FINNAMORE
Genealogy Research
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ORIGIN OF NAME  |  SOURCES CONSULTED  |  MY PATERNAL LINE

If you want to know whether this site includes your relatives, you might want to start with the Alphabetical List, comprehensive for generations born 75 years ago or more, on the FINNAMORE side. Think of it as the master list of sourced data, organized alphabetically by individual.

For my mother's side (FLEMING), the best I've got for you so far is my gedcom file converted to HTML by Gedbrowser.

See how Donny Osmond added 38 generations to his family tree using OneGreatFamily!

FINNAMORE may derive from the Italian (Latin) finn amore, "true love," more-or-less. Think of it as one's "final" or "last" love. Alternatively, the name may derive from "fin' amors," which, according to early music performer and broadcaster Angela Mariani, "is the Occitan term for 'courtly love,' the idealized notion of love so prevalent in medieval romance and in the songs of the troubadours." (Occitan was the language spoken in Provence of old.)

On the other hand, since it has been spelled in ways as various as Fynmore, Finnimore, Fenemor, Phynnymore, Pillmoor, Venmore, and even Belmer, who knows what it was originally? In the publication Genealogy Of The Family Of Phillimore (George Simpson & Co., 1922), W. P. W. Phillimore traces the roots of about 150 such variations, which are often connected by being attached variously to immediate family members, even to the same person at different times. The evidence he gathered points in favor of an origin in the place name Finmere (the earliest known spelling is Finemere), which was an area of wooded fens and moors "in the north-east corner of Oxfordshire, about four miles west of the town of Buckingham." Curiously, there's a town of Woodstock in Oxfordshire, about 15 miles from Finmere. If Phillimore is right, the "more" part of Finnamore very likely comes from the geological feature called a mere or moor, but he believed that the "fin(n)" part of it refers, not to the scattered soggy bottoms of the land, but to a tribal or personal name, such as King Finn of Celtic legend, or the Finnish people who left their mark on many European place names. That seems logical since most spellings use either an i or a y, while e is relatively rare between the F and n(n). The middle vowel is the most highly variable one, sometimes even omitted altogether. A favorite passage of mine from Phillimore's book reads,

Henry Filmer, churchwarden of Windsor, who was burnt there for heresy about 1543, is variously described in the earlier editions of Foxe's Book of Martyrs as Finmore, Finnemore, and Filmer.

So, how did FINNAMORE come to be regarded as an Irish name? One tale tells that in the 17th century, two Finnamore brothers followed Oliver Cromwell to Ireland to suppress Catholicism for the Anglican King of England. Fighting about religion--yeah, that sounds about right. ;-)

So much for speculation. This site contains actual information I've found so far about my branch of FINNAMOREs. I currently have twenty-three sources:

1. The Deaths and Memoranda pages of my great-aunt Bea's Bible
2. New Brunswick-based volunteer genealogy researcher Wiley F. WAUGH
3. The PANB Online Database Search web site
4. An email from a David FINNAMORE in Toronto about the history of IRISH FINNAMORES
5. Large amount of data compiled by Stanley Corey of Green Valley, Arizona, which he had obtained from Leatha Sisson, who had collected it beginning in the 1950s, continuing perhaps into the 1970s.
6. FINNAMORE family story given by Edith FINNAMORE, daughter of Charles W. and Melissa (LAWSON) FINNAMORE, to the Genealogical Scrapbook of Southern Victoria County 1978 Historical Project.
7. Photocopied pages from the Carleton Sentinel in the 1930s, sent to me by Valerie FINNAMORE of New Brunswick.
8. The LDS Family Search online database.
9. SSDI, the Social Security Death Index.
10. GenCircles.com
11. Rootsweb: New Brunswick, York Co. Cemetery records online, Marysville United Church Cemetery (formerly Methodist).
12. Rootsweb, miscellaneous. See link at entry on Alphabetical List page.
13. Photo copy of a few pages about the ALLEN clan from book, Old Burying Ground, Vol. II by Isabel Louise Hill.
14. Valerie FINNAMORE of Fredericton, New Brunswick by email correspondence.
15. Various Family Tree Maker user pages.
16. Ancestry.com
17. Judy Arnold and Sharon Pickett of Minnesota by email correspondence.
18. Mary (SAUNDERS) CALLNAN, grand-daughter of Alice FINNAMORE, by email correspondence.
19. Frank LAWSON by email correspondence.
20. Scans of hard copies of a family record made by ?, sent to me by Mary (SAUNDERS) CALLNAN.
21. Larry McCREA, great grandson of John and Susan McCREA, by email correpsondence.
22. Ruth FINNAMORE of Vancouver, British Columbia by email correspondence.
23. Testimony of immediate family members, personal knowledge.

It may be useful to keep open a separate pop-up page of these sources. The footnote numbers on all pages of this site refer to this list.

To see the most information from all those sources collected in a single, cohesive presentation, I have created an ever-changing and growing Summary Page.

Here's my personal paternal line as far as I know it right now, with the first two being likely but largely suppositional at this time:

Isaac FINNAMORE of Finamore Crossing, Northern Ireland (?)
 Charles FINNAMORE of New Jersey, Loyalist soldier (?)
  Charles FINNAMORE of Fredricton, New Brunswick
   Isaac FINNAMORE of Woodstock, New Brunswick
    John Henry FINNAMORE of Woodstock
     John William FINNAMORE, Sr., of Minneapolis, MN, n.d.
      John William "Jack" FINNAMORE, Jr., of Minneapolis, n.d.
       David John FINNAMORE, b. 03 September, 1962, Greenville, South Carolina, USA; m. Deborah ANGSTADT (Pennsylvania Deutch) May 28, 1988 at Redeemer Covenant Church, Brooklin Park, MN, USA, n.d.

Thanks to my wife Deborah for helping me collate this material.