Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of various places named from Old English scypen, scipen ‘cattleshed’, such as Shippen in West Yorkshire and Shippon in Berkshire, or a topographic name derived directly from the vocabulary word. In some cases it may originally have been acquired as a metonymic occupational name for a cowman, who in medieval times would often have lived in the same building as his animals.
- Born in Methley, Yorkshire, England, in 1639, Edward Shippen emigrated to Boston, MA, in 1668. He joined the Society of Friends and moved his family and business to Philadelphia in about 1694 to avoid religious persecution, eventually becoming mayor of Philadelphia, where his sons and grandsons continued to be prominent.