When one begins to seek out the early history of the Baggett Family, he may be surprised and at times astonished at what he will find. Apparently as far back as the eighth century A.D., they are found holding titles as Advocate, Earl, Count, Lord, and Duke. Variants of the name are Baggot, Bagot, and Bagod.

During the latter part of the first millennium the family is found in Flanders and Artois, a country and a province, which are presently a part of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. There they held the titles of Counts of Artois, Advocates of Arras, Lords of Bethune, Earls of Albe-Marle, and Dukes of Sully. This family bore noble titles far back in the first millennium, before the first public records were kept.

It is believed that there is a family connection with the Counts of Flanders. It has been revealed that some of the family of Bagod were among the Carloviginian Counts. Apparently, according to what we have found, they were a part of a royal family in the region–and that may explain why they were prominent in Flanders and Artois. They held high positions during the reign of the Holy Roman Empire. (Saint-Omer Castle):

Let us now concentrate on European history and see if we can establish why and when the family came there to Flanders before recorded history began, and see if we can understand the migration of the family from other countries.

About the tenth or eleventh century is as far back as history records the Baggett name, but if we consider the history of Europe, it appears that perhaps the family originated in ancient times in northeastern France and several centuries later in western Germany. When Julius Caesar succeeded in conquering Gaul, he subjected those French and Germans living west of the Rhine to Roman rule. Some of these people may have migrated north into Denmark and Norway before the peak of the Roman Empire in the first and second century A.D. Many may have fled because of the enforced conversion to the relatively new Roman Catholic religion.

In the fourth century most of Gaul north of the Alps fell to the Franks, while the Alamanni and the Saxons remained in Germany. The Roman influence remained strong in northeastern France and western Germany by reason of the cities on the main rivers where the Roman social structure and Roman Catholic religion were already established.

Enforced conversion and Frankish rule were imposed on the Saxons, and other parts of Germany were incorporated into the Empire under the Carolingian dynasty.

Knowing all this gives a better understanding of how much control the Roman Empire had on the people of Gaul and Germany and this region of Europe.

It's possible that the family may have been pushed north into Scandinavia in the beginning of the Christian Era. During the first century A.D. our ancestors, who at that time were assumed to be of German descent, may have moved north into Denmark and then Norway, since history indicates that settlers from Denmark and Sweden spoke a Germanic language; and it also shows that a form of  the old Germanic language eventually became the mother tongue of the Scandinavians.

The Norsemen, or Vikings as they were called, were excellent colonizers. After moving south from the Norwegian territory, they established several villages south of Denmark on both the East and West Frisian Islands. By the fifth century they may have begun to establish villages on the islands which are now the Netherlands territories. Then by the ninth century the Baggett families were already established in Flanders. (However, there is a possibility that the family has always lived in the region around Flanders and never migrated to Scandinavia.)

The Norse, no doubt, colonized villages along the French coast, but this may have been after they had colonized the territories below the Frisian Islands. They probably had colonies below their coasts in very ancient times.

Knowing the history of the Norsemen makes one aware that the Baggett family may be of Norwegian descent, but only back to a certain point.

The ancient history of Normandy indicates that some Germanic settlement had begun on its coast before the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The Roman Empire eventually fell apart, and on the overthrow of the Roman kingdom in A.D. 486 the country passed under Merovingian Frankish rule.

The Vikings, or Norsemen, were raiding the coast of Normandy in Charlemagne's time, and as the Carolingian kings became weaker the Norse invaders penetrated farther inland. In the tenth century Charles III, King of France, was unable to defeat them, and in 911 the king turned over to the Norseman leader, Rollo, the duchy of the territory that became known as Normandy.

In the period from the ninth to the twelth century we find the Baggett ancestors all along the coasts of the English Channel and the North Sea. By the ninth century, they were in Flanders and Artois. There they are recorded as Carloviginian Counts of Artois, Lords of Bethune, and among the nobles of Flanders. This data is according to records we have from a genealogist and the Family Castles Website.

As we study the history of the Baggett family and at the same time the history of the Norsemen, we can almost be certain that some of the family descended from Scandinavian countries. Somewhere on the coasts of practically every country these Norsemen went, we find the Baggett ancestors.

History suggests that the family may have originated in ancient times in northeastern France and western Germany and migrated to Denmark in the early Christian Era. From Denmark and Sweden these people, who spoke a Germanic language, settled later in Norway. In the early Viking Age some of the family then migrated to Artois and Flanders and to Normandy.

In the beginning of the Viking Age, Norsemen ships went into the Southwest establishing along the Irish coast the Kingdom of Dublin. In the ninth century they permanently colonized the Shetland Islands.

It was only a century after the Scandinavians had invaded the British Isles in A.D. 787 that they became masters of part of England. In 878, the Saxon king Alfred the Great finally drove the invaders from England, but the Danes conquered England under Sweyn, King of the Danes, in 1013. England was then ruled by Danish kings until the death of Hardecanute in 1042. Hardecanute was last of the Danish kings over England and the Saxon king Edward received the crown.

Edward died in 1066. At his death the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot elected Harold king as Harold II, but his reign was very short lived. Harold was forced to meet William the Conqueror in battle almost immediately and on 14 October 1066 the armies met at Senlac Hill. With the English army defeated and Harold slain, William, called the Conqueror, was crowned as William I, King of England, in 1066. He ruled England until he was killed during a battle with the King of France in 1087. The Norman dynasty ruled in England until Henry I died in 1135. In 1154 Henry II, son of the daughter of King Henry I, became King of England. This was the beginning of the Plantagenet dynasty of English kings.

So we see that the Norsemen became famous everywhere as great warriors, and in many cases settled in foreign countries, notably in France, where Vikings became the ancestors of the Normans.

The Norseman also established colonies in Ireland and along the English Channel. By the thirteenth century the Baggett ancestors had become prominent in Dublin and in Limerick–and throughout much of England.

When the Vikings established along the Irish coast the Kingdom of Dublin, we find the family there. When the Normans invaded England in 1066, we find the family in the Norman Army. There were several of the Baggett ancestors recorded in the Rolls of Battle Abbey. Some are recorded as knights in the Norman Army of William in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings.

The Baggett family remains one of the few found in the entire world that can claim an authentic Domesday ancestor: Bagod d'Arras, or Bagods (Bagots) of Bromley. Bagod, as stated before, may be a variant of Bigod (or Bigot). But certainly they are descendants of Bagod, the undisputed progenitors of the family in England.  (The shield of Bagod d' Arras and Bagod Bromley apparently was the shield on the Battle Abbey Roll):

We don't know if any of the family settled in Russia, Poland, or Spain, but there are variants of the name in Argentina. These probably descended from the Spanish. Their name is written, Bagu.

As the family settled in the many countries speaking the different languages, the name was spelled in various ways, and by looking at arms one can readily see this. Although the names are spelled slightly differently because of the various languages, the similarities of the arms show that they are of the same family.

The name varied over the centuries. In the tenth and eleventh century in Flanders the name was spelled Wago, or Bago. In Normandy some time later it was spelled Bagod. After the family migrated to England, the name began to be varied in the English form, Bagot. In the fourteenth century the name began to be spelled with two "g's" or two "t's" and the "e". By the seventeenth century it was spelled as it is in America, Baggett.

It was some time after the Baggett ancestors in Northeastern France were pushed over and up into Northwestern Germany that they began to migrate upwards into Denmark and Norway at the peak of the Roman rule. The name probably varied somewhat in the early Christian Era from that at the Viking Age, when we first begin to see the name.

The idea of the family migration described above is a theory that has substance, but it may be that they never left the northern regions of France and Germany during the early Christian Era. It's possible that the family had lived for millenniums in the regions of France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. Before the reign of the Carolingians, these nobles may have already had strong connections with the government in the region and the prominent then took their positions as Counts of Artois. Their descendants became Dukes of Sully, Earls of Albe-Marle, Advocates of Arras, and Lords of Bethune, according to our records.

When we see the Name Origin section, we will better understand how the name Baggett evolved. You may be as surprised as I was at first when I began to study the history of the Baggett family. I understood or imagined that the name had always been spelled as we spell it now, but after studying history, I then realized that names (at least some of them) are much different than they were several centuries ago. The migrations of people to other countries can have a pronounced impact on the way a name is spelled. This is also true in the situation of the name Baggett.

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