Chapter 1: Origin of the Winder Family
When following the male genealogy line from son to father to grandfather, and so forth, eventually you reach a period of the Middle Ages where records become spotty and names of average people were not recorded. Yet, because of modern scientific breakthroughs in the field of DNA research, we can map out where the fathers of the Winder family came from. The people of the world with the last name “Winder” come from a variety of places, but our family comes from the Winders of south eastern England in the counties of Kent and Sussex. But thanks to DNA research, we can see where our forefathers come from even deeper in the mists of antiquity!
Winder DNA Analysis
Everyone has in their body DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid), which provides genetic instructions to your body about how it should be—whether to have brown hair or blonde, to be tall or short, or whether you can curl your tongue or not, for example. Males have a Y chromosome in their DNA (or Y-DNA) that is passed down from father to son, just like a last name. Their Y-DNA has a unique signature made up of markers in unique positions (called alleles) that rarely change over hundreds of years. Because of this, a Y-DNA test can tell you where your father’s fathers came from.
Here are my Y-DNA results, which would be the same Y-DNA signature that my grandpa Ned Winder has, John Rex Winder has, and other paternal ancestors back for ages:
For example, our most common recent ancestor with Genghis Khan appears to be very distant, and we are far more closely related to Celtic notables. You can see that our paternal ancestors were not Anglo-Saxons and that we are not closely related at all with the Winder families of northern England.
A perfect match is found with the Brythonic Celt sample, although based on only six key markers. Yet their closely related cousins, the Gaelic Celts (including the ancient Irish nobles), have strong matches when looking at 25 markers. This seems to validate the Celtic heritage.
Our Brythonic Celtic Heritage
The Celts (from the Greek word Keltoid) are first found in the central European valleys of what is now southern Germany and Austria about 800 BC. They expanded throughout Europe and by about 200 BC had reached the southern shores of the island of Britain. Our Winder forefathers arrived to the island they would call home for the next two-thousand years. These Celts in Britain were called Brythons or Britons. By 100 BC the Gaelic Celts began to diverge genetically from the Brythonic Celts. The Gaelic Celts form the basic stock of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. DNA tells us that the direct Winder forefathers were among the Brythonic Celts who remained in Britain, not their Gaelic cousins.
The Brythonic Celts were impacted somewhat when Julius Caesar led a Roman army into southern Britain in 55 BC, but were dramatically affected when the Romans conquered the whole of what would become England and Wales in 43 AD. The Romans would rule Britannia, as they called it, until they abandoned it around 410 AD. Romans in Britannia often intermarried with the native Britons, and the ancestors of the Winders certainly picked up some Roman blood in those centuries.
Many Celts were driven west into Wales and Cornwall (southwest Britain), and in 577 a Saxon victory at the Battle of Deorham divided these two Brythonic strongholds. Culturally, the Brythonic Celts survived in Wales, Cornwall, and in Brittany in northwest France (where some had migrated in the 400s). Even today some of their ancient language survives in the dialects of Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish, and Breton.
But according to DNA studies, the Anglo-Saxons did not wipe out the Romano-British natives in all parts of England, especially in the south where our Winder ancestors are eventually identified. Rather, over the course of six centuries, they conquered the native Brythonic people and imposed their Germanic culture and language upon them.
DNA shows that the direct son-to-father line of Winder ancestors were among the Brythonic Celts—the people who have been in Britain for two-thousand years, and who fought with (and then merged with) invading Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and then Normans. |
Around 600, Anglo-Saxon England was Christianized as missionaries arrived from Ireland and Rome. In 825, the Kingdom of Sussex began to combine with neighboring kingdoms, eventually becoming the Kingdom of England. Viking raids resulted in Danish kings ruling England on and off beginning in 1013. And so our Winder forefathers continued from generation to generation in early medieval Britain amidst the struggles and turmoil of their place and times.
This is an excerpt from the Bayeux Tapestry, a 224-foot-long cloth depicting the successful conquest of England by William the Conqueror of Normandy in 1066. The earliest Winder families have been found near where the famed Battle of Hastings took place—and DNA analysis shows that they were already in England at the time of the famous invasion. |
The Beginning of Last Names
In England, people did not start using last names until the 1200s, and nearly all families had last names by 1400. When William the Conqueror surveyed much of England in compiling his Domesday Book in 1086, we don’t see last names being used. But when King Edward I returned from the Crusades in 1274 he set out to survey the kingdom for judicial and taxation purposes, and we begin to see some last names appear. Edward’s survey looked at each hundred (or borough) and is known as the “Hundred Rolls”.
In the Hundred Roll for Sussex, in the Rape (or county subdivision) of Hastings, in the Hundred of Foxearle (sometimes spelled Foxherle), we learn of the Sheriff, Matthew of Hastings, who in 1274 successfully appealed for the release from jail a group of six innocent men, including William de la Wynde and his son John.[ii] William’s French name literally means “William of the Wynde”, meaning their family likely lived at the wind, or bend in the road or river. The French influence on the English language was great during the first couple of centuries after William the Conqueror led his armies from Normandy, France into England.
Most important to us, however, is we meet Richard atte Wynde and Robert atte Wynde, possible relatives or descendants of William de la Wynde or John de la Wynde mentioned in 1274 in a location just nine miles down the road.
When King Edward I, shown here, returned from fighting in the Crusades in 1274 he ordered a survey done of his kingdom. Called the “Hundred Rolls”, this census contains the first record of anyone with the name “Winder” when it mentioned William de la Wynde and his son John, who had an early form of the name “Winder”. |
This map shows where the ancient county of Sussex was in southern England. Our earliest Winder ancestors are found in Sussex in the Middle Ages. |
In 1537, the Church of England required parishes to begin keeping church registers to record baptisms, marriages, and burials. Because of this, we can trace the Winder family son-to-father back to the early 1500s. However, before 1537 the records are spotty, and it has been impossible to connect the generations. That said, there are dozens of likely family members appearing in the few records we have from the Middle Ages bearing the names of de la Wynde, atte Wynde, Wynde, Wyndere, Wynder, and Winder. These all lived within a dozen miles or so of each other in Sussex, and the common first names seen in our post-1537 family history appear very frequently (William, John, Thomas, Richard, etc.).
This typical flint cottage in Sussex was built in the late 1200s and had an open hearth in the main room and an oven in the inner room. The early de la Wynde and atte Wynde families would have lived in similar humble cottages. |
1274- John de la Wynde: son of William de la Wynde and also freed from jail by Matthew of Hastings, the Sheriff.[v]
1296- Robert atte Wynde: Living in the village of Wilting, now part of Crowhurst six miles north of Hastings.[vi]
1296, 1327, 1332-Richard atte Wynde: Living in Wilting and likely son of Robert atte Wynde.[vii]
1340- John Wyndere: associated with Winder’s Wood in Whatlington, five miles north of Wilting.[viii]
1400- Thomas Wynder: living in Hastings and possessing at least one servant.[ix]
1417- William Wyndere: associated with the Winder Farm in Peasmarsh, seven miles from Whatlington.[x]
I will bear faith to our sovereign the King of England and the commonalty and the franchise and the usages of the same rightfully will maintain and the common profit will keep, and to rich and poor will do right so far as I can, so help me God and the Saints.[xii]
1441- William Wynder: from Hastings, elected that year to be bailiff to Yarmouth for the Herring Fair.[xiii] Likely a son or a brother to Bailiff Thomas Wynder of 1439.
1467, 1483- Richard Wynde: Elected one of three deputies to Mayor Babylon Gramforde of Rye (twelve miles from Hastings), first on April 7, 1467 and repeatedly for decades, with his last election in 1483.[xiv]
1472- John Wynder: Mentioned in Robertsbridge (ten miles north of Hastings) as one of fifteen jurors in the March 1472 murder trial of William Woller.[xv]
1477, 1479- William Wynder: from Hastings, elected town deputy both those years.[xvi] Possibly same as Bailiff William Wynder of 1441, but certainly a relative.
1493- Richard and Agnes Winder: mentioned in the town of Lewes (29 miles west of Hastings).[xvii]
Several early Wynders in the 1400s were elected as bailiffs and sailed north to Yarmouth during the great Herring Fair each fall to secure the fishing rights of the towns along the Kent and Sussex coast called the Cinque Ports. This ship flies the arms of the Cinque Ports as it carries their bailiff to Yarmouth. |
1527- Thomas Wynder: He and two others were asked by the mayor of Rye to provide evidence in the case of Richard Ingram, who was accused of speaking “evyll and obprobryus” words against the local government.[xviii]
[i] My Y-DNA test results are kit# 48775 found at: http://www.familytreedna.com/public/Winder/default.aspx?vgroup=Winder&vgroup=Winder&vgroup=Winder&vgroup=Winder§ion=yresults
[ii] A copy of The Hundred Roll for Sussex is found at the LDS Church Genealogical Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.
[iii] The complete Sussex Subsidy was online as of 27 March 2011 at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=513.
[iv] Hundred Rolls of Sussex, Rape of Hastings, Hundred of Foxearle.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Sussex Subsidy, online as of 27 March 2011 at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=513.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] A. Mower and F.M. Stenton, The Place Names of Sussex, (Cambridge: University Press, 1930), 501.
[ix] Sussex Public Record Office, 179/235/2 and p. 9.
[x] A. Mower and F.M. Stenton, The Place Names of Sussex, (Cambridge: University Press, 1930), 533.
[xi] See F. Hull, Calendar of the White and Black Books of the Cinque Ports (1966) and Ronald and Frank Jessup, The Cinque Ports, (London: B.T. Batsford, Ltd., 1952), 21.
[xii] J. Manwaring Baines, Historic Hastings (St. Leonard’s-on-Sea, East Sussex: Cinque Ports Press Ltd., 1986), 25-26.
[xiii] F. Hull, Calendar of the White and Black Books of the Cinque Ports (1966).
[xiv] F. Hull, Calendar of the White and Black Books of the Cinque Ports (1966), 55, 60, 68, 74, 75, 87.
[xv] Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. 95, p. 57.
[xvi] F. Hull, Calendar of the White and Black Books of the Cinque Ports (1966).
[xvii] Sussex Notes and Queries, vol. 8, p. 320.
[xviii] F. Hull, Calendar of the White and Black Books of the Cinque Ports (1966), 55, 60, 68, 74, 75, 87.
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