When Abraham Bishop was born on 30 January 1787, in Scotch Plains, Union, New Jersey, United States, his father, James Bishop, was 24 and his mother, Susanna Keats Bunnell, was 21. He married Phebe Maxwell about 1808, in Scotch Plains, Union, New Jersey, United States. They were the parents of at least 7 sons and 4 daughters. He died on 1 September 1846, in Pine Township, Crawford, Pennsylvania, United States, at the age of 59.
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1787–1846 Male
1790–1839 Female
1809–1877 Male
1810–1875 Female
1812–1886 Male
1814–1890 Male
1817–1892 Female
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1762–1848 Male
1765–1836 Female
1785–1859 Male
1787–1846 Male
1793–1853 Male
1798–1852 Female
1798–1864 Female
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English: from Middle English bissop, biscop, Old English bisc(e)op ‘bishop’, which comes via Latin from Greek episkopos ‘overseer’. The Greek word was adopted early in the Christian era as a title for an overseer of a local community of Christians, and has yielded cognates in every European language: French évêque, Italian vescovo, Spanish obispo, Russian yepiskop, German Bischof, etc. The word came to be applied as a surname for a variety of reasons, among them a supposed resemblance in bearing or appearance to a bishop, and selection as the ‘boy bishop’ on Saint Nicholas's Feast Day. In some instances the surname is from the rare Middle English (Old English) personal name Biscop ‘bishop’. As an Irish surname it is adopted for Mac Giolla Easpaig, meaning ‘servant of the bishop’ (see Gillespie ). In North America, this surname has absorbed, by assimilation and translation, at least some of continental European cognates, e.g. German Bischoff , Polish, Rusyn, Czech, and Slovak Biskup , Slovenian Škof (see Skoff ).
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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