestershire (we have discovered the two were originally interchangeable before different branches adopted their chosen version). If you are related to us or any of these families, have any information about them, or would like to ask us about our research, please contact us.

This site is a work in progress, and new pages will be added frequently, so do visit again.