I’ve always wondered about my strange surname and when my daughter was born I realised that I’d better have some answers when her questions come in!
Over the last two years I’ve researched some amazing stories and created mountains of data and documents that are going a long way to explaining who came before us and how they lived.
The first thing to note is that I’m now very certain that Brunker, Brunkard and Brouncker are the same name. The confusions of standardising spellings and changes of religions have solidified the spelling as though they are three distinct families. They’re really not and I’ll develop thesis over the coming months.
Our family is a story of Ireland and Britain and how those countries have painfully interacted. It’s the story of the United States of America and how emigrant Irish make up such a huge part of that country. It’s the story of hardship in famines, penal laws and ideological struggles. It’s even the story of the birth of modernity and science.
My work is ongoing and is organised into databases. When I feel I have sufficient information on a family branch I’ll write that story as a narrative. In the meantime I want to share that data for other researchers. Here’s the sell. I’ve spent a lot of time and money collating it so if you find it useful then please help my work with a contribution using the strategically placed paypal button below.
Links to the various trees follow. This is the page to bookmark as the software that generates these pages changes the links when I update the research. Each tree features a lot of rich media.
Finally, if you are a researcher and you would like to challenge my work I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me through the contact page here.
The most famous line of this family are the Brounckers of Melksham but I’ll start with this family as they have some interesting connections with Ireland plus I’m in touch with one of them! (Hi Gordon!)
The common first names are Richard, Thomas and John, much like the Irish Brunker and Brunkard clans. They owned property in Dublin and appear to be the only extant family that use the 17th century spelling of Brouncker.
I’ve documented this family up until the end of the 19th century with a special focus on the 18th century and their Dublin involvement.
There is no known connection between them and the Irish lines presently.
