For anyone doing historical research, here are links to three outlines, complete with portraits or photographs:

Robert Wornum (1780-1852) was a pioneer in the development of the piano and patented an invention which is still used in piano actions today.
Ralph Nicholson Wornum (1812-1877) was an art historian and critic who became one of the first Keepers of the National Gallery.
George Grey Wornum (1888-1957) was an architect who was selected by competition in the 1930s to design the architects' own headquarters in Portland Place, London.

The family name is very unusual. There are related Wornums in the United States and Australia as well as in the UK but up until 1998 I believed that there were fewer than one hundred Wornums all around the world.

What follows is a collection of paragraphs about the Wornums, started in 1998. Then there are the updates; this page is very long and getting longer!

11 March 1998: I was contacted by Jesse Wornum from Georgia, USA, who told me that there is a large population of black Wornums. All are descended from one slave called Ben, who adopted the surname Wornum when he was freed while still a teenager. It was not uncommon for freed slaves to take on their master's name but at that point in time I could not trace any white Wornums who might have been in America at the time and owned slaves or been a slave master. There are a few white Wornums in the USA now, but they are all descended from George Grey Wornum (who moved to America long after the abolition of slavery) and they are easily outnumbered by the large family of Ben's descendants. Thanks to this web site, I am pleased to have been contacted by other members of that family too. They have reunions from time to time; there was one in Boston in 1997 and about 400 people turned up. Another family member, Taylor Sparks, tells me that at the last count (in 1989) their family had 1792 members, all descended from Ben. The 1999 reunion was held in New Jersey and there was another one scheduled for the 4th of July weekend in 2001.

Curiously, Jesse said that one theory going around about how Ben chose the name was that he took the name of Munrow County in Georgia and spelt it backwards. Now, this coincides with our old family legend about the origin of the name here in the UK: a Scotsman, William Munro of the Clan Munro quarrelled with his brother at the time of the Jacobite uprising in the early 1700s. He fled from Scotland to England and, wanting to have no more to do with his family name, changed it by spelling it backwards, putting the W for William in front to create Wornum. Personally I find this hard to believe, but I like the way the two legends are similar. If the "Munrow backwards" theory were true it would certainly explain why I had not yet traced any white Wornums who would have been in America at the time that Ben was freed.

So, with that in mind, here is another theory: Maybe Ben was owned by someone with a similar sounding name to Wornum, a Wornham perhaps. Our surname is so frequently mis spelled and mispronounced. Even these days, after spelling my name over the phone to people they can still get it wrong. Here is a list.

However, Taylor Sparks is quite clear about the matter. She tells me that Ben married three times and fathered 28 children, of whom the youngest daughter, Pinky is still alive. Pinky has told the story of how her father was owned by a Wornum, a Taylor and a Walker. Given that Pinky has told her father's story to people who are still alive to record it in writing, it certainly gives more credibility; especially to the idea about Ben choosing Wornum as a surname because it was the least common of the three.

There is yet another aspect to this story which relates to the difficult subject of slave owners having sex with their slaves. Taylor tells me that the resulting mixed race offspring were often cared for by the slave owner and treated very well; their births would probably be recorded in the slave owner's property register. Therefore it would appear that even if few records still exist of such births, there is a possibility that the white and the black Wornums are in fact related genetically if not legally. This theory is going to be difficult to prove. We still need to find out if there were any white Wornums living in America at any time up until the abolition of slavery.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS (December 1999) :
Since the above was written, another of my correspondents has sent me an e-mail, part of which is reproduced below:

By the way, I have lost touch with the author of what is quoted here; the e-mail address given was not working, so if you are "Andrew" who wrote the following then please get in touch with me again

"Your story about the black Wornums in the US is quite interesting, but the answer to your question about the actual family is that a John Wornum arrived in Northumberland County, Virginia in 1665, after being released from Newgate Prison. Little else is known about the particulars, but this wayward individual appears to be of the same London family of Wornums which would go on to greater things back home. He would father a brood of six children, who would become the origins of the small Wornum family in the United States. A vowel intervenes two generations on, and the name becomes Wornom. This earliest branch of the family in the States has always been centred in the Mid-Atlantic region, mostly along the Virginia coast, and the black Wornums are probably descended from slaves owned by a Samuel Wornom who disappeared somewhere in the early 1800s. The name is rare, exceedingly rare, but you may well have already discovered that it originates in Berkshire in the 13th century as Warneham, meaning 'Warne's home'. As I understand it, the original surname of all of us was Warne, or 'trees', dating possibly from the 6th century (after the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain). So our name reflects the settlement of one of us in Berkshire. It's possible that the name is so rare because while our common ancestor added 'ham', everyone else carried on with Warne or went on to become Warners. The actual legitimate spellings of Warneham (at least 12, of which Wornum is the dominant one) are almost as maddening as the misspellings you've encountered. The pronunciation here is also the same as the British one, and it confounds Americans constantly, who like to say WORE-num, with the characteristically hard 'R'."

NOVEMBER 2000 developments:

I have been contacted by David Wornham who has shed much light upon the family history.

He has much experience in genealogy and is compiling a database called WRNM which incorporates all related people with the similar spelling of the surname. In olden days people compiling parish registers were just as prone to mis-spelling the name as people are today, and this gave rise to many of the variations now in use. Most of these variations include the key consonants WRNM which is why David's name for the database is so appropriate.

He is looking into possible links between the various branches of the family but of course the spelling variations and the shortage of accurate records, especially before the 1700s, for any family not of noble birth can make things difficult. That's why it is not going to be easy to find any verifiable link between the John Wornum who spent some time in Newgate Prison until 1665 and the Robert Wornum born in 1738 who is the first well documented ancestor of my own branch of the family. I suppose that whatever John Wornum did to land himself in prison, the rest of the family might have disowned him.

DECEMBER 2000 developments:

I am contacted by Maria Wornom Rippe and also by Joseph Wornom, who live in the Williamsburg area of Virginia. They inform me that there is a Robert Wornum piano in the Colonial Williamsburg museum.

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