The ELDRED Family Genealogy

The ELDRED Family

History of the Eldred Family

The Eldred Family is a very ancient English Family, and one of only a few English Families that can trace their ancestry back to the early Saxon settlers from the European mainland. Although today members of the Family are found in England, America, Canada, the West Indies, South Africa and Australia, records of the family reach for more than 12 centuries back into the past. Numbers of Eldreds are named in the Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror, compiled in 1086 A.D., and others are named in records here and there during the following centuries, but the oldest record that can be authentically connected to living members of the Family, is the death record of one John Eldred, of Corby, Lincolnshire, England.

The will of John Eldred was written in Latin and is filed at Bury St. Edmonds. It was dated 17 Jan 1489 and was proven April 9, 1489. John's parentage is unknown and details concerning his life are limited to data extracted from his will. It seems likely that the elderly John was living with one of his children at the time of his death. They had moved from Corby to Knettishall, a little hamlet in the very northwest corner of Suffolk County, England, a distance of some 60 miles, which was a substantial trek in those days. The reason for the move is unknown. John's will gives his age as 'well past the year of man by the roods of Books'. This means that he was more than 70 and would place his birth sometime before 1419. Four sons and two daughters are named in the will, but not a wife, whose name is unknown. She had probably died earlier.

Some of his grandchildren lived in New Buckenham, Norfolk. Later generations lived in Ipswich, Norfolk, and still later generations lived in London. My own family descends from Samuel Eldred, born 1620, one of the three original immigrants to the New World.

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Database owned by Carrie E. Bodensteiner
Modified 8 January 2001.