Cayley Family History

compiled by Michael Cayley
and originally at https://cayleyfamilyhistory.wordpress.com

This Cayley Family History site is based on work by Michael Cayley of Hayling Island, UK. He assembled a vast amount of genelogical and other historical information, represented here, about the Cayley baronets and associated families, and about other Cayley families. The site has been edited and reconfigured from Internet Archive snapshots by John Cayley, a descendant of the ‘Russian Merchant’ line.

This site is built with the Observable Notebook Kit.

Privacy

Michael Cayley had a policy of not including information which relates to people who may still be living, unless there was permission for him to do so.

Blog

Michael Cayley also kept a blog on his site, some items of which are rendered as topics on this site.

WikiTree

Michael was heavily involved with the genealogy site WikiTree, where people contribute sourced genealogical information with the aim of linking it together, working towards a single worldwide tree. If you go to WikiTree, you can explore not just members of Cayley families but also many families connected to them by marriage. Go to wikitree.com. It is a wonderful site. Information on it is constantly being expanded and improved. If you want a starting point, here is the link to the Wikitree profile for the first Cayley baronet.

On WikiTree you will find more detailed information about many of the individuals named on this site, together with sourcing.

Brief History of the Cayley family

The name “Cayley,” as it applies to those linked to the Yorkshire Cayley baronets, comes from a village called Cailly in Normandy, and the first members of the family to settle in England came with the Norman invasion of 1066. Over the next two centuries they acquired estates in East Anglia, Sussex, Gloucestershire and Yorkshire. By Tudor times the most common spelling of their surname had evolved from “de Cailly” to “Cayley” or “Caley”. (By the 18th century, “Caley” ceased to be used.) Eventually the main branch settled in Yorkshire at a village called Brompton, inland from Scarborough. Since then the family has spread, and members are to be found in various English counties, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the USA and elsewhere.

There are a number of Cayleys not clearly linked to the Brompton Cayleys. It is possible that some descend from members of the family who stayed in East Anglia or Sussex in the Middle Ages. The same may be true for some “Caley” families – this is a surname associated with East Anglia. A number of families varied the spelling of their surname between “Caley” and “Cayley.”

Medieval records suggest that some families with the surname Callaway, Kellaway (or other variants) may have descended from a branch of the de Cailly family. Census and other information implies that in the 19th century a few Irish immigrants to England and North America with surnames Kelly or Cawley changed them to Cayley.