Cabot

Cabot family page

With records dating back to the 13th century, this is one of Jersey's longest established families

J E Cabot making cider in 1913

Record Search

Direct links to lists of baptisms, marriages and burials for the Cabot family can be found under Family Records opposite. If you want to search for records for a spelling variant of Cabot, or for any other family name, just click below on the first letter of the
family name you are interested in. This will open a new tab in your browser giving you a list of family names beginning with that letter,
for which there are baptism records in our database of half a million church and public registry records.

You can also select marriages or burials. Select the name you want
and when the list of records is displayed you can easily refine the search, choosing a single parish, given name(s) and/or start and end dates.

The records are displayed 30 to a page, but by selecting the yellow Wiki Table option at the top left of the page you can open a full, scrollable list. This list will either be displayed in a new tab or a pop-up window. You may have to edit the settings of your browser to allow pop-up windows for www.jerripediabmd.net. For the small number of family names for which a search generates more than 1,500 records you will have to refine your search (perhaps using start or end dates) to reduce the number of records found.

New records

From August 2020 we have started adding records from non-Anglican churches, and this process will continue as more records, held by Jersey Archive, are digitised and indexed. Our database now includes buttons enabling a search within registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These records will automatically appear within the results of any search made from this page.

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If you can help with information about the Cabot family, please contact editorial@jerripedia.org, using Jerripedia as the subject of your email. We are particularly interested in information which will help create further family trees, family histories and photographs

A blue link anywhere in the text will lead you to another page with more information on this family

Pre-1500 arms as researched by Julian Wilson. The arms show the cabot fish which is supposed to have been the origin of the family name

Origin of Surname

Historian the Rev George Balleine records that the Cabot is a small fish that seems all head (It gets its name from the Latin, caput, a head). ‘So probably the first Mons Cabot's head seemed too large for his body’.

G.F.B. de Gruchy wrote that the name means "big-head".

But 'cabot' was also a measure of cereals still in use in the 19th century and the name may have been given to someone who did the measuring.

Early records

The name first occurs in Jersey in the Extente of 1274 and three Cabots are found in the Jersey Chantry Certificate of 1550

The baptism of Colin Cabot was recorded in Trinity in 1464.

The name is particularly common in the records of Trinity and St Martin, in the north-east of Jersey, over 800 of the island total of 1200-plus baptisms and births in our database being found in the registers of those parishes.

Payne's Armorial of Jersey

The eldest branch of this family, which formerly held much landed property in the parish of Trinity, emigrated to America, in the person of George Cabot, so early as 1680

The Hon George Cabot, one of the descendants of the first colonist of this name, was a man of influence and position in Boston in the first quarter of the present century. By some it is imagined that this is a branch of the celebrated family of Chabot, which figures conspicuously in the medieval history of France, where its members held many high offices of state ; but by others, that it is identical with the family of Cabot, of Normandy.

Family tradition gives to this house the honour of numbering among its members the celebrated circumnavigator Sebastian Cabot, who was the son of John, of that name, and born in the city of Bristol.

In a magazine article in the late 19th century Payne goes on to claim this history for the Cabots:

The name of Cabot is first found in insular records of about this date [1488], and possibly owes to the war in question [[the Breton wars] its introduction to Jersey. The first immigrant is traditionally supposed to have been a younger son of the famous French house of Chabot. It is not impossible that Sebastian Cabot may have owed his extraction to this source, not withstanding the tradition (for it is no more) of his Venetian origin.

His father, one John Cabot, was born or settled at Bristol. Now, from time immemorial Bristol has had trading relations with the Channel Islands, and it is quite within the bounds of probability that the father of this celebrated navigator had, for commercial purposes, taken up his residence at a port in constant communication with his native island. ^[1]

Arms

As borne by the Cabots of America: Or, three chabots, haurient, gules

Crest : An escallop, or

Family records

Family trees

These three trees overlap

• Descendants of Collin Cabot, 1464
• Descendants of Colin Cabot, 1470 The same Colin(n) as above, a different descendancy
• Descendants of Nicholas Cabot

• Descendants of Philippe Cabot
• Descendants of Moyse Cabot
• Descendants of Pierre Cabot
• Descendants of Francois Cabot, whose son John founded the American Cabot dynasty
• Descendants of Thomas Cabot, a Trinity family
• Descendants of Thomas Cabot - 2, a separate Trinity family
• Descendants of Jean Cabot, a Trinity family
• Descendants of Jean Cabot - 2, a separate Trinity family Added 2016
• Descendants of Nicolas Cabot, a Trinity family Added 2016

Church records

Tips for using these links

• Cabot baptisms in Jersey
• Cabot marriages in Jersey (groom)
• Cabot marriages in Jersey (bride)
• Cabot burials in Jersey

Family histories

• The Cabot family a famous name in America
• A history of the Cabots of Boston
• Francis Cabot ^[2]

Great War service

• Cabot family members who served in World War 1

Family wills

• Cabot family wills from 1663 to 1980 held by Jersey Archive

• Cabot burial records 1820-1978

Family houses

• Le Carrefour Farm, Trinity
• Les Ifs, Trinity
• Badier Farm, St Lawrence
• Astley House, Trinity
• Augres Farm, Trinity
• Beau Pre, St Martin

Family album

The Cabot family threshing at Bouley Bay Common in 1954. The threshing machine was owned by St John Catel Cabot, who farmed Les Cateaux in Trinity, and also had land in St Martin

A 1872 letter to John Cabot of Trinity from a Cabot in Boston, USA, researching his family tree

Family businesses

• T Cabot was a baker and confectioner at 43 King Street in the 1830s
• Charles Cabot was a lamp merchant at 58 King Street in the 1870s

Family gravestones

Click on any image to see a larger version. See the Jerripedia gravestone image collection page for more information about our gravestone photographs. Images of gravestones in other cemeteries will be added progressively

Tips

The church record links above will open in a new tab in your browser and generate the most up-to-date list of each set of records from our database. These lists replace earlier Family page baptism lists, which were not regularly updated. They have the added advantage that they produce a chronological listing for the family name in all parishes, so you do not have to search through A-Z indexes, parish by parish.

We have included some important spelling variants on some family pages, but it may be worth searching for records for a different spelling variant. Think of searching for variants with or without a prefix, such as Le or De. To search for further variants, or for any other family name, just click on the appropriate link below for the first letter of the family name, and a new tab will open, giving you the option to choose baptism, marriage or burial records. You will then see a list of available names for that type of record and you can select any name from that list. That will display all records of the chosen type for that family name, and you can narrow the search by adding a given name, selecting a parish or setting start and end dates in the form you will see above. You can also change the family name, or search for a partial name if you are not certain of the spelling

The records are displayed 30 to a page, but by selecting the yellow Wiki Table option at the top left of the page you can open a full, scrollable list. This list will either be displayed in a new tab or a pop-up window. You may have to edit the settings of your browser to allow pop-up windows for www.jerripediabmd.net. For the small number of family names for which a search generates more than 1,500 records you will have to refine your search (perhaps using start or end dates) to reduce the number of records found.

New records

Since August 2020 we have added several thousand new records from the registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These will appear in date order within a general search of the records and are also individually searchable within the database search form

Notes and references

1. ↑ In his attempt to prove a relationship between an established Jersey family and famous namesakes (something he was frequently guilty of), Payne got his Cabots totally confused. Sebastian Cabot was born in Venice in 1474, the son of an Italian. Their original names were Giovanni and Sebastiano Caboto. They had nothing to do with the Jersey Cabots. If Payne was correct in his assertion that the first Cabots arrived in Jersey at about the same time as the Collas and Lerrier families, after the battle of St Aubin du Cormier, any link to the Cabot explorers would have been impossible, because the battle took place in 1488. But Payne was wrong in this assertion as well. The Cabot family had been present and well established in Jersey for two centuries before the battle. It is quite possible that a Jersey Cabot established a business in Bristol, but he could not have been the father of the explorer
2. ↑ Mayor of Southampton. Born in St Helier, the eldest son of Francois Cabot and Suzanne Gruchy, he emigrated to America in 1700, with his two brothers, George and John. George became a joiner at Boston. His descendants went into the ‘Wild West’, and established many farming families. John settled in Salem. Francis returned to Europe in 1701, and became a successful and very wealthy merchant in Southampton. In 1716 he was Sheriff and in 1725 Mayor. In 1741 he bought the Manor of Houghton near Dover. He was still alive in 1748. His son Francis became Sheriff of Southampton in 1733