This study is still in its early stages. One of my great-grandparents was a Chappelow and ever since I discovered the name I have been interested in its origins and its distribution. I have a Member's Website on which I am reconstructing trees, primarily in the UK but with some in the US and currently a few in Australia. My aim is to eventually document the different branches of the family and to discover how they are linked (if at all). 

Almost as soon as I began my One-Name Study, it became apparent that there had been a previous, very comprehensive study of the name which had been lost when the researcher, Dale Chappelow, died. Occasionally I find traces of that study, and discovered a document written c. 2010 which I have used as the basis for these pages.

Many years ago I corresponded with Brian F Chappelow of Leeds who had done some excellent research into the name. Sadly he has also now passed away and I have no idea what became of his research. If anyone out there reading this knows, please get in touch. I feel his work deserves recognition and to be made more widely available.

There are currently over 3,000 individuals on the website, many of whom can be traced back to a single couple, but ironically, I have not yet discovered how/if my own branch is linked to them.

Notes from the original One-Name Study:

This family study was done in 2007-8 and has been updated with recent statistics. A preliminary study of the Chappelow variant was started in 1985. A third and more thorough study has been started and will take a few years to complete.

Though all spelling variants are currently considered part of the same family, there is a possibility that we are two or three families with interlocking surnames. This study currently assumes that all variants listed below are related. A companion study is listed under the surname Chappelhow, and is virtually identical to this page. [Editor's Note: This companion study no longer exists.]

Notes from the original One-Name Study:

Eight living spelling variants have been found: Chappelhow, Chapelhow, Chapelow, Chaplow, Chapplow, Chappelow, Chapleo and Chappellow. Most variants arose from spelling deviations made during recording (called deviants). There are a few extinct variants and over 70 deviants of the surname in official records, occurring to this day.

Worldwide, the 2009 estimated percentage of each variant within this group of surnames is Chappelow (39), Chaplow (30), Chapelhow (12) Chapplow (7), Chappelhow (5), Chapleo (4), Chapelow (2) and Chappellow (1). This means about 95% of the surnames in this family have changed from the original spelling.

The following series shows the year and place of the first known permanent lineage of each variant: Chappelhow (before 1541 in Westmorland but probably ended; restarted later from Chapelhow), Chappelow (before 1561 in East Yorkshire and 1573 in County Durham), Chapelhow (1690 or earlier in Cumbria), Chapelow (ca. 1720, Cumbria), Chaplow (ca. 1750, Cumbria), Chapplow (ca. 1830 near Liverpool and later in Durham) and Chapleo (ca. 1830, North Yorkshire). The existing Chappellow variant was begun about 1850 in West Yorkshire, but had previously been the most common deviant of Chappelow in Yorkshire and County Durham since parish records began. It is surmised that when Chappelhows migrated to locales unfamiliar with the term 'how', recorders changed the 'h' to an 'l' to make the deviants Chappellow, Chapellow, etc.

Surnames similarly spelled but unrelated to this family include Chaplo (found in USA but originally from Bohemia), Cheppelew/Chappelew (French but originally Russian or Ukrainian), and Chaplowe (found in England and America of Jewish heritage).

No connection to surnames derived from French (Chappelle, Chapleau, etc.) has been found.

Notes from the original One-Name Study:

The original variant Chappelhow derives from English and Norse and means 'chapel on a hill'. It was formed by the combination of the Middle English 'chappel' (a previous local variant of 'chapel') with the Cumbric 'how' (meaning 'hill' and derived from the Old Norse 'haugr'). It originated in the West Ward of the old county of Westmorland, now in Cumbria. A specific 'Chappel How' has not been found in the area (after much research), therefore it appears to be a locative type of surname derived from living, working or being associated with this type of place. It is suspected to have been formed around 1250 AD either at the hamlet of Keld (associated with a chapel on the how above Shap Abbey) or on the west bank of the River Eden north of Appleby-in Westmorland.

When parish records began, there were two other small areas of England with concentrations of the Chappelow variant (mostly similarly spelled deviants). The largest was in the East Riding of Yorkshire, specifically in the triangle between the parishes of South Cave, Pocklington and Beverley. The other was in southern County Durham in the parishes of Hurworth-on-Tees, Haughton-le-Skerne and Bishop Auckland. DNA studies are now starting and will help determine whether this is one related family of surnames or more (see below).

Notes from the original One-Name Study:

Leonard Chappelow (1692-1768) was raised in Beverley, the son of Edward, a mercer. His early education was in the historic Beverley Grammar School founded in 700 AD. He excelled in academics and continued his studies at St. John's College at Cambridge. There he received his BA degree at age 20 and his MA degree four years later. He was ordained as a priest in 1716, received a divinity degree in 1723, was Rector at Childerley and at Little Hormead, and was later Vicar of Royston and of Great Hormead. He was a Fellow of St. John's College (1717-1731) and was the longest serving Professor of Arabic in Cambridge history from 1720 to 1768. He was considered an orientalist, the English authority on the Arabic language in his day and a master of many languages. Leonard was the first to translate Biblical accounts from Arabic to English and maintained that Job wrote in Arabic, which was taken through Hebrew to the Old Testament. He is buried in St. Andrew the Great Church, Cambridge.

Leonard's nephew, also Rev. Leonard Chappelow (1744-1820, son of Rev. Edward of Diss, Norfolk) was the Rector of Roydon and of Burston in Norfolk. He was one of the early naturalists in England and persuaded his godson/great-nephew Rev. Leonard Jenyns to enter the field. Upon Leonard's death, he bequeathed his advanced library to Jenyns, who expanded it into one of the largest libraries of early biological writings in the UK. The collection is now in the holdings of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. For health reasons, Rev. Jenyns decided against being the naturalist aboard the second voyage of HMS Beagle and suggested his eventual replacement, brother-in-law Charles Darwin. Reverend Chappelow is buried in the Churchyard of St James, Paddington.

In the early 1800's, neighbors near Thirsk, Yorkshire were tenant farmers and recent Methodist converts. They were unhappy having to pay a tenth of their labors to the Church of England and emigrated to America. This group, which included William Chappelow (1770-1866) and his family, left England and sailed in 1819 from Liverpool to Philadelphia in the United States. From there they walked and ox-carted their belongings to Pittsburgh, built flatboats and rafted down the Ohio River to southeastern Indiana. The first known family member born overseas was Benjamin Fenteman Chappelow, born 1820 in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. The family pioneered the upland area across the Whitewater River from New Trenton that is called Chappelow Ridge today. William and Elizabeth's descendants form the bulk of family members in America.

William Chaplow (1811-1884) was born in Scotland and by age 30 owned a furniture store in Dorset. He emigrated in 1842 from England to St. Thomas, near the northern shore of Lake Erie in Ontario, Canada. There, he established a fine furniture factory more than twenty years before the Canadian Confederation. After 17 years, the business was sold to establish a farm outside of town, where he raised cattle that were sold in Toronto. From the frame farmhouse by Kettle Creek, the family prospered. They began dairy farming with Jersey cows and built a permanent white brick home on the edge of their valley.

The 778-ton barque 'Scotia' left England in 1849, taking 107 days to sail from Plymouth to Sydney, Australia. When John Chappelow (1816-1867), his wife Elizabeth and their five children disembarked, it must have seemed a wild and primitive outpost of the empire. The family built a dairy farm on the Cooks River off Botany Bay and supplied their fellow colonists, while the boys ferried new settlers to homesteads on the river. The site, now in Arncliffe, became the Streets Ice Cream Factory. John and Elizabeth had four additional children in Australia and families were established in the Sydney area and in Queensland. Their descendants make up most of the family members in Australia today. John was the nephew of William Chappelow, the emigrant to the US in 1819.

William Chappelow (1848-1928) finished his apprenticeship as an optician and scientific instrument maker in London and traveled to New York City in 1868 to start his career. Within a year he had passed through New Orleans and Veracruz on his way to employment with the silver mines in Chihuahua, Mexico. In 1873 he moved to Arizona Territory, then relocated to California in 1874 and started an orchard and nursery. He married California Beardsley, the first European-American born and raised in the San Gabriel valley of Los Angeles. In 1893, he planted a cold-weather variety of avocado obtained from Mexico and from it produced Chappelow avocados. This tree in Duarte, California quickly became the oldest avocado tree in the United States and was still standing in 1950, but is now gone. William was the grand-nephew of John Chappelow, the pioneer in Australia.

A branch of Chaplows in Cumbria had worked as quarrymen and later, on the railroads. One member from Lazonby, Thomas Henry (1883-1945), came to New Zealand in 1907 and settled in Christchurch. Four years later Harry married Helen Grace Scown, a third generation New Zealander. He became a grocer and continued in this line of business his whole working life. The couple had four children, who all married and had children, and many descendants were present at the Chaplow family reunion in 2002.

The great-nephew of William in California was the late Allan Chappelow (1919-2006), a writer, photographer, and the last acquaintance made by George Bernard Shaw before he died. His father and grandfather were interior designers and decorators of the most prestigious houses in England, but their fortunes fell during World War II when many mansions and estates were shuttered. Allan was well read and a conscientious objector. Though eccentric and reclusive, he continued to possess a keen mind late into his life. The trial for his murder was held 'in camera'. It was the first UK murder trial ever held behind closed doors without access by the press or public.

Richard Chaplow (born 1985), midfielder. (Soccer, for those in the former colonies.)

Notes from the original One-Name Study:

This is a somewhat rare group of surnames. Considering the number of spellings, most individual variants are indeed rare.

In the year 1881 there were approximately 415 people with these surnames worldwide, 315 in the United Kingdom and 100 overseas. Using estimations, they constituted 0.0012% of the population in England, Wales and the Isle of Man, 0.0010% in Australia, and 0.0003% in Canada and Scotland, and 0.0001% in the USA. Considering the overall population of the countries in 1881, these surnames occurred at the rate of five out of every million people. This becomes 10 per million with the US numbers excluded, a diluting factor.

The total number of people living with these surnames in 2002 was estimated to be a minimum of 1200 and perhaps 1500. Decent minimum population estimates are available for England, Wales and the Isle of Man (770 people) and the United States (190). The surname numbers in Australia (120), Canada (60), New Zealand (40) and Scotland (20) are very rough figures. Using the lower estimations, this family of surnames constituted 0.0014% of the population in England, Wales and the Isle of Man, 0.0010% in New Zealand, 0.0006% in Australia, 0.0004% in Scotland, 0.0002% in Canada, and less than 0.0001% in the USA. Considering the overall population of these countries in 2002, this family was found at the rate of three for every million. Excluding USA numbers, the rate is 9 per million.

Notes from the original One-Name Study:

Today, lineages exist with these variants in the United Kingdom, USA, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Individual families are or have been found in Spain, South Africa and Singapore.

The first parish records of this family occurred at Lowther, 5 miles north of Shap Abbey and 4 miles south of Penrith. No mentions of the family were recorded in the few years after Lowther parish records began, but five different Chappelhow families baptised children there during the years 1541-1543 (Shap Abbey was closed in 1540). Other Cumbrian parishes mentioning this family when their recording began later include Crosthwaite (now Keswick parish), Morland, Shap, Barton, Kendal (at Garnett Bridge), and Ravenstonedale.

For two centuries after the mid 1500's, family members lived near the village of Bolton on the west bank of the Eden River. It is in Morland parish, 6 miles to the east of Lowther. The early lines in Shap, Barton and Kendal parishes were each home to a few generations of the family.

Another early colony was present in Darlington, 50 miles east in County Durham. It is believed that most of this line came to an end due to a plague outbreak at Hurworth-on-Tees in 1665. The early notations of families in East Yorkshire (100 miles southeast) could indicate a separate family with a similar surname, or could be the result of migration of a branch of the family between the formation of the surname and the commencement of most available records.

By the late 1500's the family had expanded in Cumbria to Penrith and to the upper Eden valley, 15 miles southeast. The first members on the west coast of Cumbria appeared in the early 1600's and would concentrate near Whitehaven. The 1600's found the surname spreading throughout the mid to upper Eden valley in Cumbria and into County Durham, northwest Yorkshire and the western suburbs of London. By the mid 1700's, the name had spread north to Carlisle, the lower Eden Valley and southern Scotland and was well represented in the Durham coalfield areas. Some coal-mining families would move many times between Cumbria and County Durham. By 1750, a version of the name was present throughout all of Yorkshire and families were found in Norfolk, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Northumberland and Lancashire. The cities containing the largest numbers of the family became Leeds, Liverpool and London and emigration to the colonies and former colonies began in the early 1800's.

By the year 1910, continuing lineages of three Chappelow and four Chaplow families had been established in North America. The first Chappelow lineage was founded in the state of Indiana in 1819 and the second was started in California via Arizona, Mexico and New York City. The third early Chappelow family consisted of siblings sent, around 1900, to Canada from England through an adoption agency. The first Chaplow family was established in 1842 near Lake Erie in the province of Ontario in Canada. The second was established in Utah and the third in the USA near the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania in the 1880's. The fourth Chaplows came from an unknown origin and era and established themselves in New England.

The descendants of the Australian Chappelow pioneers concentrated near Sydney with some in southern Queensland and others scattered elsewhere. The New Zealand Chaplows have spread throughout the North Island of New Zealand. Mary variants are found in Australia today and a few are currently represented in New Zealand. The only variant not yet found outside of the United Kingdom is Chappelhow, the original spelling.

Today, the largest concentrations of these names occur in Cumbria and Leeds in England, Sydney, Australia and central Indiana in the US. Minor concentrations are also found in Kansas City, USA; southern Ontario and western Canada; the North Island of New Zealand; and the Durham, Blackburn, Doncaster, Newcastle, Wakefield and York registry districts in England.

The current worldwide distribution of this family is estimated to be 53% in the United Kingdom, 21% in the United States, 16% in Australia, 6% in Canada and 4% in New Zealand. About 64% of the Chappelows are found overseas, along with 58% of the Chaplows. However, 83% of the population of the remaining variants are found in the United Kingdom.

Notes from the original One-Name Study:

The preliminary study of the Chappelow variant in the 1980's used data extracted from telephone directories and vehicle registrations in the United States, and information charmed out of overseas telephone operators. That data was only used for designing subsequent studies.

The study of 2007-2008 used the following data sources:

A spreadsheet of 2500 individual entries of people in the United Kingdom with these surnames (variants and deviants), consisting all birth/christening, marriage, death, census and miscellaneous records found online. The entries include 1837-1914 sources from the General Register Office for England and Wales through FreeBMD (freebmd.rootsweb.com), IGI sources from 1516-1919 through The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (www.familysearch.org), and online records located in books, censuses, directories, tax rolls, bishop's notes, cemetery recordings, memorial plaques, apprentice records, obituaries, christening and confirmation notices, and the Durham Records Office.

The study utilized various online sources, including other searches of the two sources above, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org), Google (www.google.com), Online Etymology Dictionary (www.etymonline.com), Domesday Explorer (www.domesdaybook.net), Lowther Family (www.lowther.co.uk), University of Cambridge (www.cam.ac.uk) and the Order of Canons of Premontre (www.premontre.org).

Geographic resources utilized were private maps of Cumbria, northern England and the world; parish maps from The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies; Google Maps (maps.google.com); and printed and online historical maps.

Information was obtained from correspondence with William Chappelow and Joseph Chaplow (USA), Dale and Richard Chaplow (Canada), Raymond and Alan Chappelow (Australia), David Chaplow and Ian Reid (New Zealand), Harry Hawkins (Cumbria), and Lis Chapelhow, Rob Chapleo, Clare Chappelhow, Martin Chappellow, Denise Chapplow, David Torkington, Peter Manton, Julianne Gray, and the late Allan Chappelow (England).

The complete genealogies of the Chappelow lineages in the USA and the Ohio Chaplows/Chapelows, and the partial genealogies of many variants worldwide. Genealogical information was obtained from personal research; collaborative research with Dale Chaplow, Joseph Chaplow and Julianne Gray; David Torkington; and 'The Chappelow Family' by Bernice Auld Morton, self-published in 1980 (with hand-written notes from 1981).

Sources for current estimates include online voter registry and telephone directories in the United Kingdom, online telephone directories in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and online telephone directories augmented by family genealogies in the United States.

There is a very small DNA project on the Family Tree DNA website. It was carried out as part of the original study and is currently dormant. I have recently taken over as Administrator of the project and hope to incorporate the findings into this study at a later date.