There are quite a lot of entries in the Hunsdon Parish Registers to the Redington family. Spellings of the surname vary (quite substantially) but we have uncovered the following information about this family.
Our earliest record predates the registers. It appears that a John Redington left 20d in his will to the High Altar of Hunsdon Church in or around the 1530s.[1] In terms of value, we are probably looking at the equivalent of several days’ wages for a labourer.
Legacies of this magnitude and kind were quite conventional at the time, being made in lieu of tithes forgotten. Wills were often made when a person was dying, and mindful of the Roman Catholic teaching about Purgatory, it was common for people to do what they could to settle any outstanding obligations in their will. Such gifts were usually intended to pay for candles to burn before the High Altar.
This gift is of particular interest because it appears that around this time – when Henry VIII was breaking with Rome – gifts to churches started to become less frequent. It is suggested that Hunsdon was a community which began adopting Protestant ideas early and quickly. So why did John Redington leave this particular legacy when many of his contemporaries did not?
We don’t know. He may have been a devout Catholic, or he may have just following the dying conventions of the day. What we do know is that a century or so later, Hunsdon’s Redingtons ended up travelling to the New World.
We were first alerted to this by receiving enquiries from Americans who had been tracing their family lines and who had discovered possible connections to Hunsdon. We also found a clue in the parish registers. There are lots of Redingtons listed in the earliest registers, then the name just vanishes. In the middle of the 17th century, just when many Puritan families were departing for a land of liberty, the Redington name stops appearing in the registers.
We’ve tried to reconstruct the Redington family tree from the records we have and from other online information. From our own records, we can’t be certain about the relation between the Thomas married in Hunsdon Church in 1578 (to Johan Burnoppe) and the Thomas baptised in Hunsdon Church in 1583, but it is highly likely (and other online records[2] suggest) they are father and son. (We will continue to add detail as it becomes clearer.)
We know (not from our records) that Thomas (Jr) married Hannah Perry in Sawbridgeworth in 1609 and that all their children were baptised in Hunsdon. Our registers certainly record lots of Redington baptisms. Then, at some point between 1631 and 1634, Thomas moved with his family – not to America, but to High Laver in Essex. This all suggests which children are theirs: Hannah, born in 1612; Thomas, born in 1614; Abraham, born in 1617; John, born in 1619; and Isaac, born in 1631. Other records[3] suggest another two sons: Benjamin who does not appear in our records, unless he is the “Benjamin Runnington sonn of Thomas Runnington & Ann his wife” (baptised 20th January 1621/2); and Daniel who is also not in our records, unless he is the “Daniel Ruddington son of Thomas Ruddington” (baptised 16th September 1624).
Thomas’ wife, Hannah, died and he remarried (in 1636). It is known from Fiske’s genealogical studies that his sons, Abraham (Reddyngton in our register!) and John (Reddington), travelled to Massachusetts and made new lives for themselves there, with families of their own.
Here’s what we have concluded so far. (Solid lines are confirmed. Dashed lines are likely. Dotted lines are possible.) Watch this space for updates!
Anyone who can trace their family tree back as far as Abraham or John can be assured that their ancestor Thomas was baptised in Hunsdon Church. The first Thomas Reddington in this family tree (married to Johan Burnoppe) was a witness to a will made in 1585 by John Eliot, uncle of Bennet Eliot (father of John Eliot, “Apostle to the Indians” baptised in our sister church in Widford in 1604, click here for information).
[1] Hunsdon and Widford, p16
[2] Wiki Tree https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Reddington-179 accessed 22nd October 2026
[3] Wiki Tree https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Reddington-179 accessed 22nd October 2026