Name's Fuller

Because of various coincidences, and due to family gatherings over the years, I first researched the maternal side of my family before researching the paternal side of my family. My mother's maiden name is Woehler. By working with an uncle of mine, I was able to find out that our family of Woehlers were stonemasons and I was able, with my uncle's assistance, to track them back to Prussia, part of the Holy Roman Empire and to the seventeenth century. My great grandfather was a stonemason (of course) who came to the States with his two brothers...probably to escape war. My grandfather broke from the pack to become a carpenter. Little did he probably know he was breaking a protocol that was possibly centuries old!

Now on to 'Fuller'.

I've not been able to track down any detailed genealogy of my dad's side of the family due to lack of records and oral tradition.

So I've begun with the general 'whence Fuller'.

So far, I've been able to find that 'Fuller' comes down from the Old French 'Fouller', which meant 'to trample upon'.

Further research has shown that this phrase 'to trample upon' involved the trade of cloth...fulling cloth.

In the olden days, wool was fulled manually by cleansing it with pig feces and urine, due to the ammonium they contained. Not a glamorous job back then!

But wait!

The process of fulling made it to Britain via the Romans, where the trade name continued on and in as early as 1185, there was a mini industrial revolution where the fulling process became mechanized and mills were built around natural streams. Again in 1185, in Temple Newsham in West Yorkshire and also in Barton on Windrush in Gloucestershire two fulling mills were built by the Knights Templar.

So going waaaay back, I suppose I come from simple tradesmen on both sides of my family. On my mom's side, stonemasons, and on my dad's side cloth tradesmen(women).