After a decades-long search, including an article on this very website, a family of living descendants of John Bunyan have been found, and an updated version of the John Bunyan Family Tree has been unveiled.
John Bunyan, born in Elstow, is best known as the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, the bestselling single-authored book in the world.
Read: Could you be a descendant of Bedford’s most famous son, John Bunyan?
The search for his descendants was carried out by Clive Arnold, the curator at Moot Hall in Elstow, the 15th-century building associated with the author and non-conformist.
And thanks to our story in 2024, three families believing themselves to be related to John Bunyan came forward. Unfortunately, two of the family trees were incorrect, but one looked promising.
“[Over the years] many families who thought that they were descended from John Bunyan got in touch, sending their trees for me to check,” explained Clive.
“Some, initially, looked promising but, upon careful checking, were all found to be incorrect, which disappointed me almost as much as it probably disappointed them.
“For it seemed to me that, as John Bunyan had produced six children, it was quite possible that there might be some living descendants, so I set out to try to discover if any did in fact exist.
“Progress proved very slow, with only a few additional names and dates being added over the next several years.”
For several years, Clive found nothing to add to his Bunyan Family tree and began to think that perhaps he was “searching for something that did not exist.”
“Then, in 2024, I found an article by local historian Mike Pratt, published in ‘History in Bedfordshire Journal ‘ V8 No.11 Summer 2020, which gave new impetus to my quest,” he said.
Pratt’s article, entitled ‘The Brown Family of Carlton and The Bunyan Connection’, detailed his findings from searches of Parish records in the north of the county.
These records showed that, as recently as the early 1900s, there were descendants of John Bunyan’s daughter Sarah and William Brown still living in the Turvey/ Farndish area.
“I added the names Mike had found to our version of the tree and then wrote an article for the Bedford Independent online newspaper.
“We included a link to our Bunyan Tree and asked if anyone recognised any of the 19th and 20th century descendants shown at the bottom of the tree.”
New family tree
Three families soon got in contact following the article, with one seeming particularly promising.
The Brown family from Harrold claimed to be descended from a Henry Brown (b1831) in Farndish. Could this be the same Henry Brown from Farndish as mentioned in Mike Pratt’s article and who we now had at the bottom of Clive’s tree?
“This Harrold family did not have any official documents to support their claim, so we had to carry out a search of England’s BMD records,” explained Clive.
“Imagine our surprise and delight when we discovered that every level of this Brown family’s tree was correct. That their ancestor Henry and the Henry Brown on our tree were one and the same person!
“Imagine my delight as I realised that I had discovered not just one living descendant of John Bunyan, but a whole family of 13.”
To mark this historic moment, copies of the updated family tree were presented to the living Browns in a special ceremony at Moot Hall in Elstow on 15 October.
The family tree was designed with support from Bedford Borough Council’s reprographics department.
The 2025 edition of the tree, which includes these living descendants, can be downloaded here.
