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If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well dance with it.

                                                                                              George Bernard Shaw

This family tree began as an examination of my own genealogical origins. It has become a table encompassing almost 5,000 people connected through blood or marriage. 

Cousins live in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France and Germany. Places of birth include such interesting locales as Hawaii, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Texas, the Czech Republic, Chile and Easter Island. We walk all paths in life. We occupy high, low and middle rungs on the socio-economic ladder.

My Hunt ancestors lived for centuries as villagers in and around East Hendred, Oxfordshire in the heart of Saxon England. Click on East Hendred and the Hunt Family to read the full story.  Does the Hunt family really have a link to George Washington? Read all about it. Click on The Martha Washington Connection. Another family line, the Carters, stems from the Suffolk/Cambridgeshire horse-racing country.

My mother was a member of the Fludgate family. This family appears to have origins in the 13th century England where a putative ancestor earned his unusual surname from operating a flood gate on the Thames. So why do some members claim Irish ancestry? For the full story click on: A Tale of Two Cities: The Fludgate family of London and Dublin.

I owe great debts to Dave Fleming of Dublin and the former Diana Ward-McQuaid, mother of my sons, for the McQuaid family information and the connection to John Charles McQuaid, archbishop of Dublin and primate of Ireland; to Suzi Plooster of Boulder, Colo., for the Plooster line; To John Redrupp of Kitzbuhl, Austria for the Redrupp information; to Mike Clark for details of his Fludgate/Floodgate ancestors; to the indefatigable Arthur Floodgate of Toronto for his splendid researches into the primal origins of the Fludgate/Fladgate/Floodgate clan; and to Phil Fludgate, a brave un-indicted co-conspirator.

                                                                                                                                   -------- Bernard Hunt 

This 300-year-old cottage in East Hendred carries a sign saying Hunt's Farm. My Hunt line was rooted in East Hendred and nearby villages until my grandfather wandered away as a young man more than a century ago. To my knowledge, only one person born a Hunt was resident in East Hendred until recent years.

The Roman Catholic church of St. Mary in East Hendred. This church dates only from 1865, post emancipation in England. But Catholicism in East Hendred is strongly rooted. The area was a hotbed for generations of so-called recusant Catholics, believers who had to lie low in the centuries of Protestant persecution. Some of my Hunt kin are buried in this village churchyard. The Hunt Window commemorating cousin Cecilia Hunt, a nun, is one of the church's highlights..

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This material created and maintained by Bernard Hunt. Updated Oct. 3, 2013

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