The Castle name has had many spelling variations over the centuries, such as Castle, Castles, Castell, Castel, Castello and other variations, though it was not uncommon in ancient times in England for people to spell their names differently at different times, since the spellings of the name were affected by language spoken at the Royal courts, usually Latin or French. However the common practice for most people was to pay more attention to how the name was pronounced than as to how they thought it was spelled. Originally, the name Castle probably meant a person who worked at a Castle, or perhaps a governor or constable of a Castle.

The Castle name is an ancient one that goes back to the fifth century A.D. in England, after the Romans had withdrawn from the Islands of Great Britian and Ireland, and the Angles and Saxons emigrated to the islands and settled there. The Castle surname is found in some of their early documents, so it appears to have begun with the Anglo-Saxons in England. For many centuries these tribesmen maintained records of births, deaths, marriages and land transfers, and the Castle name is found prominently in these documents for a period of almost 1,000 years, although the first recorded instance was listed in Sussex, where the Castle family had established their homes long ago.

The Castle family originally came to England from an area in Germany called Schleswig-Holsten, which was dominated by the Angles and the Saxons, and when they settled in England they pushed many of the native Britians out of the areas in which they had settled. The Anglo-Saxon culture consisted of family groups with a local chieftain or king, though never in very large groups, and by the 9th Century A.D., the portion of Britain in which they settled, was ruled by Egbert, but no real unity occured between the Angle and Saxon kingdoms until the Norman Invasion of 1066.

When William the Conqueror led his army of Norman soldiers across the English Channel from Normandy and did battle with the Anglo-Saxon King Harold at Hastings, his victory over Harold changed the history of England forever. Many of his Norman warriors settled in various parts of England. However the great bulk of the people continued to maintain their Anglo-Saxon culture, but very gradually they adopted some of the Norman customs and developed into a unified nation. The Castle family was found in the English County of Sussex from 1148-1154, and the names Richard Castel and Robert Castel were recorded there in that six year period, both of them were descended from the Lords of Lystynton. By 1201, a John Castle owned estates in Leicestershire. By 1273, a census called the Hundrendorum Rolls listed the names among many land and estate owners in Norfolk, Yorkshire and Northumberland. In Scotland, in the year 1240, the Castle name was found near Dundee and there may have been some connection with the family of Robert the Bruce. The name was also listed in Aberdeen, Lundors, Dundee and Dunkeld, Scotland.

The common male English first names for many of the Castle family were such names as Alan, Andrew, Ranulph or Randolph, Robert, William and Thomas, but in Scotland the names Peter, John and David were more popular. The name continued to flourish in England until the 17th Century, with many notable families in Sussex. The family name had survived the Middle Ages with alll of its wars, plagues and famines, but by the 17th Century in England, the political turmail of the English Civil War under Oliver Cromwell forced many families to leave England and religious wars and tensions between Protestants and Catholics also resulted in dividing the country in factions, which eventually resulted in the emigration of many more families to the new world. In Ireland, after Cromwell defeated the Irish Army, many of his Protestant followers were given large grants of Irish land and settled their families there, and it was probably about this time that the Castles arrived in Ireland.

Emigration to the new world of America became very attractive to many families because of the political and religious turmoil in England, some settled in Canada, many in the United States, and later some went to Austrailia, and a few moved to the continental Europe. Many migrants to America bore the Castle surname or a variant of its spelling. A Gregory Castle settled in Maine as early as 1624. A George Castell settled in Virginia in 1635, followed by a Henry and a Dorothy Castell who settled there in 1639. Another George Castell settled in Maryland in 1775. Many other Castles settled in Pennsylvania and New York in the 18th and 19th centuries, but a few Castles settled in the Southern colonies, especially in South Carolina. The first census for the United States for South Carolina, taken about 1790, lists an Ephraim Castles, born about 1743 with his family and the 1800 South Carolina census lists John Henry Castles and wife Hannah Land and family residing in Fairfield County, South Carolina. John Henry and Hannah had a family of at least nine children, including sons John, Henry, James, William, Jesse, Thomas and Samuel, and daughters Elizabeth and Ann.

John Castles was born in Fairfield County, South Carolina about September 2, 1799 and married Mary Wagner Robinson, a descendant of the distinguished Moberley and Robinson families, on October 17, 1820 in Fairfield County, S.C. They had at least ten children, including sons Samuel, Henry, John, James R., William and Thomas Land Castles and Newton Langhead, and daughters Hannah, Lucretia and Nancy Elizabeth. John moved his family from Fairfield County, S.C. to a homestead near Albia, in Monroe County, Iowa, in 1851. His son, James R. Castle, married Mary Humphrey in April, 1861 in Albia, but she died shortly after giving birth to a son Morton, and James later married Margaret Freeman from Pennsylvania on June 18, 1868 in Albia, Iowa. James had served in the Civil war with the Iowa infantry Company H, after the death of his first wife before 1864.

James R Castle and wife Margaret had Newton in 1868 in Albia who went on to become a school-teacher in Wyoming and other states, but was a life-long pacificist who abhored guns, and he remained a bachelor all of his life. . He lived many years in Alaska, but later died from cancer in Oregon when he was almost 84 years old. His father had died about 1884 after siring at least two other sons with Margaret- Charles, and John R., who died from a train station accident in France while with the allied forces in 1919. James R. and Margaret also had twodaughters, Lulu and Anna Lucretia Castle. James had dropped the 's' from the end of the name Castles, after his family moved to Iowa. James and Margaret had made sure that all of their children were well-educated and most of them were college graduates. Anna Lucretia graduated from nearby Dartmouth College and became a school teacher in the town of Albia, but by the age of almost thirty she had not yet married. Then she met a farm hand who was a couple of years younger than she, named Peter Lemuel Abernathy, and after a period of courtship, they were married and soon moved to Bushnell, Nebraska, where their first son, Byron Glenn Abernathy was born in December, 1909. Anna had two more sons, Roy and Newton and later had a daughter, Mary Edith in 1917, while they were living in the Ozarks area of Missouri. The family moved to near Sterling, Kansas in the early 1920's and lived there until about 1930 when they moved to Oregon at the beginning of the Great Depression, though they had to sell their farm at a loss to do so. Anna lived in Oregon until her death in Portland, Oregon in November, 1949. She is buried at the Rose City Cemetery in Portland, Oregon.

Among many famous Castles throughout history was Baron Castle from Medieval English history, Barbara Castle, a Labour party Member of Parliament in England, Norman Henry Castle who was the chairman of the Board for S. & W. Beresford Ltd., William Castle, the famous Hollywood horror film director, John Castle who testified in 1816 at the trial of the Spenceans, and James Castle, the well known painter of the 20th Century.