If you have the surname Bonney, Branson, Brown, Davison, Foster, Johnson or Millward, the curator of Moot Hall in Elstow is hoping to find out if you could be a living descendant of John Bunyan.
Clive Arnold began researching the Bunyan family tree when he first became involved in Moot Hall, the 15th-century building associated with John Bunyan.
A writer and Puritan preacher, John Bunyan is most famous for his allegorical book The Pilgrim’s Progress, which he wrote while imprisoned in Bedford Gaol for public preaching. The Pilgrim’s Progress was first published in 1678, has been translated into over 200 languages and has never been out of print.
“I began researching the Bunyans, with the aim of producing a definitive family tree,” explained Clive, who is the curator at Moot Hall.
“My primary source was the Reverend Dr John Brown, who was pastor of the Bunyan Meeting church during the 1880s. He carried out extensive research and published his findings in his biography of John Bunyan.”
However, making sense of Brown’s data proved difficult, as his listings of descendants were not all in chronological order and, says Clive, “he tended to jump about a bit. Also, it often wasn’t always clear exactly which person Brown was talking about”.
This was not the only difficulty. Clive found that getting exact dates for every event and establishing all the family links proved almost impossible.
“Back in Bunyan’s day, and in those of his children and grandchildren, there were no censuses for me to refer to. [The first national census was not until 1801.]
“Also, there was no central register of births/baptisms, marriages and deaths/burials until 1837. Thus anyone researching families in the 17th century has to rely on any baptism, marriage and burial records kept in each parish – and even these were, by no means, a complete record.
“Plus, you have to already know in advance in which parish a birth, marriage or death took place. Marriage records especially can be almost impossible to trace – before 1653, marriages were not required to be entered into parish records and it was only in 1660, that this became established practice.”
In fact, when John Bunyan first married, marriage was not a ceremony conducted by an outsider but was primarily a contract between a man and a woman.
“To formalise that contract, all that was needed was someone to witness that contract,” said Clive.
“Thus marriages might take place with only three people knowing that it had even happened and marriages could take place almost anywhere – there are accounts of them taking place in prisons and brothels.”
All of this, says Clive, explains why we still do not know the name of John Bunyan’s first wife.
“We think that they married c1650 and that (as they named their first child Mary) her name may have been Mary.
“But we do not know her surname, nor who conducted or witnessed their marriage, nor where they were married, nor whether they had a ceremony in a church – for although marriages back then tended to be blessed in a church, this was not a legal requirement and Bunyan had not yet undergone his conversion to Christianity.”
Therefore, establishing exact dates for Bunyan’s ancestors and determining the links between them has proved difficult. The published family tree contains several estimated dates and presumed family links.
“After publishing the first edition of the Bunyan family tree, I soon had to produce a second, then a third edition, as more information gradually came to light,” said Clive.
“This process has continued and I have actually lost count of how many editions I have had to produce.”
After posting the tree on Elstow.weebly.com, Clive began receiving enquiries from people who thought their trees might link back to John Bunyan.
Some of their claims initially looked exciting because, if proved to be accurate, Clive would discover that Bunyan actually has living descendants.
“Sadly, every claim thus far has proved to be unfounded,” said Clive.
“Many are based on assumptions and/or on so-called ‘very old’ family Bibles – which were not around in Bunyan’s time, only becoming widely available in the mid-1800s.”
Various historians have gradually discovered more about one particular branch of Bunyan’s descendants – those stemming from JB’s daughter Sarah (by his second wife Elizabeth).
Sarah (born 1667) married a William Brown in November 1686. Her great-grandson, William Brown of Carlton, married a Mary Kenworthy and, between 1781 to 1795, produced five children.
The oldest of these – also (confusingly) called William, married and, until very recently, it was thought they had seven children. Thus it was this branch of Bunyan’s descendants that looked the most likely to have descendants living today.
Recently, some keen amateur family history researchers have uncovered a lot more information about the Browns and their descendants. Clive has now incorporated that data into the Bunyan family tree.
“From the Parish records at Carlton, we’ve discovered that William was married to a lady called Sarah Benbrook and they had not seven but ten children (poor woman!),” said Clive.
“Also, that William’s sister, Francis, had not just three, but five children, born in the first quarter of the 19th century. Plus, William’s second sister – Mary – also had four children during that quarter and at least three grandchildren – probably born around the middle of that century.”
So, these three siblings had a total of nineteen children and three grandchildren.
Some of those children went on to have children of their own, so we now have the names of some descendants of John Bunyan who were born in the early 20th century.
“Could one of these have descendants alive today?” asks Clive.
“If your family surname is Bonney, Branson, Brown, Davison, Foster, Johnson or Millward and your ancestors came from the areas of Bozeat, Carlton, Farndish, Guilseborough, Newton Blossomville, Stagsden or Turvey then do take a look at the January edition of the Bunyan family tree.
“You can find the tree in the Elstow History Archive as a downloadable file here.”
If one of your ancestors is on that tree, then Clive would love to hear from you. You can contact Clive Arnold by email at Moot.hall@bedford.gov.uk.
