History

In 1837, the law changed in England and Wales so that birth,marriage and death records were kept by the General Register Office (GRO). Prior to that, records were kept in local Parish Registers, and often contained relatively little information, for example, ‘John Smith married his wife’. If records are examined from the 1500’s and 1600’s, the writing is often difficult to decipher and names misspelt.  This means that firstly finding old records can be a challenge, and secondly they may not always be completely accurate.

In researching the early records, we have found a number of variant spellings. For example, there are 9 records of Hawgud from the 1500’s in the same location as records for Hawgoods. There are also records of Allgood, Hallgood, Hagood, Hawgoode, and Heagood. There are records of Hawgoods in Allgood family trees and vice versa. We have also found through scientific testing that some Haygoods today are matched almost identically to Hawgood DNA. Further, the name Hagood appears in numerous other records, particularly in the USA, although it could simply be that a mistranscribed version of Hawgood coincidentally matched another surname. Only ancestral marker DNA testing will resolve this conundrum.

Some early records were written in a Latin equivalent as well as being misspelt - for example - Johannis Hawgud and Nicholaus Hawgud in the Redbourn Herts area in the 1500’s. In fact the 1500’s are the earliest years of Hawgood records, only in two locations - Redbourn, Herts and Church Brampton. The Hawgood’s from Herts appeared to be large landowners and retained the land in the family for some 200 years. Whilst the Church Brampton connection can be traced to the modern day, the Herts connection appeared to dry up in the 1700’s. One family that exists that has no modern day descendents are the Rutland Hawgoods, originally traced back to Walter Hawgood born 1660 in London. We cannot trace any living descendents - if you are from this line, please contact us

Otherwise, from extensive research and DNA analysis, all Hawgoods of today can be connected to two of sons of John Hawgood born 1663 in Church Brampton.

1) William b 1704 in Northants, whose son Thomas born 1731, had three sons - John b 1766, Samuel b 1769 and Thomas b 1763. Samuel moved to London living in the Southwark and Lambeth areas whilst Thomas lived in Daventry, and we believe his descendents are still there. Around the latter half of the 19th century Samuel’s children still lived in London but then spread out to Brisbane as well as Brighton, Croydon and Devon/Cornwall. The Brisbane connection is now quite large and started when Samuel’s grandson also called Samuel, who was born in 1835, emigrated to Australis in 1875, arriving on the Alexandrina.  We cannot find any records for the descendents of John b 1766.

2) Thomas b 1706 in Badby, Northants, whose grandson John b 1769 had three sons, John 1800, Obadiah 1811, and Thomas 1818, who all had families. Thomas b 1706 generated fewer descendants - about ¼ of the number of William. They remained primarily in the Northants area, in Brington, Daventry and Brixworth. Some moved to Sheffield and some further, ending up in Perth, Australia.

But to add a twist, a family of modern day Allgoods are also descended from the same Church Brampton Hawgoods. This is through the uncle of John Hawgood of 1663, being Robert Hawgood who was born in 1621. The name was changed to Allgood in the early 1700’s. These Allgoods are unrelated to the rest of the Allgoods many of whom were based in Cambridgeshire, and who have a different genetic descendency.