Wilsden One-Name Study

(Click on picture to enlarge) Brian Victor Wilsden.

Wilsden
One-Name Study

Topics

About the Wilsden One-Name Study
Variants
Origin of the surname
Data
Links

About the Wilsden One-Name Study

I became interested in my family history when my father died in 1998. When I was sorting though his effects I came across a box containing hand written family trees, letters from all his known relatives past and present, listing what they knew of their side of the family. I put this information onto a datbase and I was hooked. I was living at the time in Long Hanborough in Oxfordshire and discovered that by chance I was living in the centre of the largest concentration of Wilsdens in the UK. I started to look for a connection to my Kent branch of the family name and this in turn led to the One Name study.

Variants

There are many variants of the Wilsden name. These include Wilsdan, Wilsden, Wilsdin, Wilsdon, Willsdan, Willsden, Willsdon, Willesden, Willesdon and I suspect Wyliston.

Origin of the surname

This most interesting surname, of Anglo-Saxon origin, is a variant form of 'Wilsden', a locational name from Wilsden, near Bradford in Yorkshire. This place name is composed of the Olde English pre 7th Century personal name 'Wilsige' and 'denu', the Olde English word for valley, hence 'the valley of Wilsige's people'. It was recorded as 'Wilsedene' in the Domesday Book of 1086 and as 'Wulsingdene', circa 1200, in the Yorkshire Charters. The surname itself first appears relatively late in the mid 17th Century (see below). The following entries appear in the London Church Registers: Martha, daughter of John Wilsden, who was christened at St. Luke's, Chelsea on November 1st 1696, and John, son of Edward and Mary Willsdon, christened on April 28th 1745 at St. Luke's, Old Street, Finsbury. The following marriages appear in the Oxfordshire Church Registers: Robert Wilsden to Alice Bew in 1643 at Wootton, and Mary Wilsdon to Jeremiah Leper in 1675 at Chesterton. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Radulphus Wilsden which was dated November 14th 1642, marriage to Elizabeth Lister, at 'St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, London', during the reign of King Charles 1st, known as 'The Martyr', 1625 - 1649. 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.

Data

My records contain:

2976 Birth/Baptismal Records - 1698 Marriage Records - 2076 Burial Records - Records from the 1841 to 1891 Census - Origins of the surname - A few Wills and Letters of Administration. This information is available on my website given below.

Links

http://www.kiwibrits.co.nz/WilsdenOneName/

This page last updated 25 February 2008.