Explore the Family Name Redwood

The meaning of Redwood

English: from Middle English red(de) ‘red’ + wode ‘wood’ (Old English rēad, wudu). The name may be topographic, denoting someone who lived ‘(by the) red wood’ (perhaps a reference to trees with reddish branches, such as birch as they appear in the spring), or habitational, from a place so named, such as Red Wood in Hamfallow (Gloucestershire) or Redwood in Barrow Gurney (Somerset). History: Abraham Redwood, a former English merchant ship captain, who had become owner through marriage of a valuable sugar plantation in Antigua and a large number of slaves, moved to America in 1712, when his son Abraham (1709–88) was three years old. Thirty years later, the son was one of the group of merchants whose prosperity and education was focused in Newport, RI. Intellectuals and people of culture flocked there, due in part to the Redwood Library, established in 1747 with a generous gift from Abraham the younger, who had three sons and a daughter who reached maturity.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.