The surname of Willingale is very uniquely Essex and is supposed to have originated in an area of the County known as Willingale, a village comprising of the which two hamlets of Willingale Doe and Willingale Spain situated seven miles due west of Chelmsford, the County Town.

It is said that an Anglo Saxon pioneer called Willa settled here and that he and his family were called "Willa's Gang". This became corrupted over time to Willinsgale (still seen in some records) and more commonly to Willingale.

As there are virtually know church records prior to 1538 when Thomas Cromwell ordered the churches to establish and maintain records of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, it is impossible to trace the early ancestry of the Willingales.

The earliest reference i have found so far is at Great Dunmow, a town ten miles north of the village of Willingale and refers to the birth of Margaret Willingale in 1543. I am going to assume that this is the same Margaret who married Thomas Wood on the 20th November 1564. Another reference found at Great Dunmow is of the marriage in 1563 of Thomas Willingale and Ellen Milborn. For the purposes of entering this information into the tree I am going to assume that Margaret was the sister of Thomas.

Living around the same time another family, that of Georgius Willingale was found at Bocking, just outside Braintree, eight miles east of Great Dunmow. Again for the purposes of entering into the tree I am going to assume that Georgius was the brother of Thomas.

Finally I found two more references to the early Willingales, the first in 1561, the marriage of Jane Willingale to Thomas Porter at Maldon, fifteen miles east of the village of Willingale and the other in 1559 at Heybridge, just outside Maldon, of the marriage of Margaret Willingale to John Arthur. This is interesting in that at the moment there appears to be no further reference to the Willingales in the Maldon area until 1662, around a hundred years later. Again for the purposes of entering this information onto the tree I am going to assume that Margaret and Jane are sisters.

So for the time being I am going to assume that Father Willingale of Willingale had two sons. the first son married and settled in Great Dunmow he had three children Thomas, Margaret and Georgius. The second son went to Maldon and had two daughters Margaret and Jane.