6,869 Global STILWELL Family Members

STILWELL Family History

This interesting name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and may be either a topographical or a locational surname, found mainly in the Southern counties of Hampshire and Surrey. As a locational surname, Stillwell or Stilwell derives from a now "lost" place, one of the estimated seven to ten thousand English villages and hamlets known to have disappeared since the 12th Century. The main reasons for this were natural disasters such as the Black Death (plague) of 1348, in which an eighth of the population perished, and to the widespread practice of enforced "clearing" of large areas of land to create sheep pastures.