Vousden One-Name Study

(Click on picture to enlarge) Wedding of Robert John BROWN and Agnes Minnie Lucy VOUSDEN, 9 April 1918

Vousden
One-Name Study

Topics

About the Vousden One-Name Study
Variants
Origin of the surname
Historical occurrences
Frequency of the name
Distribution of the name
Data
Links
Contact Details

About the Vousden One-Name Study

The Vousden One-Name Study grew out of tracing the family line of my grandmother, Agnes Minnie Lucy Vousden.

Vousdens have lived in and around Goudhurst since at least the sixteenth century. More Vousdens seem to trace their ancestry back to Goudhurst than to any other known place.

I registered the name with the Guild of One-Name Studies early in 2006.

Variants

The registered variants of the name are Fousden, Fowsden, Vousdon, Vouseden, Vowsden, all of which I think are simply variations in spelling before it settled at Vousden.

Forsden and de Forsdenne may be even earlier spellings of the name: in a Lay Subsidy tax list (of 1344) and a Will (of 1474) respectively, both in the area of Biddenden.

Vowden which appears to be a name from the Devon area is not considered a variant.

Origin of the surname

There is a conventional wisdom amongst many Vousdens interested in their surname that they descend from Huguenots from France. However, I have yet to find any evidence for this.

I am more inclined to think that they may have come to England from Flanders, perhaps as early as the late thirteenth century after King Henry III invited “all workers of woollen cloth” to come and settle in England. A group of Flemish weavers were granted royal protection in England, where a number of them settled in the Weald area on the Kent-Sussex borders. Many villages, including Goudhurst, still have old weavers cottages that reflect this wave of immigration. It could be that the surname Vousden has evolved from an original Flemish or Dutch surname.

However, an alternative view is that the name is derived from the local 'dens' that were clearings in the great forest of the Weald where hog-breeding flourished in medieval times, and the first part of the surname may have been the given name of an early swineherd.

There again, perhaps I am entirely wrong about this...

Historical occurrences

There have been quite a few Vousdens who have made significant achievements in their chosen field with their words and/or deeds, including:

* Lieutenant-Colonel William John Vousden (1845-1902), Commandant of the 5th Punjab Cavalry, awarded the Victoria Cross.

* Val Vousden, stage name of the Irish actor, poet and playwright William ('Bill') Francis Maher MacNevin (1886-1951).

* Mary Ann Vousden (1845-1920), a nurse who went to New Zealand to follow her profession and her calling.

* Ernest Vousden, a conductor and composer, in a career of more than forty years.

* Neil Vousden, economist, author of 'The Economics of Exhaustible Resources: A Theoretical Contribution' and 'The Economics of Trade Protection'.

* Dr. Karen H. Vousden, a leading expert in the field of cancer research, now at Glasgow University.

* Janet Vousden, psychology researcher into memory, language and speech at Warwick University.

* Wendy Vousden, Montreal-based writer and comedienne.

* Martin Vousden, author of 'The Illustrated Rules Of Golf' and 'With Friends Like These (Ryder Cup) : A Selective History Of The Ryder Cup'.

* Linda Vousden, author of 'Tonkinese Cats' (a cross between a Siamese and a Burmese).

Frequency of the name

From the index of the 1881 UK census produced by the Church of Latter Day Saints, there were 280 Vousdens recorded in that census. This gives a frequency of 1 in 92,235 or 0.00108% of the population.

According to a contemporary ONS database of surnames there are some 405 Vousdens in England, Wales and the Isle of Mann as of September 2002. This gives a frequency of 1 in 134,321 or 0.00074% of the population, making Vousden the 12,625th most common name in England and Wales.

Distribution of the name

In the 1881 census, 225 of the 280 Vousdens lived in the county of Kent. They were very strongly represented in a small cluster of parishes around and including Goudhurst on the Kent border with Sussex. Of the other 55, 29 were in Surrey, 15 in Sussex, 7 in London, 2 in Essex, and 1 each in Somerset and Staffordshire.

Data

* All references to Vousdens in 200 years of The Times (London) newspaper. They include court and military reports, news items, letters to the Editor, obituaries, advertisements, and so on. The index contains a name, date, type of article and brief description for each entry. I have started to put them online at: The Times

* All Vousden grants of probate and letters of administration from 1859 to 1972 in England and Wales are online at: Wills

* All Commonwealth Vousdens who died in the First and Second World wars, both civilians and military personnel, are online at: War Deaths

* Vousdens on Monumental Inscriptions in the churchyard of Goudhurst Church online at: Monumental Inscriptions - Goudhurst

* Numerous entries from UK Parish Registers, Census returns and civil records of births, marriages and deaths as well as pedigrees submitted by many Vousden researchers. Please contact me for further information (see below for contact details).

Links

The Vousden ONS web site is at: http://www.vousden.name

My Vousden V-BLOG is at http://vousden.blogspot.com/ or can be accessed from the main menu on the above web site.

There is a RootsWeb Surname Message Board at http://www.rootsweb.com/

Contact details

For further information, contact:

Mr Nigel Brown
21 Woodhouse Road,
Tettenhall Wood,
Wolverhampton
WV6 8JN
UNITED KINGDOM
E-mail:

This page last updated 8 March 2008.