Gumbleton Family History

The name "Gumbleton" (also written as Gomeldon, Gumbelton and Gambleton) originates from the village of Gomeldon, near Salisbury, in Wiltshire, England. I have been researching the history of the Gumbletons (from whom I am, myself, descended) for some years and have accumulated information about several thousand Gumbletons of earlier times.

Although the largest concentration of of the family remains in the Wiltshire and Dorset areas of England, Gumbletons established themselves in Ireland (see section on Gumbletons of Ireland), Australian and the USA.

Online information

I am gradually making the results of my work available as online information, most of which is presented here as an indexed Compendium of Gumbletons. There are several hundred pages of information available and they can be searched for any text by using the search engine.

I have begun (rather experimentally, at the moment) to add pages relating to individual people. Currently this people index just covers Gumbletons whose births are recorded in the England and Wales GRO indexes for 1837-1901. If this proves successful I shall extend it.

Current problems

Tracing the ancestry of my own ggg-grandfather, Robert Gumbleton of Sherborne, Dorset.
Tracing the origins of the Irish branch of the family

Famous Gumbletons

The best claim to fame must be William Gomeldon who was a seventeenth century jeweller and was responsible for providing jewels for Charles II. Some of these are significant items amongst today's Crown Jewels on show at the Tower of London.

Currently, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit is a well-known figure in the US and internationally.

Gumbletons today

The Gumbleton name is quite rare today: there are fewer than a hundred Gumbletons in the UK telephone directories. Many of these are descended from a single nineteenth century family and many still live in Wiltshire and Dorset.

The above picture was taken by Mark Gumbleton at a Gumbleton reunion organised by Tony Jones in August 2002. Click on the image to see full size version.

One-name research

I have registered my research with the Guild of One-Name Studies. The aims of the Guild are:

To advance the education of the public in the study of genealogy and family history of persons with the same name and its variants.
To promote the preservation and publication of the resultant data, and to maximise its accessibility to interested members of the public.

In pursuit of the second of these aims I am keen to make as much information about the Gumbletons as possible available over the Internet. However, this project will take some time.

Extent of my current research

Some examples of the data that I have collected are:

All Gumbleton entries from the IGI for the UK
All Gumbleton births in England & Wales 1837-1935
All Gumbleton marriages in England & Wales 1837-1954
All Gumbleton deaths in England & Wales 1837-1924
All Gumbletons from the 1881 census index for England and Wales
All Gumbletons from the 1901 census for England and Wales
...and thousands of other references to the Gumbleton name.

Other people interested in the Gumbleton name

I am grateful for any reference to the Gumbleton name, worldwide, and will happily answer any enquiries from those seeking information about Gumbletons in their own family trees.

Useful links

Commercial, privacy and copyright

This website is independently owned and maintained. It does not rely on commercial sponsorship or advertising and does not promote or endorse any particular products. Wherever possible, the content uses open standards to ensure that it is browser-neutral and platform-neutral. If any platform or browser dependencies are found, please contact the site owner.

I am committed to respecting your privacy and recognize your need for appropriate protection and management of personally identifiable information you share with me. My intention is to avoid publishing, online, any information about living persons and recent events, other than general information that is readily available through other sources. In general, information and contact details that are sent to me will be made available, on an individual basis, to other genuine researchers who are interested in the Gumbleton family. However, if you send me information and stipulate specific privacy requirements, I shall observe them. No personal information is made available to commercial organisations.

Copyright statement: The individual items of information contained in this website are not copyrightable. However the collection, compilation and presentation of this information is the copyright of Steve West. The contents of the website may be reproduced and distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic, for non-commercial purposes, provided that this license notice is displayed in the reproduction. Commercial redistribution of the information is prohibited.

Steve West
steve.m.west@btinternet.com