The Shaftos have in various branches been closely connected with the county for many centuries. The late Rev. John Hodgson, in an early volume of the Archæologia Æliana, throws doubt upon the traditional descent of the Shaftos in the male line from the Folliots. He overlooked, however, several important facts that at least render the assertion possible. The Fenwick of which the Folliots were Lords is not the Fenwick in Northumberland as he assumed, but the place of that name in Yorkshire which passed by the marriage of Margaret Folliot to her husband, Sir Hugh Hastings, and long continued in his family.
Cuthbert, son of John Folliot of Fenwick, is said to have acquired lands at Shafto in Northumberland by marrying one of the heirs of Roger Welwick of that place, and his descendants took the local name; another daughter of Roger is stated in the Visitation of Rutland, 1618, to have married a Bryan Harbottle. A comparison of the arms of the respective families shows that the Shafto coat is merely the Folliot arms differenced. Jordan Folliot in 1295 bore gules a bend argent, and Robert de Shaftowe, a contemporary, bore gules on a bend argent, three mullets azure.
The Shaftos of Tanfield Leigh in this county recorded their pedigree at the Visitation of 1615. Le Neve continued the family for several generations. James Shafto, aged eight, in 1615 married a sister of Sir John Jackson of Harraton, and his son was living in 1707, and then described as very poor. His son, again, a third James, married a daughter of Sir Thomas Sandford, and had three sons, after whom the descent is not clear.
The family now resident at Whitworth Park are an early offshoot of the Shaftos of Bavington in Northumberland. They have several times intermarried with the Edens, and, like that family, are very rich in quarterings. Their escutcheon includes the arms of the Cavendishes, Dukes of Newcastle; the Lords Ogle, and many other great houses. Within the last century Beamish Park, near Chester-le-Street, has become the seat of another branch of the same family.
The Salvins of Croxdale are another of our old historic families who have held the same acres for generations. They have lived at their present home from the early days of the fifteenth century. In the time of King Charles they were gallant Loyalists, and two of them were killed in the King’s service.
The Whartons have also resided near to Durham for a good many centuries. They descend from the Whartons of Wharton in Westmorland, and their armorial insignia is interesting both in its origin and as illustrating the close alliance often existing between families bearing similar arms. Amongst the Normans who settled in this country after the Conquest was a family named Flamanville, often abbreviated into Flamville, who took their name from their lordship of that name in the province of La Manche in Normandy, and gave it as a suffix to their new Leicester estate of Aston. Their coat of arms was simply la manche, the sleeve, and so the name originally applied to the curious geographical shape of a peninsula came to be a familiar term in English heraldry. They intermarried with the Conyers and the Hastings, and both these families adopted the manche as their emblem. An heiress of the latter family married a Wharton, and to this day a silver manche or maunch on a black field is the Wharton arms.
Dr. Wharton of Old Park, a lineal ancestor of the Dryburn family, is celebrated as one of the courageous physicians who continued to visit the sick during the Great Plague of London. One of his descendants, Dr. Thomas Wharton, was the friend of the poet Thomas Gray, who visited him at Old Park.
The name of Burdon is an old one in the county, and probably derived from one or other of the local villages of that name. There were Burdons at Helmdon centuries ago, and for a number of generations Burdens have owned Castle Eden. The curious articles on the family arms, described by some writers as organ-pipes, are said to be in reality palmers’ staffs, and are so used by the present family.
One branch of the Ords, who are a Northumbrian, or more correctly a North Durham, family, must not be passed over. In the reign of James I. John Ord acquired property at Fishburn, and founded the house who have for so long dwelt at Sands Hall, beside Sedgefield.
Another family of Northumbrian extraction are the Blenkinsopps of Hoppyland, who are, however, in the male line descended from the Leatons or Leightons of Benfieldside. Hoppyland was purchased from the Blacketts in 1768 by William Leaton of Gibside, agent to the Bowes family.