This interesting name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational surname from any one of the places called Moulton, for instance, in Cheshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Suffolk and Yorkshire. Most of these places are named from the OldeEnglish pre 7th Century personal name "Mula", "the mule", with the suffix "-tun", enclosure or settlement, although in some cases the places may originally have been farms where mules were reared or kept. The placenames are variously recorded in the Domesday Book or 1086 as "Moletune, Multune, Muletuna", and "Moltun". Locational surnames were usually acquired by a local landowner, or by the lord of the manor, and especially by those former inhabitants of a place who had moved to another area, and were thereafter best identified by the name of their birthplace. The surname was first recorded in the late 10th Century (see below), and other early recordings include, Thomas Moulton of Wiltshire, who is listed on the Register of the University of Oxford in 1591, and William Moulton, who married Elizabeth Brocket at St. Peter's, Cornhill, London, on June 23rd 1623. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Aelfgar de Muletune, which was dated circa 975, The Book of the Abbey of Ely, Cambridgeshire, during the reign of King Edward, 'The Martyr', 975 - 978. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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