The Renowden Family One Name Study

Database updated 14 April 2006

Introduction

This one name study is being researched by myself, Rick Parsons (GOONS #3605), in conjunction with Philip A. Renowden, the registered Guild of One Name Studies researcher (Registered number 1137). We would be very interested to hear from you if you have any current or historical connection to the family or have a general interest in what we are doing. Maybe we can link you to unknown or distant cousins. A lot of the material we have available is now online and is growing daily. We meet the Guild requirements having extracted all known Births, Marriages and Deaths from the Civil Registration indexes, all known Baptisms, Marriages and Burials from parish registers, all known Wills and Monumental (Tombstone) Inscriptions. That accounts for the raw data but we have done considerable work linking this together into family trees and have done a certain amount of research into particular family circumstances and lifestyles.

If you would like to contact us, please e-mail or write to me at

18, Brighton Road, Redland, Bristol BS6 6NT, England. Tel: (+44) 117 974 1288.

Philip can be contacted at

41, Lakeside Drive, Norton Canes, Cannock, Staffs, WS11 9RH, England. Tel: (+44) 1543 279611.

Origins

References can be found to a family “de Trenode” in Cornwall England from the C12^th. Whether this is the actual origin of the RENOWDEN family we are not sure but certainly by the C15^th the RENODEN name can be found in Bodmin and Penwith in Cornwall. The priest in the parish of Mylor was John RENAWDEN in 1452 and there are records of two monks ordained about this time. The Bodmin branch , sometimes spelled RENORDEN, seems to die out by the end of the C17^th but the families that originated in West Penwith continue to thrive today with a strong group around Penzance. One branch in St. Hilary began to experiment with the spelling of the name inventing the TRENOWDEN variation early in the C19^th. It was about this time when the bulk of the Cornish adopted the RENOWDEN spelling.

The great migration

In common with many families, when the mines started to decline in the mid C19^th, our family began to disperse to other parts of the world, often where new mining communities were springing up. The most prolific of these resulted from a single family emigrating to South Australia where they are still going strong under the name TRENORDEN . Many thanks to Christine Trenorden, Judy Elliott and Barry Wilson for their untiring work on this branch.

Mary Parsons’ branch (née Renowden) went to mid Wales for the Carmarthenshire lead mines and, apart from a family that went onward to New York State and Pennsylvania, this branch will be extinct by the next generation.

Philip’s branch went to the South Wales coal fields and is still going strong scattered about England and Wales, Australia, USA and Switzerland. Other branches have been traced to New Zealand , Michigan, Arizona, Yorkshire and possibly South Africa. The great news is that many of these big branches, including Mary’s and Phillip’s, have now been linked up stemming from one family in Zennor which is linked to another one via his wife (Jane OSBORN) which takes us back to the end of the C16^th.

Red Herrings

We think that the RENODIN family in New York State and the RENAUDIN family in Stoke on Trent, England are unrelated, probably originating in France—perhaps there is a pre-conquest link but we are not anticipating a break through in this area.

Other Material of interest

Rhosneigr in the Second World War from “An Anglesey Anthology” by Ray Renowden, 1997 Unpublished.

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Selected Site Credits

These are some of the groups and sites that have really helped with this project.

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