UPDATE FOR JULY
Welcome from the Wickenden Families Website.
We hope you and your families are still staying well during the pandemic which, unfortunately, seems likely to be with us for a while longer. We are pleased to describe some exciting developments this month.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT- The new page which was added to the Wickenden History section of he website last month has been completed, although anyone who has an interest in this kind of historical analysis is welcome to add to it or comment on it. Various documents that shed light on the prehistory and history of the Angles, the Wicken, the Hwicce, and the Wickendens are mentioned. A few examples include the Old English poem Beowulf, The Anglo Saxon Chronicles, the Domesday Book, and Pioneers (about the families that settled the Ohio Territory following the Civil War). Collectively, these documents provide a context within which the story of the Wickendens can be better understood. They are listed in five sections: I. The Origin of the Angles, II. The Anglo-Saxon Settlement of Britain, III. The Norman Conquest, IV. English History, and V. American History. The relevance of each event to the Wickendens is summarized in an underscored paragraph at the end of each section.
NEW PAGE ON PLACE-NAME TRACING THE WICKEN - The major concept that underlies the website section on Wickenden History is that all of us with a connection to the Wickenden family can trace our ancestry back to the members of the Wicken clan who established the Wicken den in medieval times in what is now the village of Cowden, Kent, England, and that the Wicken clan can, in turn, be traced back to the migration of the Angle tribe in prehistoric Europe. Evidence supporting this conjecture is scattered throughout the various pages of the Wickenden Families website, so this evidence is now being collected into one paper presented on this new page. This evidence, along with references to the academic literature on the toponymy (history of place-names) of geographical locations with names derived from the Wicken, will be organized chronologically into three sections: (1) Wicken settlements on the Continent, (2) Wicken settlements in Kent and (3) Wicken settlements in the Southern Midlands. Tracking the movement of Anglo-Saxon tribes through the analysis of place-names and refining that analysis through a study of tribal clans appear to be original contributions to a field that has formerly focused primarily on the names of individual locations and the history of whole tribes.
ADDITION TO THE WICKENDEN WIKITREE - Irma Rose Dunn has provided information about the ancestors of Jean (Dunn) Wickenden, daughter-in-law of Thomas H. and Dee Shuman Wickenden and Granddaughter-in-law of Thomas Rogers Wickenden. This information has been added to the Wickenden family tree created using WikiTree.com. This family tree has been linked to appropriate sections of the Wickenden Family website. It is free to join and is a collaborative site, so anyone with a connection to the Wickenden family is invited to join and to add information about their family.