The original source for the following information is from the old website www.marvelcreations.com/marvel1.html and was notated as “Written material provided by Bettye Wheat of Fairfield, Illinois”. (Unfortunately the website is no longer on the web at this address.)
“Evolution of the Name Marvel”
The pride of ancestry seems to be innate in nearly everyone, and there are very few who claim indifference to the origin of their family and its name. It has been asserted that “He who cares nothing about his ancestors will rarely achieve anything worthy of being remembered by his descendants.” The knowledge of the origin of our family name brings to us a generous enthusiasm and a harmless vanity created by the fact of its antiquity. The family name, MARVEL, is not the result of any scientifically created system of nomenclature, but the result of an adoption of a place-name by the first man who bore it.
When the gallant Robert de Merveille left his native hamlet in France, to pursue fame and adventure with William the Conqueror, in the eleventh century, he became the progenitor of a family who for nine hundred years has borne his name.
The family name, Merveille, takes its origin from a town in what is today a part of France, though in the middle ages when surnames were in the process of formation, it was a part of maritime Flanders. This name was first applied to Robert because his friends found it a convenient label to distinguish him from others bearing the same name. No more natural method of referring to the man of alien birth could have arisen to designate him from others than this custom of attaching the name of the locality from whence he came. Thus, Robert became the bearer of the name of his native town, Merveille. (According to Bardsley in his “English and Welsh Surnames,” the name Marvel, or Marvellis, a nickname meaning “the marvel”. Medieval English, Mervaile; French Mereveille; THE WONDER)
This peaceful French village, with its quaint old stone houses, is situated in the valley of the river Lys. It was the scene of tragic conflict during World War I when the Allied and German Armies fought in the last great battle for military control of the French seaports along the English Channel. The spelling of the name of this town, Merveille, has been modernized to the form of Merville.
The early form of the name Merveille was retained for a period of two centuries or more in England, in which the Norman Conquerors spoke only French, the language they brought across the Channel with them. The Anglo-Saxon language was spoken by the conquered population. The nobility was almost without exception of the former race. Hence, in the castles only the French language was spoken, and naturally, the French forms of names prevailed. Robert of Merveille was written Robert de Merveille since “de” is the French word meaning ‘of’.
Later, due to the political severance of Normandy from England, there was an amalgamation of language that was basically Anglo-Saxon, and from which modern English has developed. During this period “de” was dropped from its former usage in family names. Thus de Merveille became Merveille.
Hugh de Morvill (some records give de Mervill) had his chief estate on Burgh-on-Sands, Cumberland. Apparently he lived until 1202 or 1203 when his English estate passed into the hands of his two daughters, Ada and Johanna.
The de Mervills and Morvils (another form of the same name) each had a coat of arms, which signifies that they were held in high repute. Some of them held worthy positions in the northern part of England. The town of Morville in Shropshire derived its name from a line in this family. The name Morvill became illustrious in Scotland where it finally became Marvell. It is reported as an extinct baronage.
The Morville name continued in France. Comte de Morville born in Paris in 1688, was a French diplomat. He became minister to Foreign Affairs in 1723 and was elected to the French Academy in the same year. He died in 1732.
In the village of Meldreth in Cambridgeshire, England, there is an old manor house called “The Marvells.” It was in Meldreth in 1586 that Reverent Andrew Marvell was born. He married Anne Pease, a member of an old and politically famous family of England. In the district of Holderness, Yorkshire, England, Rev. Andrew Marvell, was serving the parish of Winestead, when their son was born on Easter Day, March 31, 1621. He was given the name Andrew Marvel, the same as his father. He was educated at Trinity College in Cambridge and became secretary to John Milton, the poet. In 1660 he was elected to Parliament from Hull, which parish he represented honorably until his death on August 16, 1678. He was well known for his writing ability, and was called the “Poet of Gardens” because of his intense admiration of flowers.
The name of William Marvel is recorded in 1702 on the baptismal roll of St. James Clerkenwell, a district on the north side of London. In 1724, the marriage of Richard Marvel and Elizabeth Walford is recorded at St. Mary Aldermary, London. These reports go to show that the spelling of the name, Marvel, was used two hundred years ago in the same way it is today. It is chiefly in Yorkshire that the surname exists in this form.
Perhaps no better conclusion can be offered to our readers than the following quotation:
“No virtuously disposed mind can look back upon a long line of truly venerable ancestors without feeling his motive to a virtuous life strengthened. He can scarcely help feeling that it is not for you to be the first to bring disgrace upon his lineage. It will, however, lead him to reflect that his posterity will also be looking back and comparing life with that of his progenitors.”
I found the following recently
According to Augustine Birrell who wrote a pamphlet on Andrew Marvell (Edited by John Morley)
“Holdernesse was not the original home of the Marvells, who would seem to have been mostly Cambridgeshire folk, though the name crops up in other counties.”
“Cambridge to Meldreth, where the Elizabethan manor-house, long known as “the Marvells”, agreeably embodied the tradition that here it was that the poet’s father was born in 1586.”
The poet’s father is an interesting figure in our Church history. Educated at Emmanuel College, from whence he proceeded a Master of Arts in 1608, he took Orders; an after serving as curate at Flamborough, was inducted to the living of Winestead in 1614, where he remained till 1624, in which year he went to Hull as master of the Grammar School and Lecturer, that is preacher, of Trinity Church.”
“Fuller’s account of the elder Marvell is too good to be passed over: — “He afterwards became Minister at Hull, where for his lifetime he was well beloved. Most facetious in discourse, year grave in his carriage, a most excellent preacher who, like a good husband, never broached what he had new brewed, but preached what he had pre-studied some competent time before. … It happened that Anno Dom. 1640, Jan. 23, crossing Humber in a Barrow boat, the same was sandwarpt, and he was drowned therein (with Mrs. Skinner, daughter to Sir Edward Coke, a very religious gentlewoman) by the carelessness, not to say drunkenness of the boatmen, to the great grief of all good men.”
Andrew Marvell (Elder) “was married at Cherry Burton, on the 22nd of October 1612, to Anne Pease, a member of a family destined to become widely known throughout the north of England. Of this marriage there were five children, all born at Winestead, vis. Three daughters, Anne, Mary, and Elizabeth, and two sons, Andrew and John, the latter of whom died a year after his birth, and was buried at Winestead on the 20th September 1624.”
“The three daughters married respectively James Blaydes of Sutton, Yorkshire, on the 29th of December 1633; Edmund Popple, afterwards Sheriff of Hull, on the 18th of August 1636; and Robert More. Anne’s eldest son, Joseph Blaydes, was Mayor of Hull in 1702, having married the daughter of a preceding Mayor of Hull in 1698. The descendants of this branch still flourish. The Popples also had children, one of whom, William Popple, was a correspondent of his uncle the poet’s, and a merchant of repute, who became in 1696 Secretary to the Board of Trade, and the friend of the most famous man who ever sat at the table of that Board, John Locke. A son of this William Popple led a very comfortable eighteenth-century life, which is in strong contrast with that of his grand-uncle, having entered the Cofferers’ Office about 1730, he was made seven years later Solicitor and Cleark of the Reports to the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, and in 1745, he became in succession to a relative, one Alured Popple, Governor of the Bermudas, a post he retained until his death”
“Marvell’s third sister, Elizabeth, does not seem to have had issue, a certain Thomas More, or Moore, a Fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge, whose name occurs in family records, being her stepson.”
“In April 1638 the poet’s mother died. In the following November the elder Marvell married a widow lady, but his own end was close upon him. The earliest consecutive account of this strange event is in Gent’s History of Hull (1735): — “This year, 1640, the Rev. Mr. Andrew Marvell, Lecturer of Hull, sailing over the Humber in company with Madame Skinner of Thornton College a young beautiful couple who were going to be wedded; a speedy Fate prevented the designated happy union thro’ a violent storm which overset the boat and put a period to all their lives, nor were there any remains of them or the vessel ever after found, tho’ earnestly sought for on distant shores”.
“Thus died by drowning a brave man, a good Christian, and an excellent clergyman of the Reformed Church of England.”
“There is an obstinate tradition quite unverifiable that Mrs. Skinner, the mother of the beautiful young lady who was drowned with the elder Marvell, adopted the young Marvell as a son, sending to Cambridge for him after his father’s death, and providing him with the means of travel, and that afterwards she bequeathed him her estate. Whether there is any truth in this story cannot now be ascertained. The Skinners were a well-known Hull family, one of them a brother of that Cyriac Skinner who was urged by Milton to immortal verse to enjoy himself whilst the mood was on him, having been Mayor of Hull. The lady, doubtless, had money, and Andrew Marvell was in need of money, and appears to have been supplied with it. It is quite possible the tradition is true”
“A somewhat solitary man he would appear to have been, though fond of occasional jollity. He lived alone in lodgings, and was much immersed in business, about a good deal of which we know nothing except that it took him abroad. His death was sudden, and when three years afterwards the first edition of his poems made its appearance, it was prefaced by a certificate signed “Mary Marvell,” to the effect that everything in the book was printed “according to the copies of my late dear husband.” Until after Marvell’s death we never hear of Mrs. Marvell, and with this signed certificate she disappears. In a series of Lives of Poets’ Wives, it would be hard to make much of Mrs. Andrew Marvell. For different but still cogent reasons it is hard to write a life of her famous husband.”
“Andrew Marvell was born at Winestead in Holdernesse, on Easter Eve, the 31st of March 1621, in the Rectory House, the elder Marvell, also Andrew, being then the parson of the parish.”
Further Links
Click here for the Marvel Family in England
Click here for the John Marvell Family in America
Click here for the Family of Thomas Marvel Sr.