This section of the family history memorializes British Kirkmans and descendants of Kirkmans who emigrated to America in the mid-17th century.

The World Book of Kirkmans asserts there currently are 11,600 Kirkmans worldwide, most of them in the English speaking nations. It estimates there are 6,800 American Kirkmans, 3,200 in Great Britain, 1,000 in Australia, 200 in Canada, 100 in New Zealand, and several hundred in Ireland, Germany, South Africa and Switzerland.

Sources offer four explanations for the name’s derivation.

One avers the ancient Kirkmans were Celtic Britons who were Christianized and began using the name in the 5^th century.

Another claims the Kirkmans were Anglo-Saxon warriors, members of a barbarian horde that overran Britain in the year 450 and dominated the country until their defeat by William the Conqueror’s Normans at Hastings in 1066. With other surviving Saxons, the Kirkmans then allegedly fled from southern England to Yorkshire and the Midlands and interbred with Danish Vikings.

The third proposes the Kirkmans are descendants of Danish Vikings who began raiding eastern England in 793 and settling in Yorkshire and the Midlands in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Lastly, is the possibility that the Kirkmans were Normans.

The name Kirkman provides the answer. It isn’t Celtic or Norman. Instead, it derives from the Icelandic Old Norse words kirkja, which means church, and kirkju-menn, which means churchmen. Thus, the best bet is the Kirkmans are descendants of Danish Vikings, then became a mixture of Danish and Saxon.

There are six English variations of the name: Kirkman, Kirkeman, le Kirkeman, Kyrkman, Kyrkeman and Kyrckman; three Danish spellings: Kirkeman, Kirkemann and Kjerkman; two German: Kirckman and Kirchman; the Swedish Kirkeman; Finnish Kirkkman, and Dutch Kerkman. But all the variations mean the same: a person who lived near a church or worked in a church.

Thus, there is no single ancient ancestor of modern Kirkmans and there isn’t one ancestral home or home region. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of northern Europeans took or were given the name Kirkman in the distant age when family surnames became common (probably the 13^th century or thereabouts). There also are instances of persons with Danish and German versions switching to English nomenclature.

Ancient English census records (the Ragman, Curia Regis, Pipe and Hearth Rolls) say families named Kirkman, Kirkeman, le Kirkeman, Kyrkman, Kyrkeman and Kyrckman were medieval landowners in Great Britain’s Midlands.

The first family member to be registered on an ancient British census was Robert Kirkeman, a Yorkshire squire cited on a Pipe Roll in the year 1230.

Roger le Kirkeman was recorded in Yorkshire in 1259 and two family members were

noted in eastern England in 1273 (Roger le Kyrkeman of Lincolnshire and Symon Kirkeman of Suffolk).

The family continued to reside in Yorkshire in the 14^th century with Gilbertus Kyrkman, Johannes Kyrckman and Ricardus Kirkeman listed in 1379.

In the 15^th century, a Rev. Richard Kirkman was rector of Little Ashby in Leicestershire during the War or the Roses reign of King Henry VI (1422-1461), and Alan Kyrkeman was a Norfolk freeholder in 1472.

Charles Kyrckman was a Lincolnshire landowner in 1597 and an Anne Kirkman married a William Kynder in London in 1609.

The family attained British prominence during the 17^th century when Francis Kirkman of London published books and plays, including French and Spanish translations. He also wrote two novels and had a private circulating library.

The British Kirkmans reached a pinnacle with popular 18^th century London composer-pianist Jacob Kirckman and famed 18^th and 19^th century London harpsichord and piano makers Abraham and Jacob Kirckman. The late 19^th century also produced noted Manchester mathematician and vicar Thomas Penyngton Kirkman.

There are two family coats-of-arms:

Early Kirkman warriors apparently went into battle carrying gray shields crosshatched by two broad vertical and horizontal stripes, a pattern that resembles a black-on-gray tic-tac-toe game.

The other coat-of-arms, which appears in Burke’s "General Armory," has crossed shepherd’s crooks topped by three bishop’s miters, and above those depictions a crossed sword and crook. It also displays the scrolled legend "In Deo Confido" (I Trust in God).

There are several claims that a Robert Kirkman was one of the first converts to the Rev. John Wesley’s Methodist church which roared into prominence in England in 1739.

An early history of the Methodist church by Bishop Holland McIntyre says Robert was a close friend of Wesley and one of Methodism’s first three converts. Robert, the son of a clergyman, was a "rollicking fellow addicted to tea, drinking and reading Greek testament" (apparently an 18^th century version of cigareets, whiskey and wild, wild wimmen). Bishop McIntyre says Robert shed his vices during the first Methodist meeting which occurred in Oxford in 1727.

THE MUSCIAL KIRCKMANS

From Stephen Thomas Kirkman of London, England and John Watson of Colonial Williamsburg comes an intriguing tale about Jacob and Abraham Kirckman, famous 18^th and 19^th century London harpsichord and piano makers.

Stephen says his ancestor Jacob Kirchman (1710-1792) immigrated from Bischweiler, Alsace (then in Germany but now in France) to London in the early 1730s and became the foreman for the eminent harpsichord manufacturer Hermann Tabel. When Tabel died in 1738, Abraham married his widow, formed a partnership with his nephew Abraham, Anglicized their names and took over the business.

During the 18^th century, the Kirckmans manufactured 1,000 to 2,000 harpsichords on a clever assembly line that pre-dated Henry Ford’s automobile assembly line technique by more than a century.

It’s alleged that the Kirckmans once were challenged for musical preeminence in England by a guitar maker who persuaded upper class English women to switch from harpsichords to guitar strumming. The Kirckmans slyly bought a number of guitars and distributed them to street singers and poor milliners. Horrified upper class ladies immediately ditched their guitars and resumed tinkling harpsichords.

Famed for excellence, the Kirckmans sold harpsichords until 1809, notably to Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III; Virginia tobacco planter Thomas Jefferson, and a pre-revolutionary governor of Virginia.

The Kirkmans switched to manufacturing pianos when they became the premier keyboard instrument in the early 19^th century. The family’s piano works, located on London’s Broad Street, Golden Square, was destroyed by a fire on August, 20, 1853, but the business survived until it was sold to a competitor in 1898.

Another Jacob Kirkman, a nephew of harpsichord-making Jacob, was a noted late 18^th century London pianist and composer who wrote more than 30 works for the piano.

Currently, there are three Kirckman harpsichords in Colonial Williamsburg and one, made in 1758, is on display in the ballroom of the picturesque, recreated Governor’s Palace. A Kirckman harpsichord purchased by Thomas Jefferson for his daughters can be seen in Jefferson’s Monticello, VA estate. Kirckman harpsichords also can be viewed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; at Yale University, New London, CT, and in the Boston and New York City Museums of Fine Art.

John Kirkman of Manchester, England was an early British convert to the Mormon church. Born Nov. 1, 1830, weaver John became a Latter Day Saint in 1849 and emigrated to the United States in 1855 with a wave of British Mormons. He became a church official in 1871 and a Salt Lake City councilman in 1886. Oddly, John’s wife, Sarah, also was from Manchester but they married in Utah.

South African Frederick Bernulf Beaver Kirkman, a son of Manchester’s famed mathematician and vicar Thomas Penyngton Kirkman, was a noted teacher and ornithologist.