Paul Stancil

My name is Paul David Stancil and I am the site manager of this family history webpage.The image shown to the right is of Chesterfield, located in northeastern Derbyshire, England. This, and several other nearby villages (like Staveley and Barlborough) in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire, are the towns in the East Midlands of England that our Stancil ancestors called home, apparently for several centuries.  The small image to the left (you may want to save it and zoom in on the picture) is of Kingston Bagpuize, a village near Oxford, England. Prior to the Norman Conquest in 1066, Chingestun (as it was spelled at that time) was one of King Edward the Confessor's "tuns" or royal villas. This was one of the "royal residences" that were maintained by local magnates or "thegns" (thanes) for the King. In 1066, Chingestune was held by a man named Stanchil for the King. Stanchil (the letter "h" was silent in the Saxon language) fought and perished in the famed Battle of Hastings in October 1066, fighting with King Harold and the English against the Normans (and some of my other ancestors on another limb of the family tree). Stanchil and Chingestune are mentioned in the famed Domesday Book of 1086.This is the oldest origin of the famly name that has been found. After the Norman Conquest, there is some circumstantial evidence that Stanchil's descendants may have been relocated and forced north by the conquering Normans to the Derbyshire/Yorkshire area - which is the Chesterfield - to Sheffield area where we do find our ancestors five and six centuries later - but we can really only speculate about whether the descendants of Stanchil are our ancestors! An intriguing possibility. But we do know that our Stancil's are in NE Derbyshire by the 1400's. Most of my ancestry comes from Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and France, with some scattered families from the Netherlands, Denmark, and lands that are now part of Switzerland and Germany.I am slowly adding my 23 years of genealogical research to this site, and it will take quite a while to get the research in, so check back periodically. At present I am working on getting all of the ancestors in and not adding information about them beyond name and birth/death. If you have any comments or feedback about this site, please click here to contact me. Always happy to hear from cousins (the known and the newly found)!Our family tree is posted online on this site! There are 251 names in our family site.The site was last updated on Jan 6 2017, and it currently has 1 registered member(s). If you wish to become a member too, please click here.   Enjoy perusing the site and family tree - and please use this page to help remember birthdays, etc! If you are like me, you need the help :)