Skinner Family History

Welcome to the Skinner Family History Site.

A collection of Skinner family history research, stories, and details.

The name Skinner comes from the old Norse Skinnari, meaning someone who deals in skins or skins animals. The first record of any Skinner in England is Henry le Skynner in 1273, no doubt a Norman. Stephan Skynnar held land in Inverness in 1361. John Skinner was burgess of Inverness in 1360 and another John Skinner was burgess of Aberdeen in 1470.

The current spelling appears in the 1500s, with Stephen Skinner owning Le Burtons in Hereford. His brother Robert Skinner was Bishop of Worcester at the Restoration of Charles II and died in 1557. There was a Skinner who was Lord Mayor of London in 1596. A Company of Skinners was raised in Edinburgh and these became Skinners Horse in India in the early 1800s. There were many Skinners in Essex down the east coast and in southern England in the 1500s and this is where our ancestors probably came from.

The first Skinner in Australia was probably William Skinner, a convict on the 2nd Fleet who was granted 30 acres at Toongabbie on the 1st of October 1796. Richard Skinner was sentenced to transportation to NSW in 1791 aboard the ship Salamander. Mary Skinner, a former convict, had to surrender a land grant to Governor Macquarie on the 30th of April, 1810. Another William Skinner arrived in Sydney in 1838 on the Eden as a passenger, only ten days before our ancestor, Alfred Skinner. A Richard Skinner was involved in the mutiny aboard the Bounty, but he drowned when the Pandora, transporting some of the mutineers back to England, sank near Cape York in 1791. There is one plot at Rutherford cemetery near Newcastle, containing three Skinners and one Smith, born from 1819 to 1876, perhaps related, considering that the Smiths came from near Newcastle and the later intermarriages of the two families.