Bicket/Bickett/Becket/Beckett Family Tree Reunion
Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland and via Zoom
5-7 August 2023

 

The Bicket/Bickett/Becket/Beckett Family Tree Reunion took place 5-7 August 2023 in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland at CentreStage (formerly the Kilmarnock Academy) and by Zoom.  This page gives information published immediately prior to the reunion.  See the other links above for the presentations and other deliverables from the reunion.

Overall schedule

Saturday 5 August (open 9am, start 10am, end 5pm)

• Presentation by Stuart Wilson (local historian) on ‘Why Your Ancestors Left Scotland’
• Presentations on general topics such as an overview of the different trees and branches; different spellings of the surname; and coats of arms
• Presentations on different branches of Bicket(t)s and Becket(s) by members of those branches
• Group photos
• Optional evening dinner at local restaurant (charges apply)

Sunday morning 6 August (open 9am, start 10am, end 1pm)

• Presentation by Stuart Wilson (local historian) on ‘The Ulster Plantation and Ulster Scots‘
• Presentations on general, but more detailed, topics such as DNA testing
• Further presentations on different branches of Bicket(t)s and Becket(s) by members of those branches

Sunday afternoon 6 August: visits to nearby locations associated with branch ancestors (not on Zoom)

Monday morning 7 August: walking tour of old Kilmarnock including locations associated with branch ancestors (not on Zoom).

Monday afternoon 7 August (start 2pm, end 5pm)

• Further presentations on different branches of Bicket(t)s and Becket(s) by members of those branches
• Presentations on more detailed topics such as
  • The ScotlandsPeople downloads project (all pre-1855 records and images)

Resources

Major resources will be made available on the internet before, during, and after the reunion, including:

• Details of all BMD records in Scotland pre-1855, for all identified surname spelling variants, with images available separately
• Collected lineages of all Bicket(t) and Becket(t) branches from all sources on the internet
• Supporting write-ups about the different branches, and photos

More information

People living in Ayrshire may remember articles in the Kilmarnock Standard about the Bicket family tree first in 1969, and then again in 1981. Work on the family tree has continued, and as a result there was a family tree reunion at CentreStage in Kilmarnock 5-7 August.

There have been a few well-known Bickets from this Ayrshire tree.  One of them, Sir Alexander Bicket (1853-1931), worked for the Kilmarnock Standard in 1870 when he was 17, before heading to Liverpool and making his name in the tugboat business there.  His great-grandson is Harry Bicket OBE, the conductor.  Thomas Walter Bickett (1869-1921) was governor of the state of North Carolina in the USA from 1917 through 1921.  Welton David Becket (1902-1969) founded one of America’s largest architectural firms.  And there are still many descendant Bickets, Bicketts, Beckets, Becketts and Bichans in Ayrshire, throughout Scotland, the north of Ireland, the rest of the UK, and throughout the world, including Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand.

Bicket family tree research started using deep DNA testing in 2018.  The result has been the identification of 27 different branches of this tree which originated in Ayrshire.  21 of these branches all descended from a single individual born around 1400. There are five genetic branches which can only trace themselves back to the north of Ireland (Antrim, Down, Sligo, and Mayo), but they are genetically clearly part of the Ayrshire tree.

There is more information about the family on https://bicket.one-name.net.