Ancestry | washbourn

Early Family Ancestry

Washbourne - All the various spellings (Washburn, Washbourne, Washburne, Washbourn etc.) are consolidated as Washbourne. with no preference implied as to which spelling is more important or correct.

In earlier versions of this page there was a supposed family ancestry, commencing with an individual named Tancred the Viking from around 890AD from Normandy in France; his lineage was traced through 10 generations to Sir Roger de Washbourne of Stanford. This descendancy came from American author Mabel Thacher Rosemary Washburn who published Washburn Family Foundations in Normandy, England and America in 1953. Unfortunately it is replete with errors.

I have been persuaded that this lineage is based on faulty logic and incorrect information - it seems to be a fanciful wish to link possible but improbable relationships. Accordingly I have removed this line and commenced instead with Sir Roger (d. 1299) whose presence can be verified by Rev. James Davenport in his scholarly book The Washbourne Family (1907). Thanks to Angela Bristow for providing me with documentation

NB: That the Washbourne family in Davenport's book is the precursor line to Richard Washbourn's Wiltshire Branch of the family has yet to be convincingly documented.

The Washbourne pedigree should be amended: Urse d'Abitot is not in the pedigree and is not a progenitor of this line. Based on such documentary evidence as can be found, the line begins with one Godard - the use of surnames were not then in general use.

Godard - held Little Washbourne, prior to 1139.

Samson, son of Godard, held Little Washbourne in 1163.

William, son of Samson, held Little Washbourn in 1182.

William the Corpner of Worcestershire, held land associated with the Washbournes at Stanford, Worcs., prior to 1237/38, and it is suspected that he may have been holding the traditional lands at Little Washbourne.

William de Washbourne held land in Orleton and Stanford from 1240 until his death in 1255.

Sir Roger de Washbourne who lived in the 1200s and was Lord of Washbourne and Stanford. From 1255 he payed taxes and delat with land in Stanford and Little Washbourne. Washbourne in the southern part of Worcestershire includes two tiny villages known as Little Washbourne (in Worcestershire) and Great Washbourne (in Gloucestershire), the latter for all its name being the smaller of the two. Sir Roger was born about 1219 and died in 1299.

(His genealogy can be followed in detail in Rev. James Davenport’s book The Washbourn Family.) A summary of the family lines from Sir Roger de Washbourne to the present day can be found on the page 'Descendancy'.

Follow the family lines into the more modern times in the 'Descendancy' pages.