The Horton Surname

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According to Horton family genealogy, the name Horton goes back to a remote antiquity. In English history, Ralph Horton was Lord of the Manor as early as 1313. The name is supposed to be derived from the Latin word "Hortiss" meaning a garden, and the prefix "De" is good ground for believing that the ancestor was one of the followers of William the Conqueror in the great conquest of 1066.

Here is the summation of the Horton Crest:

A stag's head cabossed, silver; attired, gold; and, for distinction, a canton ermine. Crest, out of the waves of the sea proper, a tilting spear erect, gold; enfiled with a dolphin, silver, finned, gold, and charged with a shell.

[Cabossed means cut off short so as not to show the neck; attired denotes the horns; canton ermine, means the black spots upon the white field in the left-hand corner. In the picture the artist has not given the shell upon the dolphin.]

Motto--"QUOD VULT, VALDE VULT,"--What he wills, he wills cordially and without stint.
Modern English-"What he wills, he wills sincerely and without restrictions."

As I understand it: some historians� claim that the name HORTON is derived from the Latin word "HORTUS" meaning "a garden". Others claim that the name came from the Anglo-Saxon words "ORT" meaning "a plant" and "TUN" meaning "enclosed", which gives the name practically the same meaning. It was taken as a surname by its first bearers because of their residence at a place called HORTON, probably in Yorkshire, England at the time of the adoption of surnames or "sirenames".

The earliest records of the HORTON clan in England show where those of a Thomas "de" Horton, a William "de" Horton and an Adam "de" Horton. The French "de" meaning "of" and is felt by some to infer a direct link to William the Conqueror.

Another version of the HORTON name...meaning and shield.

The family�s founder takes the name from his home village of HORTON. Places by this name are in the English counties of Dorset and Worcester "HOR-TUN", described as muddy farmstead or estate. Also middle English an encircled town, protective. Thirteenth-century records list Thomas de Horton of Devonshire and William de Harton of Kent. The HORTON shield from Yorkshire has a silver rampart lion with a blue boar head on its chest centered on a red background. American ancestors include John Horton and his two brothers who migrated from England to Massachusetts in the 1600's. There are many towns in the U.S. and Nova Scotia, Canada, as well in Scandinavia that are named HORTON.