The definitive record of one of Britain's rarest surnames: its roots in the Somerset village of Chedzoy, a single connected tree traced to 1663, and every spelling of the name found anywhere in the world. Four decades of research, every fact sourced.
Not a hobby page, but a forty-year, fully sourced reconstruction of an entire surname.
The whole site is built on one connected dataset. These are the three doors into it; every one leads back to the same sourced people.
Search every Chedgzoy and Chedzoy on record, from Somerset parish baptisms in the 1600s to the present day. Each person sits on their own page with sources shown.
Search the register 02 11Walk the line generation by generation from Robert Chedzoy in the 1660s, or take in the whole connected tree on one interactive, person-centred map.
Open the tree 03 est.Where the name comes from, how it's said, how the spellings split across the centuries, and the family's part in the 1685 Monmouth Rebellion.
Read the historyThis isn't a tree stitched together from other people's guesses. Every birth, marriage, death and connection is tied back to an original record, and where the records disagree, that's shown too, not hidden.
The same rigour reconciles the spellings. Chedgzoy, Chedzoy, Chedsey, Chidsey and a dozen clerks' variants are treated as one family, traced through the documents that link them.
If a fact can't be sourced, it's flagged as unverified, never quietly presented as truth.
The winger who, in 1924, read the new corner-kick law to the letter, dribbling the ball straight in from the corner flag and forcing the rules of football to be rewritten within weeks. Later a star of the early American game.
Read Sam's recordMarched out for Monmouth, was captured at Sedgemoor, tried by Judge Jeffreys at the Bloody Assizes, and transported to Jamaica on the Constant Richard in 1685.
Read the recordThe records reach well beyond Somerset: WWI casualties remembered in France, and emigrant families who settled in Canada, the USA and Australia.
See where the name spread"The Chedgzoy name is mine, and documenting it properly, every person and every source, has been the work of forty years."
Forty years researching the Chedgzoy and Chedzoy surname, from 1980s handwritten notes, graveyards and microfiche to AI-assisted research today, and why I share it all for free.
Read more → story · 46 min readA Roots-style historical novella: two brothers of a Somerset Levels family, the Chedzoys of Stoke St Gregory, named long ago for the village of Chedzoy, join the 1685 Monmouth Rebellion, and only one survives Sedgemoor, the Bloody Assizes and transportation to Jamaica. Based on the real Edward Chedsey.
Read more → chedgzoy · 2 min readSam Chedgzoy, the Everton and England winger who exploited a loophole in the 1924 corner-kick law and forced the rules of football to be rewritten. A short history of the man behind the rule.
Read more →If you carry the Chedgzoy or Chedzoy name, or you hold records, photographs or a branch the study is missing, your line belongs on the register. Every contribution is sourced and credited.