LINEAGE AND HERALDRY
of the
ORTON FAMILY

We know basically nothing about the English home or the social status of Thomas Orton in the old country. The name was a thoroughly respectable middle-class name in various parts of England. Burke in his standard work on English Heraldry (3d ed., 1849) enumerates seven families of Ortons, included in the gentry, each having a coat of arms of its own. But of these seven there are three, and possibly four, that are plainly separate and distinct rom one another. The three remaining are as obviously more or less closely connected with or derived from one of the three or four first named.

The different Orton arms are thus described in the language of heraldry:

1. Vert, a lion rampant, argent, crowned, and armed, gules" (Cumberland).
   

   The first of these emblems belonged to a family in Cumberland, in the northwest corner of England. The sole heiress married many years ago, and the estate has passed out of the Orton name altogether. But in the adjacent county of Westmoreland, eight miles SW of appleby, an important village still bears the name Orton, which it seems reasonable to refer to this family. Orton Hall, Orton Commons, and Orton Scar are situated in adjacent territory. All these names an be found on any good map of England.
   
   

2. Azure, a lion rampant, or.
   
   

3. Azure, a lion rampant, argent.
   
   

4. Azure, a leopard, rampant, argent, crowned, or.
   
   

5. Argent, a bend sable between s rose in chief and a fleur de lis in base, gules (Leicester).
   This coat of arms belongs to the Ortons of Leicestershire.
   
   

6. Same arms as 5, with the addition of a crest as follows: Tower proper, cupola, and flag, gules. (Leicester).
   

   This emblem, which is in reality the most elaborate and complete of the series, evidently belonged to a branch of the same family. There is a large estate in this county that has been in the hands of the Orton family for centuries. Some of its members have held positions in the Church. Several localities still retain the family name, as Orton on the Hill, Cole (or Coal) Orton, etc. The first village is situated on the extreme western border of Leicestershire. Its name in ancient times is said to have been Worton Overton, and it is further remarked that the name is derived from the high situation of the village which commands an extensive prospect over many of the adjacent villages and towns of Leicestershire, Warwick, and Derbyshire. Cole Orton, anciently written Overton, is a large parish, distinguished for its collieries and from which it has derived its corrupted prefix (Cole, or Coal). It consists of two townships, called respectively Overton and Nethertown. The former is also known as Cole Orton Saucy; the latter is sometimes designated Overtown-Quartermarsh. Cole Orton is a rectory at the present time. It is laid down on all good maps of Leicestershire.
   
   

7. Or, a squirrel, sejant, gules, cracking a nut (Kent). The emblem belongs to a family in Kent, in the extreme southeastern corner of England.
   

The name Orton is also found in the records of another ancient village, which is adjacent to Orton on the Hill, viz., Twycross, the records of which go back to feudal times. In the list of six or eight freeholders of Twycross in 1630, the name of Michael Orton appears; and in 1719, the name of Thomas Orton appears in a similar list.

At Reresby, an old village seven miles north of Leicester and ten miles south of Loughborough, there is an ancient church which has an interesting history in connection with the Orton family. The church is dedicated to St. Michael, and among the list of rectors appear the names of:

• John Orton, M.A., 1675-1715
  

• Joseph Orton, 1715.
  

• John Orton, M.A., 1730-1760.
  

• John Orton V, M.A., 1760-1791.
  

• Thomas Orton (brother of John), 1799.

Contemporary notices show that Rev. John Orton V, was greatly beloved for his "universal benevolence and extended charities." On flat stones within the communion rails, inscriptions can still be made out in memory of several of the rectors named above and their families.

The Orton line of Leicestershire appears to have been the most prolific and persistent of any of which I have found records. At least the name is more frequently met with here than in any other district of England, so fare as I can learn. Within the last two years I have come upon four different families of Ortons in the U.S. and Canada, unconnected with each other as far as I know, the members of which were either themselves born in England or whose fathers were born there; and without exception they come from this central district, and not one of them from more than 50 miles from the Leicestershire center of Cole Orton, Orton on the Hill, and Twycross.

It has thus been shown that families of Ortons of good standing were found in the northwestern, the southeastern, and the central districts of England, and perhaps in many other quarters as well. Whether Thomas Orton was derived from any one of the seven prominent families the existence of which is certified to by armorial bearings, we don't know. Probably every county of the kingdom made some contribution to the Puritan exodus from England to the New World, which took place bet 1620 and 1640; but the greater number of colonists came from the eastern counties.

Several members of the family in this country have adopted the Leicestershire emblem as the "Orton coat of arms;" but, as I have already shown, there are seven Orton arms, and the selection of any one to represent the family of Thomas Orton is of course, purely arbitrary. I am wililng to concede, however, that the probabilities rather favor Leicestershire as our ancestral home.