Patronymic, matronymic, or ancestral. Patronymic surnames (those that come from a male given name) include Benson (âthe son of Benâ), Davis, Dawson, Evans, Harris, Harrison, Jackson, Jones (Welsh for John), Nicholson, Richardson, Robinson, Rogers, Simpson, Stephenson, Thompson, Watson, and Wilson.rom an English place name. A last name may have pointed to where a person was born, lived, worked, or owned land. It might be from the name of a house, farm, hamlet, town, or county. Some examples: Bedford, Burton, Hamilton, Hampshire, Sutton.
JOHN DICKINSON Delaware. Birth: 19 November 1732, at Crosiadore, Talbot County, Maryland Death: 14 February 1808, at Wilmington, Delaware Interment: Friends Burial Ground, Wilmington, Delaware. Oil on canvas, by Charles Willson Peale (1780); Independence National Historical Park. John Dickinson represented both Delaware and Pennsylvania at the founding of the republic. A man of the Enlightenment, he believed that government was a solemn social contract between the people and their sovereign.
John Brown, (born May 9, 1800, Torrington, Conn., U.S.âdied Dec. 2, 1859, Charles Town, Va. [now in West Virginia]), militant American abolitionist whose raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. (now in West Virginia), in 1859 made him a martyr to the antislavery cause and was instrumental in heightening sectional animosities that led to the American Civil War (1861â65).