banting-family.org.uk

Banting is a very uncommon surname. Many British telephone directories contain no entries at all under that name.

The family to which I belong originates in villages around Andover, in north-west Hampshire in the south of England. The 19th century censuses reveal our humble origins, with the men working as agricultural labourers or other unskilled occupations and many of the women being employed as rag-pickers at the local paper mill. The shadow of the workhouse was never far away.

Given the rarity of the name, it is surprising that there could be two entirely separate Banting families based in the same county. Yet this does appear to be the case, because there is no known connection between the Banting family originating in south-east Hampshire (notably Bishop's Waltham and Hambledon) and my own. A chart on One World Tree gives a line of ancestry from this family back to medieval Holland.

I have no specific information on other families beyond the fact that census records show significant groupings in counties to the north and west of London. I have also received occasional emails from other people in Canada and England who are related to the two celebrated individuals described below.

Famous Frederick

The Canadian contingent is headed by Sir Frederick Grant Banting (1891-1941), co-discoverer of insulin and winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. According to this site, his ancestors came from Ballyfin, Co. Laois, Ireland.

Sir Frederick achieved the distinction of having a lunar crater named after him.

The obvious assumption is that all Canadian Bantings are related to each other, but I have not researched this at all.

Carbohydrate cutter

Another who achieved lasting fame was William Banting (1797-1878), who made the surname synonymous with dieting after he popularised the low carbohydrate diet with which he achieved significant weight loss. His family, based in London, were undertakers who included royalty and nobility among their clients.

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