Dear Graham

I stumbled upon your Smout web page yesterday and thought I’d add my knowledge, for what little it’s worth.
My knowledge of Smouts is very limited, I’m afraid. I am John Smout, graphic designer aged 47, and have lived in SW London all my life. I have one sister a consultant physician called Elizabeth.
My father, Dr Alan Hilder Smout, was the only son of Robin Hilder Smout. Robin was one of about eight children born of William J (probably John) Smout. The Hilder name came from a female line of descent somewhere, and was named after a Viking called Hildergunna. I was thankfully spared what sounds like a girl’s name by my own father.
My father can remember his father’s brothers and sisters, i.e. his aunts and  uncles:
Bertha Smout,
Hugh Smout,
William J (who took what records were then available and which were never seen again)
Eva Smout (Eva married one Harry Murray, who had a son Denis. Denis’s wife May is still alive, although of an advanced age. My father says she has a fair bit of family history of the Smout side of things. I should contact her I think, before it’s too late.)
Eric Smout
My great grandfather William J Smout was a saddler living in Mount Street, Mayfair, London. He had a shop in Houndsditch, London. (Houndsditch is/was an area just east of the original walled City of London. Stowe’s survey of London of the early 1600s states that it was forbidden to bury dogs within the City precincts, presumably because of disease, so people would take them outside the town walls and bury them in the ditch outside the City wall, hence it became known as Houndsditch.)
William J apparently did well for himself, as he became a Freeman of the
City of London, an honour bestowed upon him by his craft guild. Records
should thus exist in London’s Guildhall, which I should check I suppose. My
father recollects his having two sisters.  Father’s memory is now very hazy
William J Smout hit hard times, it would seem due to his large family and
the advent of the motor car, which rendered his saddlery business
increasingly obsolete. My grandfather Robin was sent away to Glasgow in
Scotland to be apprenticed by another relative, (Alan, after whom my father
was named) as an electrical engineer at the age of thirteen (the legal age
in England then for leaving school). He was to have gained a qualification
when Alan died at the wrong moment, leaving his protege alone and jobless.
Fortunately the first world war afforded him work in a munitions factory.
My grandfather Robin married Nellie Adams whom he knew from his youth in
Mount Street and eventually bought a house in South London where my father
was born. Robin lost his job and, in consequence the house. Housed again by
relatives until able to get back on his feet as an electrical engineer with
the, until recently, state-owned power company, the family happily enjoyed
a relatively stable existence in South London for the rest of their days.

My father Alan, deemed educationally subnormal by the authorities at the age of nine because he was educated at home by his teacher mother and actually learnt very little, went on to win scholarships to college and university and obtained a degree in botany and a degree in geology before doing his PhD. He worked in research for British Petroleum and is an expert in foraminifera - little single-celled marine creatures. He followed his father in marrying a childhood neighbour, my mother Joan. Alan is 84 and still alive, presently writing a book on the origins of the planet which he hope to publish soon.
 

Some background about the Dutch connection:
Prior to the thirteenth century there lived a vassal of the Count of Holland who lived upon the Count’s feudal estates near the town of ‘S Gravenhage in the Province of Zuid, Holland. When family names were being adopted by the civilised states of western Europe this man assumed the name of Smout.
The sons of this vassal amassed wealth and as their enterprises or estates offered an important source of revenue for the Counts of Holland and Zealand (about this time the two countries had united under one head) they assumed a more prominent position in the realm.
Their sons in turn relinquished the industry of their immediate ancestry and devoted themselves to public service and combat during which time one distinguished himself sufficiently to be granted the privilege of using arms.
At first the emblem was a plain black crescent painted on the metal shield of the senior member of the household but gradually became more complex as the institution of heraldry advanced.
The crescent thus became the symbolic emblem of the House of Smout and thus served as the basis for the later and more modified coat-of-arms in which the background of the shield remained gold with three black crescents. (see jpeg attached to this email)
Some descendants of the Squire of ‘S Gravenhage succeeded in life, many fell in battle, others enriched by industry and commerce. Through their wealth and position the gentlemen of the House of Smout intermarried with noble and gentry houses of the province and thus attained even greater importance and prestige in the Netherlands.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century one Smout allied himself in marriage with several gentry houses and established his seat in Rotterdam, also in the province of Zuid. The practice of quartering arms had become common and this member of the Smout family was granted permission to wear the emblems of his maternal ancestry. Thus we have the arms of the Smouts of Rotterdam with unicorn, shells and bars, but retaining the original crescents of the paternal line in the first quarter.
 

The Scottish connection? Not much to add here, Graham.
I wonder if the link might not be shipbuilding. Scotland had many famous shipyards and of course Holland did also. How about the following:
One William Smout or Smute lived in London, England in the seventeenth
century. He was born about 1596/7. He was apprenticed to a boatwright and
became a member of the Boatwright Guild. He agreed to perform 50 days of
work in Virginia for one Colonel Thomas Burbage. William got paid with
tobacco plantation land. This contract was to change his life. In about
1634 William sailed from England and eventually settled at Hampton, York
County. The first mention of him in American public records was in 1642. At
the first federal census of 1790 members of his family were only found in
the southern states of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. The family
appears on American  records as Smute, Smote, Smoote, Smouth and it finally
fixed as Smoot.
There is a very real connection here between the original Smout in the form of William and the distinguished American Smoot family. Apparently the name Smoot is distinctly Maryland, as Cabot is of Massachusetts and Spottiswood is of Virginia.
Your comment that “All of the original emigrants were born and baptised in or nearby Wolverhampton etc. Here is probably a completely different strand from London that predates the Salt Lake people. I have corresponded with Curtis Smout of Salt Lake City and his brother Jay.
I looked up a Scottish book of names and came up with one ‘Ade de Smot’ from the twelfth century. Probably too early for us Smouts and unrelated.
Smout in Scottish is an alternative but rarer spelling of Smolt or Smelt. My dictionary calls it ‘a salmon migrating to the sea for the first time’, from the Scandinavian. I also understand that it is sometimes used to denote very small freshwater fish of any kind. The word Smout in this context can also be used derogatorily to describe a tiny person.

I am aware that there is a judge called Smout - he’s in ‘who’s who?’. He has an address of his chambers in London, but I haven’t contacted him.

Responses from some Smouts with whom I’ve corresponded:

KRISTINA SMOUT <KRISTINA.SMOUT@student.kuleuven.ac.be> Belgium
Hello there,
As you probably noticed I study in the University of Leuven, 2nd year Pedagogical science.  I heard my father also got an email (Simon Smout, medical doctor).  He says there is also a doctor in gastro-enthrology in Utrecht (the Netherlands).  My father is also interested in the family name and knows more than I do.  He’ll probably write you as soon he finds the time!  There is also a professor in history in Edinburgh who carries our name e.
I usually go to Scotland almost every year( if I pass my exams, that is), who knows who I can bump into...
My father has been telling me something that our name goes at least until
the concordat of Worms.  We have a scription of that at home
Unfortunately, I do not know that much, but if possible, I would like to be up-to-dated on that matter.
Thank you for the email,
Sincerely, Tinneke (that’s what people say to me)

Bram Smout, VoiD <void@mail.active.be> Belgium
Hello John,
I’m Bram Smout, a student living in Herent, Belgium, 18 years old.
I know there is a family tree and I’ll search for it, but give me some time :)
No problem
Greetings,

That about wraps up my Smout knowledge. The society of genealogists has a whole bunch of typewritten Smouts, the results of a search of parish records, I would guess in the 50s or 60s. It was part of the Cotton Collection. Maybe they were trying to trace someone. This may be of interest to you as it’s all about the Shropshire Smouts. Maybe you already have these? I was able from these to fill in Curtis Smout about his ancestor who went to Salt Lake City under a bit of a cloud, having got a girl pregnant.
 

Anything you have to add, I would be interested to hear about.
As our family emblem is a crescent and we are associated with lard, I propose we adopt the French croissant as our own... : )

Regards, John Smout

The arms weren't on my website.

I would love to share what little I know with you, hope the Dutch stuff was interesting to you. I certainly enjoyed reading your stuff. I didn't look at your family tree - where do I go again? Had you seen the arms before. Could you view the jpeg okay? There's another, the simpler earlier one mentioned, but I haven't redrawn it yet and only have a bad photocopy (somewhere!).

Early in 1997 I trawled around the net and contacted a few Smouts around the place, including Prof Smout from Edinburgh. I've today dug out an old cd backup from then which has those emails on it. I'll try to share these with you in due course.

Stay lucky Smout, and enjoy those croissants!