The "Lost" Duggers!

The known paternal Dugger families originate from Daniel's sons John, William, and Henry. A fourth son; Benjamin may have a line as well, but as yet there is no record of him having married or fathered any children. Two maternal lines originate with Lydia Dugger; daughter of Daniel Dugger, who had at least two illegitimate sons;John Dugger Surry, and Alexander Dugger. The will of Marmaduke Cheatham strongly links him or his sons to the paternity, and the Dugger DNA Project has affirmed this.

While most of the original Dugger families migrated to other areas of the country; a few descendants of John Dugger Sr. and Henry Dugger Sr. stayed in Virginia.

Information links are provided with the expressed permission of Marty Grant

( This Page Last Updated 9/19/2011)

Dugger is the 3,439th most popular last name (surname) in the United States; frequency is 0.004%; percentile is 58.710 http://www.placesnamed.com/D/u/dugger.asp
Duggar is the 27,762nd most popular last name (surname) in the United States; frequency is 0.000%; percentile is 80.998
http://www.placesnamed.com/D/u/duggar.asp

[click here]

Note:

Y-DNA results so far show that the difference between Dugger and Duggar is in spelling only; as we all match back to the same root families.

(The total attendance was about double of what is shown in the picture.)
Without the tireless efforts of Ralph Dugger, this could not have been the great success that it was!

*Below is some rambling speculation as to the origin of the Dugger name in America. On the next series of pages is my "Daniel Dugger" line of Brunswick County, Virginia starting with Daniel Dugger and proceeding right up to the present.

The surname Dugger is patronymical in origin, and means "descendant of Duggert, a form of Tuchard, (worth, hard)."Elsdon C. Smith's New Dictionary of American Names. This and other sources have placed the name originally from Germany.

Other sources have it as a variation of the German word for duck or diving bird

Still other sources have it's origin in the Old English Du-guid or DuGuid; a nickname loosely meaning 'do gooder'

Before1800, The British Isles and Ireland may have been rife with Duggers and variants. Here are some examples (there are many more) I gathered from the Mormon International Genealogical Index.
(Note that I am only comfortable with actual "sourced" records, not undocumented submissions to the Mormon IGI. I have not seen any of the below records for myself, so for now they are little more than speculation)

Mrgerie DUGGER Sex: F Event(s): Christened: 14 Nov 1594 Feckenham, Worcester, England Parents: Father: John. DUGGER Mother: (---)

Hannah DUGGAR Sex: F Event(s): Christened: 23 Oct 1681 Dublin, Saint Catherine, Dublin, Ireland. Parents: Father: Daniel DUGGAR Mother: Hannah

Elizabeth DUGAR Sex: F Event(s): Christened: 12 Jan 1655 Old Swinford,Worcester, England Parents: Father: John DUGAR Mother: (---)

JOHN DUGARD - International Genealogical Index (Extracted birth or christening record for the locality )
Gender: Male Christening: 17 NOV 1678 Stoke Prior, Worcester, England
Father: Robert Dugard

Jone DUGER Sex: F Event(s): Christened: 19 Jul 1646 West Bromwich, Stafford, England Parents: Father: John DUGER Mother: (---)

Arabella DUGGOR Sex: F Event(s): Christened: 20 Apr 1736 Lansallos, Cornwall, England Parents: Father: (---) Mother: Martha DUGGOR

Susana DUGGARD - Gender: Female Marriage: JUN 1682 Saint Mary-St Marylebone Road, Saint Marylebone, London, England Spouse: Moses MARTIN

The earliest reference to the "Dugger" name I could find was in the late 1500s in England (see above). Daniel Dugger was known to use the name "Duggard" for some period of time. If he wasn't "born" a Duggard, then I have two theories as to why. One is that he was the victim of a clerical error, ie; he may have been listed as "Duggar, D", and someone just forgot the comma! Another possibility is that he or an ancestor had a substantial brogue and when he/she "trilled" the R in Dugger or Duggar, it was transcribed as Duggard. The reverse could be true as well. Keeping in mind that in Colonial America public records were kept by hand, and there were a number of languages and even more dialects of each language, record keeping must have been a nightmare. Which leads me to this: With English script of the time, just as now, a lower case 'n' is almost identical to a lower case 'r'. Given the probbable diffulcty of verbal communication, and the probbable limited number of scribes for record keeping, it seems to me that if a transcription error did occur, it probbably would have been FAR easier for the individual to adopt the name on the tax/land/vital records, than to try and get them changed.

*So far, DNA results are not supporting a relationship with ANY variant except Duggar; including Duggan and Duggen.

I even had a theory that since Daniel appeared about the time that the MacDonalds were being exterminated by the Campbells in Scotland; we were McDonalds "hiding" under new names.

*DNA results to date do not support the above theory.

Others have seen the origin being in the name Dugard as a possible source. I refer to the Lynn Dawson commentaryon the Marty Grant Site.

Within the original Virginia Colony land patent documents, there are listed at least 2 "Dugards", Abraham Dugard, and John Dugard as headrights, comming from England.
John Dugard may have been the father of Daniel Dugger. John andnot Abraham because of the well documented use of the name 'John' in Daniels line, and no use of 'Abraham', at least until some time later.
I think it worth noting that,according to Henrico County Records, some of which are posted at www.nyvagenealogy.homestead.com, on May 2 1794, a surety was provided for the marriage John Burton and Elizabeth Olsin in Henrico County by Abraham Dugard. This would seem to indicate that Abraham Dugards name carried on, especially since at least one researcher has John and Abraham Dugard settling first in Henrico County.
Unfortunately, "names" were often used many times to allow people passage on ships. In other words, there is a possibility that John Dugard himself never even traveled to the colonies, but his name was used (possibly more than once) to legitimize passage. (wanted persons, indentured servants, runaways etc)

I found this on the Allied Families Indexsite:
"The orginal spelling of the name was Daguerres. John Dugger, b. 1749 in Surry County, Virginia lived
in Dinwiddlie Co., Va. in the 1770's, moved 8 years after R/W to Orange County, N.C......"
Ref: National Archives F-W7062-R859 -Va. Archives Bible Records

I could find NO reference to this surname at anytime in history with the 's' but "Daguerre" seems to be French or Spanish. According to theMormon IGI, in the 1700s and 1800s Most Daguerreswere located in France, Spain, and South America.

*DNA results to date do not support the above theory.

I think this to be extremely unlikely as the original name if for no other reason than no documented early Dugger/Duggar line either in America or in Europe ever used French or Spanish given names, they were almost always Anglican. It would be logical to assume that somewhere either the French or Spanish heritage would make it's way into the families had it existed. There is no official record or source that I am aware of that makes any of these links either. For these same reasons I also reject the name as being of Irish. However, a German origin with Anglican given names could be explained if the source were the Hanoverians.

*There IS one very strong DNA match with the Henry/William line that points to one individual in Hanover. However, his name is not Dugger and there are other non Dugger matches.

AND...to add a "wrench to the works", I found this post on familyhistory.com:

Posted by: Beverley Wildey nee Dugher
Subject: New variant
Message:
Hello!
I am writing from Doncaster, England to tell you of my name. My great Grandfather Henry Dugher. He changed the spelling of the family name from Dugger to Dugher during the 1800`s as he tired of mis-spellings of it in its original form.

From Beverley Anne Wildey
Doncaster,England

*Unfortunately, DNA testing to date has eliminated any relationship to the above Dugher family with any known Dugger/Duggar family in the US.

From: Charles Duggar

Jim,
I just read your commentary on Dugger origins. Very intersting. I have done some research on the name and arrived at similar conclusions. One interesting thing I found is that some of the Duggar's in this country are from India. There is a sacred region in India called Duggar Sansar. I found Duggar's listed in the Bombay phone directory. I sent an email to the Duggar Sansar web site and the gentlemen replied that he was amazed that this name existed in North America so long ago.
All of my ancestors are Dugger except my Grandfather. He was raised by a riverboat captain who changed his name to Duggar. His fathers name was Dugger. Go figure.
I would like to hear your comments on this.
Regards
Charles Duggar
PS My wife's name is Debbie Duggar.

Originally done in 1999, this search was repeated on 6/21/2003 with Ireland added below!

Interestingly enough, in a rather unscientific study, I did a worldwide phone directory search of the last names Dugger, Duggar, Duggers, Duggars, Duggard, Dugard, Dugar, Duggery, and Duggert using WhoWhere, Infobel, and Deutches Telefonbuch.Countrys searched were the United Kingdom (which includes Scotland), France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, and the United States

Dugger: 17 in Canada,8 in Germany, 1 in the UK, 1 in Italy, too many to list in the U.S.

Dugard: 220 in France, 59 in the UK, 25 in Canada,1 in Germany, too many to list in the U.S.

Dugar: 7 in Germany, 5 in Italy, 4 in Canada, 2 in Spain, 2 in France, 1 in the UK, too many to list in the U.S.

Daguerre: 515 in France, 82 in Spain, 5 in Italy, 3 in Germany, 1 in the UK, 32 in Canada, 21 in the U.S.

Duggor: none currently in or outside the U.S. -There were 20 Duggors in the 1880 US census, all in Georgia, Illinois, and Missouri, and 1 (see above ) in the UK in the mid 1700's.

Duggery: none currently in or outside the US- There are 6 listings for this name (1864-1873) in Scotland, and 1 listing in the U.S. (Pennsylvania, 1875) with the Mormon Index.

I searched by name using the Ireland White pages at eircom . There areNO listings for ANY the above variants. However I did find listings for these similar variants:
Dugal, Dugast, Dugera, Duggleby, Duguid, Dugan, Dugdale, Duggan, Duggen, and Duguay