4,096 Global GARWOOD Family Members

GARWOOD Family History

This interesting name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational surname from some minor, unrecorded, or now "lost" place believed to have been situated in Northern England, probably in Yorkshire, due to the prevalence of church recordings of the surname in that county. An estimated seven to ten thousand villages and hamlets are known to have disappeared in Britain since circa 1100, due to such natural disasters as the Black Death of 1348, in which an eighth of the population perished, or to the widespread practice of "clearing" large areas of land to make sheep pastures during the height of the wool-trade in the 15th Century.