Buesnel


A Buesnel family picnic early in the 20th century
Direct links to lists of baptisms, marriages and burials for the Buesnel family can be found under Family Records opposite. If you want to search for records for a spelling variant of Buesnel, or for any other family name, just click below on the first letter of the
family name you are interested in. This will open a new tab in your browser giving you a list of family names beginning with that letter,
for which there are baptism records in our database of half a million church and public registry records.
You can also select marriages or burials. Select the name you want
and when the list of records is displayed you can easily refine the search, choosing a single parish, given name(s) and/or start and end dates.
The records are displayed 30 to a page, but by selecting the yellow Wiki Table option at the top left of the page you can open a full, scrollable list. This list will either be displayed in a new tab or a pop-up window. You may have to edit the settings of your browser to allow pop-up windows for www.jerripediabmd.net. For the small number of family names for which a search generates more than 1,500 records you will have to refine your search (perhaps using start or end dates) to reduce the number of records found.
New records
From August 2020 we have started adding records from non-Anglican churches, and this process will continue as more records, held by Jersey Archive, are digitised and indexed. Our database now includes buttons enabling a search within registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These records will automatically appear within the results of any search made from this page.
A--B--C--D--E--F--G--H--I--J--K--L--M--N--O--P--Q--R--S--T--U--V--W--X--Y--Z
If you can help with information about the Buesnel family, please contact editorial@jerripedia.org, using Jerripedia as the subject of your email. We are particularly interested in information which will help create further family trees, family histories and photographs
Origin of Surname
Various possibilities exist for the origin of this surname. Busnel is a common name in Normandy and Brittany and is believed to have been derived from Burnel, another common name in the area, known also in Guernsey. In that Island, the 1309 Assizes Roll mentions Ralph Burnel, Chaplain, together with Philip and Colin, his brothers and Raulina and Alice, his sisters, as being landowners. A member of this family may well have migrated in the late 15th century from Guernsey to Jersey, as did several other families at that particular epoch.
Although less likely, the surname might also be connected with that of Brunel, and brun, the French for brown. Alternatively it is suggested that it could come from the diminutive of the the Nordic 'Bjorn' (the bear), or the Scandinavian name Burnouf.
Another argument has the name as a diminutive form of the French buse, a bird of prey of the falcon family. A coat of arms granted to the Busnel family of Brittany is recorded in Riestap's Armorial General and depicts a black buzzard on a silver shield.
Early records
Although it is quite often wrongly suggested that the name arrived in Jersey with 17th century Huguenot refugees, it was actually present in the Island at least a century earlier, making it more likely that the first Huguenot Buesnels, if there were any, arrived with the first wave of refugees, following the Massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572. However, there are no Buesnels listed in the 17th century Abjurations.
It is also now known that the Buesnel family was established in the Island well before the first Huguenots arrived. Geoffrey Buesnel of St Clement is mentioned in the Extente of 1528, and there was baptised in St Saviour in 1540 Perronelle, daughter of Collas Buesnel and Collette, his wife. Collas Buesnel, her father, would have been born circa 1500, making him, in all probability, a younger contemporary of Geoffrey. It therefore seems likely, if not certain, that the Buesnels were established in Jersey in the 15th century, and perhaps before then. A Buesnel genealogy at the Société Jersiaise mentions the death of a Nicolas (or Collas) Buesnel in 1543, perhaps that of the same man.
Variants
- Busnel
- Buesnel
- Busnell
Family records

Family trees

Church records
- Buesnel baptisms in Jersey
- Buesnel marriages in Jersey (groom)
- Buesnel marriages in Jersey (bride)
- Buesnel burials in Jersey

Great War service

Occupation records

Family wills

Burial records
-
Two different Buesnel arms
-
researched by Julian Wilson

Family album

-
Lucille Buesnel and family members on Jersey's north coast
-
Lucille Lister, nee Buesnel, with her son and Celia Neal
-
Reuben James Buesnel with his wife Eva Grace, nee Angus. Eva died aged 36, and Reuben, aged 52
-
Reuben James Buesnel on his farm in New South Wales
-
Kathleen and Cyril Buesnel
-
Kathleen Buesnel and her sister in the 1940s
-
Clement Buesnel's barn in Canada
-
Eunice Buesnel
-
Winifred Norah Buesnel (1904-1969). She married Albert Enslin Kempster (1902-1986) in 1927 and they emigrated to Canada
-
Twins Harold and Evelyn Buesnel [1]
-
Twins Harold and Evelyn Buesnel
-
Olive Florence Buesnel, nee Podger, met Prince Charles at the age of 100

-
A card sent to Mabel Buesnel in 1909
-
Probably the same Mabel, moved to St Saviour by 1911
-
Christmas greetings in 1911 to Master Buesnel. This was Philip George Buesnel, aged two at the time, the son of Philip and Georgina Bertram, nee Jeune. The couple were married in Grouville in 1904 and had a daughter Georgina, baptised in 1912. There is no baptism record for Philip George
Occupation curfew passes
Curfew passes issued to brothers Edwin Henry and Charles William Buesnel during the Occupation as members of the Honorary Police [2]

Family businesses
-
Dairy farmer John Buesnel advertised his bull Volunteer's Financier in Nouvelle Chronique de Jersey in 1924
-
Clement Buesnel advertised his St Martin grammar school for boys in Chronique de Jersey in 1840

Family properties
La Hambie Farm, St Saviour

Family gravestones
Click on any image to see a larger version. See the Jerripedia gravestone image collection page for more information about our gravestone photographs. Images of gravestones in other cemeteries will be added progressively
-
Almorah cemetery
-
Almorah cemetery
-
Trinity Church cemetery
-
Trinity Church cemetery
-
Trinity Church cemetery
-
Trinity Church cemetery
-
St Mary’s Church cemetery
-
St Peter’s Church cemetery
-
St Peter’s Church cemetery
-
Mont a l’Abbe cemetery
-
Mont a l’Abbe cemetery
-
Mont a l’Abbe cemetery
-
Mont a l’Abbe cemetery
-
St Ouen parish cemetery
-
Surville Cemetery
-
Surville Cemetery
-
Surville Cemetery
-
St Saviour
-
St Saviour
-
St Saviour
-
St Lawrence
-
St Lawrence
-
Memorial plaque in Australia
Tips
The church record links above will open in a new tab in your browser and generate the most up-to-date list of each set of records from our database. These lists replace earlier Family page baptism lists, which were not regularly updated. They have the added advantage that they produce a chronological listing for the family name in all parishes, so you do not have to search through A-Z indexes, parish by parish.
We have included some important spelling variants on some family pages, but it may be worth searching for records for a different spelling variant. Think of searching for variants with or without a prefix, such as Le or De. To search for further variants, or for any other family name, just click on the appropriate link below for the first letter of the family name, and a new tab will open, giving you the option to choose baptism, marriage or burial records. You will then see a list of available names for that type of record and you can select any name from that list. That will display all records of the chosen type for that family name, and you can narrow the search by adding a given name, selecting a parish or setting start and end dates in the form you will see above. You can also change the family name, or search for a partial name if you are not certain of the spelling
The records are displayed 30 to a page, but by selecting the yellow Wiki Table option at the top left of the page you can open a full, scrollable list. This list will either be displayed in a new tab or a pop-up window. You may have to edit the settings of your browser to allow pop-up windows for www.jerripediabmd.net. For the small number of family names for which a search generates more than 1,500 records you will have to refine your search (perhaps using start or end dates) to reduce the number of records found.
New records
Since August 2020 we have added several thousand new records from the registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These will appear in date order within a general search of the records and are also individually searchable within the database search form
A--B--C--D--E--F--G--H--I--J--K--L--M--N--O--P--Q--R--S--T--U--V--W--X--Y--Z
Notes and references
- ↑ We have not been able to place the twins in our Buesnel tree
- ↑ These cards are held by Jersey Archive. Visit The Archive online catalogue for more information. A subscription may be needed to view some of the site's content


