The picture below is St. Nicholas Church at Tingrith, Bedfordshire, England. The date on the church is the year 1300, and it was was remodeled in the 1500s.

This photo, taken in 1983, will be the cover art for Bette Richards’ Bedford Bunkers CD, currently in process. The Bunker Family Association hopes to have this CD ready before Christmas 2008.

Bedfordshire is a little west and north of London, and Bunker family genealogist Henry L. Bunker III believed that early Bunker families in the Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Hertfordshire counties should be considered together in a general way. It appeared to him there had been considerable movement among these counties during the 16th and 17th centuries. Travel distances involved among the many towns in this area were on the order of five to 10 miles.

Two Bunkers are recorded in the early 1500s: Roger, in Tingrith, whose will was recorded in 1515, and John of Pottsgrove, whose will was recorded in 1540. Henry Bunker believed that if these men were related, it would seem probable that John was a son of an unrecorded brother of Roger. Pottsgrove is only four miles from Tingrith.

Roger’s family is well documented through wills and parish records, and this family supplied the two Georges who pioneered the Charlestown and Topsfield-Nantucket branches in New England. Based on current information, it has been concluded these two Georges were first cousins.

The above information is summarized from Henry L. Bunker III’s 1984 Bunker Family History, p. 45.