Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from an unidentified place (probably in southern England, where the surname is commonest and where chalk hills abound), apparently named with Old English cealc ‘chalk’ + lēah ‘woodland clearing’.
- Quaker minister Thomas Chalkley of Southwark, England, first came to America in 1698, on a preaching journey, and in 1700 he brought his family over to MD. The next year he moved to Philadelphia, and in 1723 to a plantation he had purchased in the nearby suburb of Frankford, later a part of the city. As his family grew, he became a sea trader.