When Theodore Baker was born on 18 April 1757, in Yarmouth, Barnstable, Massachusetts Bay Colony, British Colonial America, his father, Lot Baker, was 35 and his mother, Desire Baker, was 37. He registered for military service in 1775.
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Historical Boundaries: 1760: Cumberland, Massachusetts Bay Colony, British Colonial America 1776: Cumberland, Massachusetts, United States 1820: Cumberland, Maine, United States
English: occupational name, from Middle English bakere, Old English bæcere, a derivative of bacan ‘to bake’. It may have been used for someone whose special task in the kitchen of a great house or castle was the baking of bread, but since most humbler households did their own baking in the Middle Ages, it may also have referred to the owner of a communal oven used by the whole village. The right to be in charge of this and exact money or loaves in return for its use was in many parts of the country a hereditary feudal privilege. Compare Miller . Less often the surname may have been acquired by someone noted for baking particularly fine bread or by a baker of pottery or bricks.
Americanized form (translation into English) of surnames meaning ‘baker’, for example Dutch Bakker , German Becker and Beck , French Boulanger and Bélanger (see Belanger ), Czech Pekař, Slovak Pekár, and Croatian Pekar .
History: Baker was established as an early immigrant surname in Puritan New England. Among others, two men called Remember Baker (father and son) lived at Woodbury, CT, in the early 17th century, and an Alexander Baker arrived in Boston, MA, in 1635.
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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