First Meeting
The first Huskey to meet an Ogle probably
did so on the Battlefield at Hastings in 1066 where soldiers representing both families fought. The Huskeys were part of the invading Norman army under William the Conqueror, and the Ogles were Saxons
who fought in support of the English king, Harold the Fair.
Ogles
In early times the Ogle family lived for years
in the Northumberland section of England, just south of Scotland. When England
was invaded in 1066, the Ogles fought well but on the losing side. As wars go,
they should have expected to lose everything. Nevertheless, for some reason William
the Conqueror returned the Ogle lands to Humphrey de Ogle, head of the family. William
may have been hoping to claim the family’s allegiance to him, but since very few other Saxon families in Northumberland
got to keep their lands, in some way the Ogles must have been special. William
returned all the lands to the Ogles that the Ogles had held before the war.
The Ogle (or Hoggell) name is perhaps Celtic
in origin. The Celts were in England before 1000 BC, and they may have included the first Ogles in England. The Swedish name Ogell is another possibility since the Scandinavian Vikings could have included
some Swedish Ogells. In any event, some time before 1066 AD a person named Ogle
gave his family name to a hamlet in Northumberland, and later the castle built there by the family was called Ogle castle. (Note: The History of Gatlinburg, a
book published in 1931 describing the families in Gatlinburg, TN, described the Ogles as “tall, blond men.” Celts? Swedes?)
Huskeys
There are three versions of the origin of
the Huskeys and their family name. One version is that they are from France;
a second is that they are from Scotland, and a third is that they are from Ireland.
A combination of these theories is probably more correct.
At the time of the Norman invasion of England,
the Huskeys were a Norman family who lived in the Seine maritime region of Normandy, France
Originally the Normans had been called Vikings or North Men. They had invaded Northern Scotland and
the Orkney Islands in the Ninth Century. Then, in the Tenth Century
they began invading France. They laid waste to Paris and that caused the French
king, Charles the Simple, to admit defeat and give northern France to them. Thereafter
that section of France was called Normandy (Land of the North Men.) One particular section of Normandy in the Seine maritime region was called Housaya. It is from the Housaya region where our ancestors lived that they took the name Huskey.
(I always assumed that the surname Huskey was a descriptive name, since all my Huskey male relatives are “husky.” Guess not.)
The North Men’s
leader, Jarl Thorfinn Rollo, became the first Duke of Normandy. William
Duke of Normandy (who became William the Conqueror) was the descendent of Jarl Thorfinn Rollo.
The Huskeys accompanied William and were part of the invading Norman forces that defeated the English at the Battle
of Hastings in 1066. For their loyalty and support, they were awarded lands in
Kent in southern England. Some of the family stayed there. Others moved to Ireland and back to Scotland. The Scottish
name Hotchkiss is said by some to be a form of Huskey. France, Scotland, or Ireland,
the family lived in all three places at one time or another (and at still another place before that, since they were Vikings
or North Men. As one would expect, as Vikings the Huskeys–or at least some
of them—appear to have been wanderers or adventurers. For some this would
not change when they reached America.
