Nigel Farage Family History

Nigel Paul Farage was born on April 3rd, 1964 to Guy and Barbara Farage in Farnborough, Kent.  Both his father and grandfather were stockbrokers and the family was relatively well-off.  But his father was a drinker and abandoned the family when Nigel was five years old.

At the age of ten Nigel started at Dulwich College, a fee-paying private school in south London.  He was no great shakes academically, was something of a troublemaker, and did poorly at A-levels.  However, he did make a name for himself as “the yob with the gob.”  He remarked later that one of his teachers spotted “that I was quite ballsy, probably good on a platform, unafraid of the limelight, and a bit noisy and good at selling things.”

Not academically bright and dismissive of education and expertise, Nigel eschewed university.  Instead he became a trader on the London Metal Exchange in 1982.  He was to remain active in commodity trading for the next twenty years.

In these endeavors he was determined to make a lot of money and to enjoy himself.  Though his childhood had been blighted by his father’s alcoholism, one of his conceits was that he could consume prodigious amounts of booze without wrecking himself.

His interest in politics began in the 1980’s.  In 1993 he became a founding member of UKIP, which he was soon to lead.  As his biographer Michael Crick wrote:

“Farage, the public school-educated City trader from the borders of London and Kent – a man who loved golf, cricket and fishing and pottering about first world war battlefields – fitted their southern middle-class profile perfectly.”

The initial breakthrough was the 1999 elections to the European Parliament which saw Nigel and two others become the party’s first ever MEP’s.   Nigel Farage later led UKIP to win the highest share of the British vote among the parties in the 2014 European elections.  And two years after that he was a key figurehead in the Brexit referendum whereby Britain voted to leave the European Union.  His mission accomplished, he promptly resigned as the UKIP leader.

However, Nigel was not done with politics.   In 2018 he founded the Brexit party to campaign for a hard Brexit.  In 2021 this became Reform UK (in which he had a controlling interest), with a remit to campaign for reduced immigration.

For a while he seemed to be taking a back seat.  Instead he was involving himself in broadcasting with GB News.  But when the date for the British general election came around in July 2024, he rushed back to take the helm at Reform UK.

He and his party did well.  Nigel made it as an MP, his first success in seven attempts.  His political ambitions were now greater.  He wanted his Reform UK to replace the Conservative Party as the formal opposition to Keir Starmer and the Labour party; and he wanted to progress his relationship with US President-elect Donald Trump to achieve wider objectives.

The English Farages

Farage is a very uncommon surname in England, numbering only three in the 1881 census.  If the earlier spelling was Ferridge, then the number was 170, mainly to be found around London.

It has been suggested that Nigel’s forebears were Huguenot – that the Farage/Ferridge name originated with Georges Ferauge, a Huguenot who was born in Flanders around 1681 and in England anglicized his name to Ferridge.  A George Ferridge was recorded in Berkshire in 1707.  But there is no evidence that this George Ferridge was Huguenot or was once Ferauge.

The earliest direct record for Nigel’s line was Edward Farage or Ferridge, son of Daniel, who was born in Mitcham, Surrey in 1779.  He married Maria Clark in 1804 in Croydon nearby and they had a son, also named Edward.  Edward Sr. was by trade a bricklayer, later a mason, Edward Jr. an early police constable.

The Farage/Ferridge line then went as follows:

• Edward Farage (1811-1879), married Quaker?
• Daniel Farage (1849-1909), married Irish
• and Harry Farage (1890-1975), married German

These Farages lived in and around Croydon in Surrey.  Harry was a stockbroker’s clerk in 1911 before enlisting with his younger brother Reginald to fight in the Great War.  After the war was over he married Gladys Schrod, the daughter of German immigrants, and settled down in Bromley, Kent.  He continued to work in the stockbroker business until his retirement around 1950.

And the German Schrods

On his maternal side Nigel’s great great grandparents were Germans who had emigrated to London from the Frankfurt area sometime around 1861. Nikolaus Schrod was a young cabinet-maker who made cases for pianos.  He married his sweetheart Bina and they soon decided that life would be better if they left. 

They ended up in rented rooms in the teeming tenements of London, on a minimum wage and in near-poverty.

Their only child Carl left school at fourteen to become a telegraph messenger with the Post Office. He later changed his name to Charles and married Ellen Abbott, an English girl. The anglicization of the family was complete in the next generation when their daughter Gladys married a young stockbroker’s clerk named Harry Farage.

Larger-Than-Life Parents

Nigel’s desire for the spotlight was inherited from his parents.

His stockbroker father, the flamboyantly named Guy Justus Oscar Farage, was known as a great storyteller and the best-dressed man on the London Stock Exchange. He was also an absentee dad who left the family when Nigel was just five.

Guy was a heavy drinker and his alcoholism caused him to lose his Stock Exchange position in the 1960’s.  It was then that he left his family, afterwards sobered up and tried his hand in the antiques trade.  In 1972, having been endorsed by his friends, he was able to return to the trading floor on the new Stock Exchange Tower in Threadneedle Street. He remarried in 1980.

Nigel’s mother Barbara, who would take back her maiden name of Stevens, was also a vivacious character. In her late 60s and early 70s, she would strip off and pose for fundraising calendars in the style of Calendar Girls.  Later on she would remind viewers of the buxom Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street.

Nigel Farage’s Family Tree

• The English Farages

• Edward Farage or Ferridge from Mitcham in Surrey (1779-1862) m. Maria Clark (b. 1782) in Croydon in 1804
• – Edward Farage (1811-1879)

• Edward Farage from Mitcham in Surrey m. Sarah Savory (1810-1896) in Newington, London in 1840
• – William Farage (1841-1874)
• – Edward Farage (1843-1924)
• – Daniel Farage (1845-1909)
• – Henry Farage (1850-1892)
• – Caroline Farage (1852-1926)

• Daniel Savory Farage from Croydon m. Lucy Moynihan from an Irish family (1858-1932) in Islington, London in 1883
• – Winifred Farage (1888-1969)
• – Harry Farage (1890-1975)
• – Reginald Farage (1892-1975) m. Margaret Powell
• – Elsie Farage (1897-1982) m. Percival Bucknall

• Harry Farage from Canterbury in Kent m. Gladys Schrod from a German family (1900-1977) in Bromley, Kent in 1927
• – Michael Farage (1929-2008)
• – Guy Farage (b. 1935)

• Guy Farage m. Barbara Stevens (b. 1940), divorced in 1969; rem. Carol Hyatt in 1980
• – Nigel Farage (b. 1964)
• – Andrew Farage (b. 1966) m. Wendy Miller

• Nigel Farage m. Grainne Hayes from Ireland in 1988; divorced in 1997; rem. Kirsten Mehr from Germany in 1999, separated around 2007; later with Laure Ferrari from France, starting around 2010
• – Samuel Farage (b. 1989) with Grainne
• – Thomas (Tom) Farage (b. 1991) with Grainne
• – Victoria Farage (b. 2000) with Kirsten
• – Isabelle Farage (b. 2005) with Kirsten

• The German Schrods

• Nikolaus/Nicholas Schrod from Frankfurt, Germany (b. 1837) m. Bina Goring (1842-1915) and emigrated to England around 1861
• – Carl/Charles Schrod (1862-1932), born in London

• Carl/Charles Julius Schrod m. Ellen Abbott (1867-1952)
• – Charles Schrod (1892-1960) m. Alice Buggins
• – Francis Schrod (1897-1975) m. Florence Chart
• – Gladys Schrod (1900-1977) m. Harry Farage
• – Florence Schrod (1904-1972)