Perhaps a great proportion of Family Historians are 'recruited' into research by the death of a family member. My Father died in 1981, preventing any first-hand accounts of the family circumstances and history. 

Again, like many of that generation, my Father never spoke about the past; he joined the 8th Battalion of the East Lancashire's in France in November 1915, aged 20, as a 2nd Lieutenant, second in-charge of 60 men, and was promoted to Lieutenant the following February from losses in action. He served in France until August 1918, when he was shipped home with 'shell-shock'.  Therefore the past was a closed book even up to the age of 84.

Spurred on by the loss of my Father in 1981, and after living with a "girls name" all through school and early employment, there grew a need to know how or what caused such a name to be. At that time, all research had to be by visiting the sites where the records were held. Initially, that was in St Catherine's House, London, and examining each of the  quarterly ledgers covering the years 1837 up to that time and later updating until 2001. There were/are ledgers covering Births, Deaths, and Marriages. You can work out that there were 164 years, x 4 quarters, x 3 indices = 1,968 large registers to lift off the shelves, open, find your name, and record any entries.  Nowadays, a click of the 'mouse' will search for you without lifting another finger!

After joining the Guild in 1983, keeping every trace seemed logical because, with the scarcity of the surname MARGRETT, each trace must be related somehow. This caused the start of a One-Name-Study. As the research progressed people were grouped as relationships were discovered and they were allocated to some 27 trees.  As further connections were discovered, some trees were connected. In 2021 there are still 12 trees that remain separate. 

From 1986 to 2012, research and family news of those contacted was published in 26 Margrett Magazines, basically on an annual basis. They are all deposited at the British Library Copyright Office under ISSN 0269-0284 as well as with Gloucester County Archives and the Guild of One-Name Studies. 

Variant spellings are the spellings found in a public record where a human mistake or a misunderstanding causes a mis-spelling contrary to the usual spelling of the family name.  A deviant name is one where the mis-spelling has been adopted as the normal for that family.

Research since 1981 has identified the following variant spellings of the name MARGRETT-

Mag(get) (got) (gott) (it) (itt) (ot)

Marga(ret) (rete) (rets) (rette) (retts) (rettes) (rite) (rott) (rts) (te (tes) (tts)

Marge (ret) (rets) (retts) (rit) (rts) (t) (ts) (tt) (etto) (tts)

Margi (tt) (tts)

Margr (at) (ata) (ate) (ath) (att) (atte) (ave) (eate) (eath) (et) (ete) (ette) (it) (its) (itt)

including the main study MARGRETT and the devient MARGRETTS, and finally

Margu (erit) 

Despite 40 years of research of births deaths, marriages, probate, newspaper reports, passenger lists, (all data stored in the Guild Datastores under https://one-name.org/archives/margrett.html) there is no confident explanation yet of the origin of the name MARGRETT, and indeed, there are some living under the name which they adopted when arriving from Russia in the late 1800's to escape persecution. 

Many of the earlier traces of the family name are located in Gloucestershire until the arrival of the railways in about 1840, when a slow spread of Margrett families can be seen.

Family fable claimed that the name comes from France and that those immigrants were Huguenots. But whilst one or two traces of 'Monsieur Margrett' have been seen in the London registers of naturalisation applications,  this theory does not have a strong pull.

On the other hand, some of the very earliest traces show MARGRETT families living in a small village called Deerhurst, just south of Tewksbury, and a little way north of Gloucester City. This village is ancient, with a church dating from the AD 800's or earlier and previously the capital of the realm of King Odda (not to be confused with King Offa who built the Welsh-border dyke). 

Nearby is the field of the Battle of Tewksbury AD 1471.  This was between the barons and Queen Margaret.  She had come up from Plymouth after recruiting mercenaries from France to swell her army, arrived at Gloucester City who slammed the gates shut to keep her and her army out, and she then met the barons as she marched north.  Could the MARGRETT's be mercenaries from France after all, and could they have escaped with their lives from the battlefield to settle just a step away in Deerhurst? Someone more efficient may one day answer. 

Like all families, MARGRETT families can boast of heroes. On the site

https://sites.google.com/site/margrettancestry

can be found 27 or more biographies of lives that demonstrate endurance, diligence, skill, honour, self sacrifice and people caring for each other. Those include -

Charles Henry MARGRETT 1862 was Mayor of Cheltenham

Harold Clitheroe MARGRETT 1899 was four years in prison under the Japanese in Hong Kong

Frank Weaver MARGRETT 1867 was a goldsmith settling in Bangkok

Whilst extracting the nations 1837 Births, Deaths and Marriages registers is vital for connecting family trees, even more helpful are the National Census Returns. Every ten years from 1841 (before that is little of use) and available up to 1911, they show each member of a family group with much detail for each individual. 

In carefully completing the search for each of the UK Census's you find a national count of all those with the family name. The number of individuals with the name MARGRETT in those decades ranged between 122 to 183 - a small family line, with branches continuing in the UK, America, and Argentina. 

In September 2015 a DNA project was begun and showed the researcher has DNA marker that reveal and confirm a European origin. This project has stagnated, and it would be of interest to involve overseas as well as UK members.