The Wiltshire Washbourns of New Zealand

 

Earlier Generations of the family in New Zealand believed that they were probably descendants of the old English Washbourne family from Worcestershire, documented in the scholarly book The Washbourne Family by James Davenport, published by Methuen in 1906, about the Washbourne family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford in the county of Worcestershire.  The first member of the line is Sir Roger de Washborn in 1259.  Almost exactly 500 years later, Ernle Washbourn Esq. died in 1743 without male heirs, and the lands of Washbourne in Worcestershire passed out of the hands of Washbournes and the main male line of the family came to an end.

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There were however three well-established cadet branches of the Washbourn(e) family :

• A Bengeworth Branch which hived off a few miles only, near Evesham, in the 1500s, and fathered a thriving American branch (who nowadays spell their surname 'Washburn').

• A London Branch which left the main line about 1600.

• A Gloucestershire Branch which broke away one generation later (and has descendants in and around the city of Gloucester today.  Some emigrated to Canterbury in 1850 and there are descendants still living in and around Christchurch today.

There was also another branch, named as such and documented by Richard Washbourn in his essay in 1961 :

• A Wiltshire Branch whose descent from the main male line has not been established.  It is from this branch that the New Zealand Washbourns arise.

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However  .... the advent of DNA science in the 1990s has suggested that there are two main genetic groups within the Washbourn(e)s and that the Wiltshire Branch members are genetically distinct, and therefore not closely related to others carrying the surname.  See the page on Genetic Ancestry for more detail. 

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