Kingsbury family

The Kingsbury family is a family descended from royal ancestors of medieval England, from the Kingdom of Mercia. They were involved in colonial and frontier settlement of the United States, and influential in England.

According to various sources which range from studies by historian Michael Jones, studies on knighthood in early English society by Peter Cross and others by the Royal Historical Society including an early 20th-century genealogist, F. J. Kingsbury, the Kingsbury family is thought to be descendants of the Bracebridge family, whose ancestry is traced to Sir Ralf of Bracebridge, an English knight born in 975. This bloodline includes Lady Godiva and her husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who was descended from the Saxon kings of the lordship of Kingsbury. The Kingsbury family is also purportedly related to William Shakespeare. The genealogical links with the Shakespeares have been explored and tabulated in an early volume on the dramatis personae of Shakespeare, by George Russell French.

The present-day Kingsbury family has had many spelling variants of its surname, including:

There has been conjecture that the Kingsbury family also previously went by these surnames:

In his genealogical study on the Ardens and the Shakespeares, French also makes similar claims, tabulating the linkages between the Bracebridges, Kingsburys, Ardens and Shakespeares

Members of the Kingsbury family also migrated to Australia and New Zealand in the mid and late 19th Century, leaving primarily from Somerset. The best known of this group was Bruce Steel Kingsbury, VC (8 January 1918 – 29 August 1942), an Australian soldier of the Second World War. Serving initially in the Middle East, he later gained renown for his actions during the Battle of Isurava, one of many battles forming the Kokoda Track Campaign in New Guinea. His bravery during the battle was recognised with the Victoria Cross, the highest decoration for gallantry "in the face of the enemy" that can be awarded to members of the British and Commonwealth armed forces.

The principle point of Kingsbury migration was to the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, Australia, with a number of the family buried at the Drysdale cemetery overlooking Port Phillip Bay.

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