Carol Brooks wrote..... >> I listed both spellings as they are interchangable in the family.My grandfather said that they came from Scotland,however as this doesn't seem a Scotish name ,I have always wondered. Family legend has it that a Totman/Tatman tried to kill the king of England in the 1600s and after that was transported to now US as bonded servant. I know that John came over on the LION in 1632.We are traced back to him.Documented and all, but nothing before that. I am just wondering.<< HERE'S the official entry from what is probably the best source book on British surnames - A Dictionary of English Surnames by P H Reaney & R M Wilson..... "TOTMAN, TOTTMAN: Robert Toteman 1202 P (Ess). OE 'tot-mann'' a look-out man or watchman." P (Ess) = Pipe Rolls for Essex (a county in south-east England) OE = Old English TATMAN, however, has a different derivation as "servant of Tate" [Tate presumably being a personal Christian name] and is first recorded in the Pipe Rolls for Yorkshire in 1195. * Pipe Rolls were annual accounts of Crown revenues - i.e. the king's income - which had to be sent by county sheriffs to the Exchequer. The scrolls were rolled around rods, or pipes, for storage, hence the name. They survive in the Public Record Office in London from as early as 1130. Roy Stockdill Editor, The Journal of One-Name Studies The Stockdill Family History Society (Guild of One-Name Studies, FedFHS) STOCKDILL PREST YELLOW BOLTON WORSNOP GIBSON MIDGLEY BRACEWELL SHACKLETON BRADLEY MOODY in Yorkshire North & West Ridings MEAD YOUNG in Somerset, Wiltshire & Gloucestershire Web page of the Stockdill Family History Society:- http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roystock ”Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith (scholar and humorist 1771-1845)