THE MOXON SOCIETY is a one-name family history society (including all variants of the Moxon name, such as Moxham, Moxson etc).

The Society's origins date back to 1986 when three Moxons – Professor Richard Moxon of Oxford University, James Moxon OBE of Ghana and Shropshire and Dick Moxon of Southampton – got together to look at an unpublished History of the Moxon family that was researched and compiled by classical scholars Canon R.S. Moxon and Prebendary T.A. Moxon just after the First World War. These had in turn access to another manuscript, A Simple Record of the Moxon Family, written in 1877 by the Rev. Charles St. Denys Moxon, a Norfolk parson. 

Jimmy Moxon took on the task of pulling this information together, along with other information that he had gleaned in his own research, into a book The Moxons of Yorkshire, which was published in 1987. 

Around one thousand Moxons worldwide were contacted in a mail-shot, and the interest that this engendered resulted in the Moxon Society being formed. 

The wealth of research undertaken by members of the Moxon Society for more than thirty years is available to all Moxon Society members. As well as access via invitation on Ancestry.com to more than 80 Moxon Family Trees comprising over 42,000 individuals (no Ancestry subscription required), members can browse an archive of Moxon wills and the details of the Society’s DNA program.  In addition to publishing occasional booklets, the Society also produces a full colour Magazine newsletter twice a year and the 71 past issues are all indexed and available to Society members. The Society hosts a Gathering in the UK of family historians once a year and occasional meetings of members also take place in Australia and USA.

Full details are available at https://moxonsociety.org

Spellings varied up till the middle of the 19th century, but with the introduction of widespread literacy, the dominant forms of the variations settled as Moxon and Moxham.

The Moxham family of Lancashire has its roots in the Moxons of Yorkshire.  The Moxham name common in southern England appears to have completely different origins according to DNA research undertaken by the Moxon Society.

Other variants still exist today such as Moxom which is reasonably common.  For example, in Australia, convict William Moxon (Tortoise 1841 to Hobart) from Stewkley, Buckinghamshire, became William Moxham and married ex-convict Mary Hurst.  They migrated to Victoria and their descendants have now settled on the name Moxom.

A Moxham/Moxom family from Wiltshire who migrated to the USA and Canada became known as Moxon.

The origin of the surname is best explained by George Redmonds in The Dictionary of Yorkshire surnames, published in 2015. 

Redmonds outlines that various explanations of the MOXON surname have been suggested but that in 1997 he put forward the idea that ‘Moke’ (as in Mokeson which later became Moxon) was an abbreviated form of ‘Mokoc’ which came into use in the 13th century as a diminutive of Matthew.  Subsequently Steve Moxon confirmed that origin via a series of deeds in the Ronksley MSS held in the Sheffield Archives: 1333-6 Robert filius Mathei de Over Midehop, 1336 Hugh filius Robert Mokeson de Midehop.  A full account of Steve’s research was published in The Moxon Magazine in October 2002 and a more complete account of the entry in The Dictionary of Yorkshire Surnames is available in The Moxon Magazine of October 2019 . 

By the end of the 19^th century, Yorkshire (primarily the West Riding) still had the highest concentration of MOXON families in England and Wales.  However, it remains uncertain how many origins the Moxon surname may have had, and genealogists should know of the DNA tests carried out by the Moxon Society which have helped link various MOXON family trees into distinct related groups.

In the south of England, the name MOXHAM probably derives its origin from an estate known as MOXHAMS in the Great Chalfield area of Wiltshire.  In 1236 Henry son of William conveyed to Thomas Cusin and Juliana his wife lands in “Mocke­sham”. Henry de Mochesam occurs as a witness in a deed probably of the time of Henry III or Edward I (i.e. between 1216 and 1307). Adam de Mockesham, who died in 1277, had held in Moxham 62 acres arable, 5 acres meadow, ⅔ acre pasture and 5½ acres wood. John de Mockesham held land in East Chalfield about I300.  It is believed that the Irish Moxhams descend from the Wiltshire Moxhams and the website ‘The Moxhams of Ireland’ https://moxhamireland.wordpress.com  contains a wealth of interesting and useful information.    

However, DNA tests by Moxon Society Members have shown no link between the MOXHAMs of Wiltshire/Ireland and the MOXONs of Yorkshire as yet, but they indicate that the MOXHAMs of Lancashire (the county with the highest concentration of Moxhams in 1891) are definitely of the same stock as their neighbouring Yorkshire MOXON cousins.

The Moxon Society’s DNA program began in 2002 when fourteen male Moxons were tested by the company Oxford Ancestors and in September 2005 a further eight were tested. These early results proved beyond reasonable doubt that some two thirds of the male Moxons in the Moxon Society could trace their ancestry to the Moxons of Cawthorne near Barnsley in Yorkshire, and about half of the rest to nearby Silkstone.  Curiously, given the proximity to Cawthorne, the Y-DNA tests (following the male line) demonstrated that the Moxons of Silkstone are quite distinct from the Moxons of Cawthorne (although it is worth pointing out that the major Moxon settlement in the parish of Silkstone was Hoylandswaine which was about as far as possible from the main settlement of Cawthorne as it was possible to get).  So although the parishes of Silkstone and Cawthorne were contiguous, from a Moxon point of view they were quite separate.

DNA testing carried out since then has made it possible to determine the probability of how some of the Moxon Society’s Trees are related to each other, and therefore able to be placed into related groups. The groups are outlined in the Members area of the Moxon Society website.

However, DNA tests by Moxon Society Members have shown no link between the MOXHAMs of Wiltshire/Ireland and the MOXONs of Yorkshire as yet, but they have proved that the MOXHAMs of Lancashire (the county with the highest concentration of Moxhams in 1891) are definitely of the same stock as their neighbouring Yorkshire MOXON cousins.

The Moxon Society – a one-name society for the Moxon surname

The Moxon Society UK and International | Groups | Facebook

Charles Mokeson of Cawthorne and his Dynasty: Amazon.co.uk: Rendall, Alice Joan, Moxon Hill, John, Moxon, Chris: 9791716664259: Books