COLVERD is the family surname of my wife’s maternal grandfather although some members of his family latterly changed it to COLVERT.
I have extracted all COLVERD entries at in the Registrar General’s index of births, marriages and deaths from its start in 1837 up to recent times. I have acquired a considerable number of certificates to obtain further information and have followed up with searches in the censuses, wills, directories and in the IGI. I have very extensive records for this name.
My research trail led me back to Standon in Hertfordshire where there were many CULVERS noted in the registers from the late 1600s onwards with many references corrupted to COLVER and later COLVERT and CALVERT.
The earliest direct reference to the line which I believe eventually became COLVERD was the marriage there in 1761 of JOHN COLVER to MARTHA TEW. This John could have been one of two JOHN COLVER or COLVERDs baptised in 1735 both of whom trace back at Standon in the early 1700s.
JOHN and MARTHA had a son JOHN (a miller 1764/1836) baptised as COLVER at Standon in 1736, married as COLVERT in 1786 at Hertford and buried as COLVERD in 1831 at Stoke Newington. JOHN (junior) had a son baptised as COLVER at Standon in 1787, a daughter baptised as COLVER at Broxbourne, Herts in 1792 and seven other children baptised as CALVERT at Wormley, Herts between 1794 and 1808. My research has shown that all these children adopted a standard spelling of COLVERD. From the five sons included, I have identified the start of five distinct male COLVERD lines and I have been able to trace most of the entries from my listings from the Registrar General’s index into these five lines.
The five lines start from:
I have written a detailed family history of the COLVERDS, a copy of which has been given to the Society of genealogists.
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