The surname Stafford has an illustrious history in medieval times. Many families start their researches in the hope of linking their families to such characters as the Dukes of Buckingham, Barons Stafford or other aristocratic Staffords. Although much effort and money was spent on employing Victorian professional genealogists no proven descent has been documented to the present day. Nevertheless, we should be grateful for the unintended consequences: the survival of research records and family documents that might otherwise have been lost or destroyed, but which always contain an element of the truth! This does not necessarily mean that a link does not exist. Antiquarians were only concerned with the main lines of family descent as this is where the landed family interest was in order to protect and justify their inheritance. Cadet lines were unlikely to have been documented unless the main line daughtered out and a collateral line inherited. However, cadets may well have had families and descendants that disappeared from the antiquarian’s view.

Indeed the main Stafford Norman line failed in the 12^th century and the surname assumed on marriage by Hervey Bagot(d). Consequently, genetically such links will be closely related to Bagot ancestry. One earlier cadet line (Sir Nicholas Stafford) is believed to have taken the ‘Gresley’ surname, one of whose descendants assumed the surname of ‘Longford’.

The Stafford, Gresley and Longford surnames are categorised as ‘locational’ in that they refer to a place viz. the town of Stafford in Staffordshire, Church Gresley and/or Castle Gresley, and Longford, both in Derbyshire and Longford, in Manchester. Other locations are West Stafford in Dorset (presumably, there was also an East Stafford at some time in the past) and Stoford in Devonshire. It is also possible that the surname was assumed by the members of the aristocratic retinues prior to the general acquirement of unique family surnames.

We can thus infer that the Stafford surname y-DNA profile will be heterogeneous, with clusters that might reflect probable ancestral locations in the UK as well as descendants of the Bagot, Gresley and Longford cadet lines. These clusters will probably be shared with other surnames originating at the same locations. The qualification ‘probable’ is used because more recent immigrants to the New World may well have used the same strategy to Anglicize or adapt their surnames in order to meld seamlessly into their new environment.