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This is another chance to meet other Willingales, talk to our researchers Kim & Graham, and see the current Family tree which currently has over 2,800 hundred individuals on it. You will also have the chance to see some of  the other Willingale related information in our possession. Loughton also has a number of strong Willingale connections, such as Lopping Hall, The War Memorial and Baldwin's Hill (which overlooks Great Monk Wood) so their will be plenty for all to do. In nearby Chingford you also have the opportunity to see the Willingale Axe, which is held in Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge, which over looks Epping Forest.

St Johns Church is approximately 4 miles from Junction 26 on the M25

Steven Willingale - January 2008

Graham is researching marriages of female Willingales; recent research has been into Sarah Willingale who married Thomas Humphrey 1799, Mary Willingale who married Samuel Rand 1832 and Elizabeth Willingale (Keith's Great Great Grandmother) who married William Carter 1855.

We have recently discovered that the church marriage registers for St. John Loughton (1893 - 1963) have been deposited at the ERO so Graham is also currently bringing up to date the Loughton Willingales

We are also regularly cross referencing online records, such as Ancestry & Rootsweb, to see if additional Willingale information is being published.

Steven Willingale - January 2008  

December 2004 - Latest News

Another successful AGM was held at Willingale Village Hall in November, with 3 new families joining up and lots of familiar faces present.

The main family tree now contains 1785 names with a further 406 on the 'unconnected' tree.

Our plans for 2005 are very much dependant on Loughton Town Council, who are producing the plaque in memory of Thomas Willingale. Once this has been erected in St Johns Church, Loughton (were Thomas is buried), we are hoping to arrange for the 2005 AGM to be held in Lopping Hall, Loughton, hopefully in late summer, so everyone will have the chance to visit St Johns and view the plaque. As soon as we have more information on this we will let you all know.
 

September 2004 - Latest News

William Pince Publishers - The Willingale Family Chronicle

We have become aware that 'William Pince Publishers' are attempting to sell people 'The Willingale Family Chronicle' an alleged genealogical history of the Willingale family. THIS APPEARS TO BE A SCAM. We have considerably more information available and have researched further back in time than they claim to have gone! Don't be tempted to part with any money!

Blue Heritage Plaque

Loughton Town Council have finally agreed to erect a Heritage Plaque in memory of Thomas Willingale. The WFS will be contributing half the costs. This is most likely to be unveiled some time in 2005 although it seems there will be no public event associated with it. The WFS hope to arrange their 2005 AGM in Loughton so members can see the plaque, which is to be placed in St Johns Church, where Thomas is buried.

2004 AGM

We are at the early stages of arranging the 2004 AGM, which will be held on 13th November 2004 at Willingale Village Hall. Further details will be posted as they become available.
 

This years WFS meeting was held in St Mary's Church, Maldon, Essex. Maldon in general and St Mary's in particular have along association with the Willingale family.

Our two family trees were displayed at the meeting. Our main tree has over 1,500 names, all linked back to 'Father Willingale' in the 1500's. Our other tree contains almost 500 names and list the families we can't (yet) tie back into the main family line. The trees have grown considerably from the 600 or so names displayed on our tree at Willingale Village Hall in 2002.

Membership of the Willingale family Society currently stands at almost 40 members, and we now heave members in the UK, Canada, Australia, USA and New Zealand.

We are investigating lots of new leads arising from the Maldon meeting, including details of one Willingale who was incarcerated in the Tower of London. More details will hopefully appear in our next edition of the WFS Journal, The Lopping Times.

The Society is aiming to contribute towards a plaque in memory of Thomas Willingale, in conjunction with Loughton Town Council. Although Loughton Town Council are keen to displaying a plaque in St Johns Church, where Thomas is buried, they have exhausted their plaques budget for this year. We will keep you informed of developments in this area.

Steven Willingale December 2003

The first meeting was a great success with over 40 people attending the event at Willingale Village Hall, Willingale on the 7^th December 2002.

On display were two family trees, one contained over 500 names and was over 17ft long, the other more up to date tree (just printed a few hours before the meeting) had just under one thousand names. Unfortunately this tree was somewhat smaller and more difficult to read, the result of trying out a new printing firm and getting to grips with some new software. Everyone had great fun trying to locate themselves on the tree.

A tour of the two churches followed, kindly arranged by the Church Warden. Everyone who visited the church was invited to sign the visitors book. Following the tour there was a formal presentation by the WFS Committee.

This was opened by the Chairman, Keith Willingale, who gave some background on the formation of the society, what its aims are and sought comments from the audience. Some areas of research were suggested including Willingale religions, occupations and causes of death. We have now established a research register detailing our areas of research.

Two letters were read out to the audience. One was from 90 year old Albert Ernest Willingale, who encouraged the venture, and was only sorry that age and distance had prevented him from attending the meeting himself. Both writers said how pleased they were that they now knew about the wider Willingale family.

Graham Richards, our research coordinator gave a short talk on the research done by him and Kim Willingale in tracing back the Willingale line to the 1500s, helped mostly by the Willingales being mainly Essex based and most of the records being centrally located at the Essex Records centre. The family tree now stands at over 1,000 names and is continuing to grow.

Graham and Kim explained that the main thrust of research for the next year will be trying to link the ‘London Willingales’ into the main Maldon line. (The Willingales are shown to have originated in Maldon, but during the 1800s they began to move around the country more. Due to this migration there is a gap in our records of approximately two generations, which stops us linking the ‘London Willingales’ back to the main Maldon line. To close this gap it will mean reviewing the parish records of over 500 churches in the London area).

Steven Willingale then gave a short talk on the Website and its part in initially establishing contact between the WFS committee members and that it was the main focus for presenting our research.

Ken Willingale, on behalf of the audience, thanked the committee for their hard work in arranging the day’s presentation.

The rest of the day was taken up meeting new family members, discussing further areas of research and enrolling new members  into the Willingale Family Society.

Photo of Meeting

Linda and Andrew Jones of Ontario Canada
and
David Talmage of London England.

Linda is descended from Elizabeth Ann Willingale born 29th December 1852 in Southminster Essex England and the information provided by her husband Andrew enabled us to complete another direct line to the present and also provided them with the link to the rest of the Willingales.

David on the other hand is unfortunately only a half cousin as he is not directly descended from the Willingales. His Great Grandmother was Sarah Parish and David is descended from her first marriage to Thomas Ellison on 29th of March 1846 in Stepney, London. After Thomas’s death Sarah married William Willingale on the 2nd of September 1855 in Wanstead Essex. William was born in 1832 in Loughton Essex and was a son of John and Susannah Willingale. With the valuable information David has provided as a result of his own family history research we are able to extend our master tree beyond William and Sarah’s three children but, as yet, we do not have any direct lines to the present.

Our thanks to our two new contributors for contacting us with their information and let us hope that more relations come forward in the future with similar results. Also thanks go to Karen Blackwell for submitting the photographs of her Grandparents George and Adelaide Clark. Adelaide was the daughter of Elizabeth Mary Webb nee Willingale and the younger sister of my own Grandmother Lavinia.

We are currently processing information provided by two other cousins and hopefully this research will be posted on to the website on the next update.

Your main researchers, Christine Day, Kim Willingale, Steven Willingale, Linda Pattinson and myself are still busy beavering away at the Essex records Centre in Chelmsford and digging out more useful information regarding the family which we hope to publish in the future on the website for all to read.

Currently I am trawling through the Microfilms of the 1901, 1891 and 1871 Census Returns for Essex looking for Willingales and known desendents. This has produced a lot of useful information which once I have entered it into the computer it will be published on the website. Fortunately the 1851 and 1861 Essex Census returns have been surname indexed making the research a lot easier.

I started researching my late mother’s family around three years ago. As I mentioned above, her mother Lavinia, was the daughter of Elizabeth Mary Webb nee Willingale. It soon became apparent to me that the Willingales were quite unique in that they appeared to be a very close knit family. I soon established that the family basically originated from the Maldon area of Essex and that all the lines that I had traced at that time led back to just three sons of one family born in the late 1690’s and early 1700’s. The ancestral line then goes back to the mid 1500’s and a Thomas Willingale of Great Dunmow in Essex, though this does include a couple of assumptions, one around the 1640’s and the other around the late 1580’s.

It was at the beginning of this year (2002), when I had by now amassed around 250 related names on my Willingale tree, that I came across Steven’s own website. I contacted him and when we found we lived only ten miles apart we decided, along with his mother Linda, to meet up and exchange information. This then led to the idea that we, along with Keith Willingale, one of Steven’s contacts, to set up an exclusive Willingale website to further our research and make contact with our many cousins around the world. Combining our joint research had by then increased the number of related names on the tree to almost 400. One of Steven’s other contacts was Kim Willingale who had amassed as much information as myself. This was quite pleasing to me as it confirmed my own research and visa versa.

What you are reading now is the result of that meeting back in February and as mentioned earlier the tree is now currently up to 539 related names and still all descended from those three brothers back in Maldon.

In the future I will write about some of the interesting facts I have gathered about our ancestors. So until the next time goodbye and keep sending in your information.

Graham Richards, May 2002