User blog:Robin Patterson/FORLONG and FORLONGE


 * (This is the bulk of my Geocities page, rescued from oblivion.)

This page is meant to gather information about the surnames FORLONG and FORLONGE, with variants such as De Forlonge and FURLONG. I have much information about over 1000 descendants of Forlonges or Forlongs who lived in Scotland in the 18th Century.

Family tradition, backed up by a somewhat sketchy but long and partly-convincing "tree" presumed to have been drawn in the 19th Century, talks of descent from Protestant Counts of Languedoc in southern France and participation in the Battle of Jarnac and the Battle of the Boyne.

Sceptical descendants, including world-renowned (now sadly deceased) film-maker Michael Forlong, have suggested that the Forlongs had no such noble ancestry but invented it after they used their money (from merchandising) to marry into the aristocratic Gordon family of Pitlurg, Aberdeenshire.

Most of the Forlongs I know about are or were in New Zealand; my mother's mother was one of them, but my middle name is Forlonge.

The Forlonges are probably mostly in Australia (although one of the Guinness descendants says more are in Scotland), descended from Mrs Eliza Forlonge, who almost single-handedly started Australia's merino sheep industry by tramping through Saxony (in what is now Germany), buying the best sheep she could find. A museum at Euroa is devoted to her.

I really would like to clear up some mysteries about the origins of the family. Even the link between Forlong and Forlonge is unclear. Official records, such as Old Parish Registers, Directories, and Church records, conflict somewhat. Some of them even use the spelling "FURLONG" for people who are definitely of the same family, which is why my study includes that name.

Please have a look at my WorldConnect pages to see the current state of presumed family links. Find James (Comte) De Forlonge, individual id=I01625, and click on either "Descendancy" or "Register" to see a few generations of descendants. Or download his descendants (you can get about three generations) and use your own software to display any branches that may connect with yours.

I have started to add detail of apparently UNRELATED Forlongs and Forlonges and other variant spellings to the Forlong webBase, starting with material from the IGI. A fascinating detail is this: there was a large concentration of people with such names, long before 1685, in Barnstaple in Devon, which is apparently where numerous Huguenots settled after fleeing from France. Maybe the story of fleeing further north direct from France in 1685 (and getting shipwrecked off the Irish coast) was an embroidery of the truth!