There is a strong family tradition that the Toulmin family is of
Huguenot
origin, but no-one ever seems to have
found any evidence for this. The most
detailed stories come from
widely-separated sources:
"The Toulmins were originally French Huguenots and the name Toulmin
was
pronounced in the French way. My sister's teacher said there were
Toulmins now
in France, but that was very long ago, and
like other Huguenots, they probably
fled to England where they settled in
Preston, Lancashire. They were
Protestants and natural dissenters, so became
adherents of the Methodist
church." (Flora T.Briggs,
grand-daughter of John Toulmin, *61)
"My father [a grand-son of William Toulmin, *66] used to tell me
that the
family had originally come from France
which, being Huguenots, they had fled at
the time of the St Bartholomew Massacre
[23 Aug 1572]. Thence they had gone to
Holland and again had to flee because of
persecution by Philip II of Spain. He
thought that they were primarily weavers
and as such had gone over to Britain.
But how they had managed to get to
Lancashire he had no idea." (From
William
Toulmin, *66172: this story seems seems to
come from Cussans.)
Obviously there was some guesswork going on - for instance there is no evidence
that the family "settled in
Preston" before about 1805.
On the other hand, a search by the Research Assistant of the Huguenot
Society of
London, prompted by Janet Hawksley (of the
"London" family) produced nothing:
"I
have searched the registers of the French,
Walloon and Dutch churches - some 26 in
London, 9 in the provinces, and 5 in Ireland and can find no instance of the name
TOULMIN.
The nearest to it is the curious surname TOUTLEMONDE/TOULEMONDE ... But
it would be far-fetched I think to suppose
that TOULMIN is a contraction of
TOUTLEMONDE" (Mrs Caroline Hickey, 17 April 1986). The latter has certainly been
reduced to TOULEMON in modern France
(there is an eminent Robert of that name).
The "London" Toulmins (Lond*) are traced back to Somerset in
1580, but no
connection has been found between them and
the Preston family, whose certain history
begins with: