Notes for ORIGINS CROSBY:
"Simon Crosby The Emigrant: His English Ancestry, and Some Of His American Descendants" by Eleanor Davis Crosby - 1914 is the source of the early Crosbys. Below are some excerpts:
From the Introduction, page xiv:
The derivation of the name of "Crosby" seems to be generally given as coming from the "cross," the symbol of Christianity, and the Danish term "by," which suffix is equivalent to the "bury," "burg," or "borough" of other derivatives meaning a town or center of population, and hence "Crosby" meant "the town of the cross" or the town located near a cross or where a cross had been set up. Which might very well have been, for when Christianity made its appearance in England in 597 with the advent of Augustine, it is not too much a stretch of the imagination to suppose that the establishment of a cross near any hamlet which up to then had not been of sufficient importance to bear a name might thereafter be designated as the "town of the cross," or "Cross-by"; or even that such establishment of a cross in days when Christianity had not generally been adapted in Britain was enough of a challenge to the rest of the country that those who dwelt in its shadow were of the Christian faith and no longer worshipped Woden and "the gods of their fathers."
There is little doubt in the minds of etymologists that such was the origin of the name of "Crosby," nor is there much doubt that the name attached itself to some town or towns before it came to be used as a surname of any family. For in early days in England among the middle and yeoman class and before the awakening of much family interest a man might be known as simply by his name, such as Thomas, and, to designate him the better, he would be called Thomas of the town he lived in, as "Thomas of Crosby," and later, removing elsewhere, would still be known as "Thomas of Crosby," and then as Thomas Crosby; and hence began the use of the name as a family name. And this appears to borne out by the fact that in all the very earliest references to the name it appears as "de Crosseby," which is the French way of saying "of Crosby," and was so used as the family name for over two hundred years, viz., 1204-1415, when for the first time, so far as recorded, the "de" is dropped. It is interesting, also, to note that in the spelling of the name in those days the derivation from "cross" is plainer than it is to-day, by spelling the name "Crosseby"
An extensive search has failed to show that the Crosbys of Alne and Holme-on-the-Spalding-Moor, Co. York, ancestors of Thomas Crosby, the progenitor of the Crosbys of America, used or claimed any coat-of-arms; while they were of the best class of land owning yeomanry, they apparently were not of the armorial gentry, although the two daughters and co heiresses of Thomas Crosby (eldest surviving son of Thomas Crosby, the New England Puritan colonist) married into the armorial families of Belt and Bower of Yorkshire. It is therefore concluded that the American Crosbys are not entitled to a coat-of-arms.
A description of one of the early locations (generations 3-6) -- From page 2:
