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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : habitational name from a place near Manchester named Atherton, from the Old English personal name Æ{dh}elhere + Old English tūn ‘settlement’.
  • Major-General Humphrey Atherton arrived from England in 1636, settling at Dorchester, MA, and becoming governor of the colony. Joshua Atherton (1737–1809), probably a descendant of the major-general, was an early antislavery campaigner in MA.

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