Wickenden Name Study

Profile managers: One Name Studies WikiTree [send private message] and Thomas Wickenden [send private message]

How to Participate

Please contact the Study's coordinator Thomas Wickenden or post a comment at the foot of the page. If you have any questions, just ask. Thanks!

Goals

This is a One Name Study to collect together in one place everything about the Wickendens and the Wickenden surname as well as variants in the spelling of that name. The hope is that other researchers like you will join our study to help make it a valuable reference point for people studying lines that cross or intersect.

One goal is to add as many Wickendens as possible (together with sources) to the Wickenden WikiTree (at Wikitree.com).

Another goal of the project is to demonstrate that all living Wickendens have descended from the original Wicken family who established a den in the Weald of Kent sometime in the 7th century. Five academic papers have been drafted and links have been added to the Wickenden Families Website (see below) to explain the origin of the name Wicken, a clan of Angles, and to track the migration of the clan on the Continent, across the Channel and through Kent, and across southern Britain to the Western Midlands. There the pronunciation and spelling of the name changed and was recorded in written Old English as Hwicce. The territory they settled, together with Post-Roman Britons, West Saxons and other Angles, was called the Kingdom of Hwicce, until it was absorbed into Mercia. The generic title of the papers is "Place-Name Tracing the Wicken", and the subtitles are as follows: Paper #1: The Origin of an Anglian clan on the Continent, Paper #2: Arrival and Settlement on Post-Roman Thanet Paper #3: From the Isle of Thanet to the Weald of Kent Paper #4: Migrations and Settlements of an Anglian Clan across the Midlands of Britain Paper #5: How an unknown Anglian Clan established the Kingdom of Hwicce.

A final goal is to encourage Wickendens to visit the Wickenden Families Website (www.thomas-r-wickenden-families.com), subscribe to get updates, and participate in building the site by contributing pictures, stories and other information about themselves and the history of Wickendens around the world.

Task List

1. If you are a member of WikiTree, please check your profile and that of your family and add any information you might have (noting its source).

2. If you are not yet a member, please join (it's free!) and add information that is not there about you and your family.

3. If you or other Wickendens have family trees on other platforms (Ancestry, etc.), please export a GEDCOM (or ask them to do so) and use the GEDCompare function to merge and add Wickendens to our WikiTree. You can also send the GEDCOM file to me as manager of this study, and I will add the Wickendens to our WikiTree.

4. Please add to the Pathways to (and from) Cowden page in the Wickenden History section of the Wickenden Website as many verified Wickenden lines as possible that start with a Wickenden living anywhere in the world and end with a Wickenden family living in Cowden, Kent.

5. Please consider having your DNA analyzed by participating in the 23&me study or one of the other platforms to which you can send in your saliva and have it analyzed and compared to your relatives and ancestors.

OTHER TASKS:

• What is the current state of the research? - Check the website for research results and a research forum: [1]
• What are you and other members working on: At the moment we're adding Wickendens to the Wikitree.
• What remains to be done? Everything - specifically completing and cleaning up the profiles, and linking family lines to the oldest common ancestors - the progenitors.

Also to be considered:

Are there orphaned profiles that need improvement? Are there unsourced profiles with the surname? Are there unconnected profiles with the surname? Ideas for what else to include:

Research Notes section. Are there any weak links that need more sources? Post your direct family line as a family unit and invite others to do the same. The goal is to find a link between family units using traditional and/or DNA research; We need to figure out how to use DNA. There appear to be only one or two Wickendens who have participated in DNA trees.

Resources section. Are there any published books based on your surname with possible links? Historical societies in your geographical area of study that hold files on your surname? Family Historical Societies? Websites that are dedicated to your surname? Links for further research? Pictures. Upload them through the link in the right column. Surname Origins and/or Surname Meaning section. DNA section. See the information on DNA below. Famous people. Are there celebrities or historical figures with the surname? Add them to your study and encourage members to post a comment about their connections to famous people with the name. You might also create and link separate free-space pages for things like:

Maps and migratory paths. Family homesteads. Family bibles or heirlooms. Reunions.