Surname Origin
The House of Names reports that the Trout family surname was first found in Westmorland where they held a family seat at Trowtbeck in the Windermere parish. The Ancestry website reports the surname being of Middle English origin meaning fisherman. Click to learn more about the family history.
Trout is reportedly an altered spelling of German Traut. There are several variations of this surname including: Trowtbeck, Trowtback, Troutbeck, Troutback, Trowteback, Trowback, Trowbeck, Troubeck, Trueback, Truebeck, Truback, Trubeck, Truwbeck, Truwtbeck, Truwtback, Truwback, Trobeck and many more.
Initially, I always check the Ancestry.com site to see what information they have. Four hundred forty four thousand historical documents is quite a bit of information to search in. It seems with 92,000 birth, marriage, and death certificates, there’s at least a few Trout ancestors in the Ancestry database to research on. This is very promising.
Population
According to the House of Names, Trout families began immigrating to the United States back in the late 1800s. Their website gives a lot of great information on the origins of this surname and their activity before migrating over to America.
Between 1840 and 1920, Trout families were found in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Scotland. In 1840, about 35% of all Trout families in the United States were found in Pennsylvania. This was 84 Trout families which was the highest population of Trout families in 1840.
The year 1880 saw the most Trout families in the United States with about 1,196 Trout families living in Pennsylvania, which was the highest population of Trout families in this time. This accounted for roughly 30% of all recorded Trout’s in North America.
Trout families had spread all over the United States by 1920. There were 400 Trout families living in Pennsylvania at the time which was about 26% of all the recorded Trout’s in the states. Pennsylvania still had the highest population of Trout families in 1920.
Occupations
In the late 1800s, Trout families held a small variety of different jobs between the United States, Canada, and England.
In the United States, 42% of Trout’s were Farmers. This was the most common occupation for Trout families in this time. Other common jobs were Laborer, House Keeping, and Blacksmith.
In Canada, 19% of Trout’s were Farmers. Other common jobs were Brick Layer, Bailiff Devis, and Editor or Publisher.
Trout Occupations were pretty evenly spread out in England in 1881. The top three jobs were Agriculatural Labourer, Carpenter, and Fisherman. Beer House Keepers accounted for the remaining 3%.
Life Expectancy
Trout life expectancy seems to always be right about the same as that of the General Population. No matter what year, they seem to be pretty even.
As with the general population, Trout life expectancy was at its lowest point in 1945 at 35 years, and highest in 1998 at 78 years. The average life expectancy for Trout in 1940 was 44, and 75 in 2004.
Family Members I’ve Found So Far
I obviously still have a lot of work to do in order to fill this family out and discover my roots. I will be working on that in the weeks and months ahead.
Have you found any Trout’s in your family tree yet? Were they fisherman? Did they come from England or were there any from Germany? I have so many questions!
As always, I will come back and update this page as I learn more about the Trout family.
Happy Searching!
~Kris
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