From Guernsey to Gambier: The deep history of the Torode family & the one they left behind

Part of how I write the History Knox column has been a years-long process of noticing passing details and making a note to check into one of them at some later time. One such case resurfaced recently.

Years ago, on one of my strolls through the Kenyon College Cemetery in Gambier, I snapped a picture of the gravestone of one G. F. Torode, which informs us that this person died in 1832, and nothing else.

That makes Torode one of Gambier’s earliest graves, which is interesting in itself, and I was also interested in that surname.

I can’t say I’ve ever encountered the name “Torode” elsewhere, so it was tough to guess its origin. Furthermore, the minimal information on the tombstone, and the lack of any surrounding family members made this one quite obscure.

If I would have ventured a guess, I suppose I would have wondered if it was a French name. I would not have guessed the actual origin.

George Frederic Torode was born on the Isle of Guernsey in the English Channel. But my guess about it being a French name is not entirely wrong, for if you look on a map, you’ll find that Guernsey, though in the Channel, is very close to the French coast.

In fact, it was part of the Duchy of Normandy until 1204, which is today part of France. But before the unification of France, Normandy literally took its name from its colonial settlers: north men, or, in other words, Norse men, i.e., Vikings.

While the origin isn’t definite, some have theorized that “Guernsey” is derived from the Old Norse for “Spruce Island,” Gørn-Sey.

While Torode is a rare name around the world (ranked as only the 36,364 th most popular name in the world, according to the website Geneanet.com), there is one and only one place where it is common, and that is on the Isle of Guernsey.

It turns out to be a name with deep Nordic roots.

Torode was the later Norman version of the ancient Viking name “Þóraldr (Thoraldur),” which means “Thor’s Ruler,” Thor being the Norse god of thunder. The modern Scandinavian version of the name is “Thorvald.”

With such deep linguistic roots, the original Þóraldr who settled Guernsey was probably the local warlord, suggesting high social prominence.

Whatever prominence may have been in place a couple thousand years ago, by about 1,000 years ago, the island had fallen under control of the Duke of Normandy. And that’s the fellow we now remember as William the Conqueror, who invaded the nation on the north side of the English Channel, transforming Anglo-Saxon/Celtic England/Britain into the more familiar modern country we think of as the key part of the United Kingdom.

As William’s relatives fought back and forth for control of Normandy over the next few centuries, Guernsey passed back and forth between France and England, until England took control for good in 1204.

A period of peace and prosperity followed for Guernsey, except for repeated bouts with pirates, but its popularity as a seaport and, importantly, as the origin of the Guernsey breed of cattle, the island’s population exploded.

By 1800, families began leaving Guernsey for settlements in America, particularly Ohio. Southeast Ohio’s Guernsey County (county seat Cambridge) was settled and named by immigrants from the Isle of Guernsey.

Those cattle, prized for their richly creamy milk, appear to have been developed as a breed on Guernsey in the 1600s and 1700s, but the wave of settlers who came to the American Colonies, and later the United States, did not bring the cattle with them.

Indeed, the success of the breed and the need for pasture ground may well have been one of the forces which provoked many Guernsians to leave. The breed was only introduced in the US in the 1840s.

So, who was our G. F. Torode? I was able to trace his family further than I expected, though not back through the dim mists of time to the first Þóraldr.

The earliest ancestor I could track down was one Jean Thoraude, born on Guernsey in 1530. Jean had a son named Nicholas who bears the distinction of having the oldest gravestone still standing in the graveyard of St. Saviour’s Church on Guernsey, from 1601. After several generations, another Nicholas was born.

Nicholas James Torode was born in 1775, but he was the one who decided to leave Guernsey for good.

But first, he married Jeanne de la Mare, whose family traces back for at least a couple of generations in Guernsey, but is likely ultimately derived from the French Huguenot de la Mare family who were prominent silk traders — not surprising, as “de la Mare” translates to “of the sea.”

Nicholas and Jeanne had a few children, but Jeanne died young at the age of 26. Nicholas Torode subsequently married Jeanne’s cousin Rachel de la Mare, and had several more children, including George Frederic in 1818.

As early as 1816, Nicholas had made a formal request to immigrate to the New World, as his name shows up in archives still held in Ottawa, Canada.

His stated reason for leaving Guernsey was “for want of work.” By 1820, Nicholas and Rachel packed up baby George and the other children and moved the whole family instead to Ohio.

They settled in Monroe County, immediately adjacent to Guernsey County, but they didn’t stay there long. At some point in the 1820s, they moved to Knox County.

It was in 1826 that the Torodes had their last child, a son named Philander Chase Torode.

Those who know a bit of local history will immediately recognize the name Philander Chase as the founder of Kenyon College in Gambier. Some genealogical sources claim that the young Torode was born in Monroe County, but with that name in place, I’d guess it far more likely that the baby boy was named after the founder of Kenyon, placing the family’s move to Knox County around 1825.

One wonders what it was that brought them here? Was it employment in the building of Kenyon?

We have no information about Nicholas Torode’s youthful employment. In his later years, his sons are listed as farmers in census reports, but Nicholas himself passed away before occupations were recorded in US census reports.

It’s possible that he worked as a stone mason in his youth, for stone workers would have been much in demand in the early construction phase of Kenyon College.

Whether Nicholas was a stone carver or just knew ones who did the work, the tombstone for his son is a distinctly carved piece of sandstone, still easily readable after nearly two centuries thanks to the deep carving.

But the presence of that stone betrays a sad turn of events: George Frederic Torode passed away in 1832, aged only 13.

He was just over a month shy of his fourteenth birthday. We know nothing of why he died, though statistics tell us that child mortality rates were much higher in those times than they are now.

Whatever the case, the family did not opt to stay in Gambier. They subsequently moved to Illinois, purchasing land there in 1839. Did they follow Philander Chase there?

After resigning as the head of Kenyon College, Chase eventually accepted the position of Bishop of Illinois, and founded Jubilee College in the central part of the state.

But whether or not that entered into their decision to relocate to Illinois, the Torodes set up a farmstead in DuPage County, today on the outskirts of Chicago.

I found an 1859 Chicago newspaper reference: “Many of our old citizens will recollect the peach and apple orchard of the brothers Torode, on Salt Creek, which for several years produced large crops of fruit, but of late years have suffered by the hard seasons, as well as by neglect.”

Salt Creek is indeed in DuPage County, not far from the town of Darien.

That’s where the various members of the family can be found as farmers on census reports, and where most of them passed away and were later buried. Alas for their eternal rest, most of their graves were later dug up and moved during local alterations.

The relocated graves are now in Clarendon Hills Cemetery in Darien.

We do not know if any of the Torodes ever made it back to Gambier to visit the grave of young George, the only member of their family they’d had to leave behind in Ohio.

But at least his monument perseveres, and I hope that this glimpse at the family’s story gives us all a little bit of their long trajectory from the Channel Islands to frontier Ohio and beyond.