Ancestry and Descendants
Wen Tianxiang adopted the three sons of his younger brother when his two sons died young.
Legend has the Wen family name existing during the Western Zhou Dynasty over 3,000 years ago. Historical lineages can be documented to 1,500 years ago to Sichuan province.
There are now at least six branches of the Wen family in the provinces of Jiangxi, Hunan, Hainan, Guangdong, Fujian, and in Hong Kong and overseas locations. Local dialect pronunciations would be Man (Cantonese), Vun (Hakka), and Bun (Hokkien). The Man clan are considered one of the original founding families in the history of Hong Kong.
The well-known Ming dynasty painter and calligrapher Wen Zhengming also belonged to the Wen family. The mother of Mao Zedong, Wen Qimei, was a descendant as well. The majority of Wen Tianxiang's descendants still live in mainland China.
One of the oldest continuous branches of the Wen family established itself in the Hengyang/Hengshan area of present-day Hunan shortly after AD 1000. A branch of this Wen family settled in the United States in the mid-1940s and is related through marriage to the prominent Sun family of Shouxian, Anhui (Sun Jianai; Fou Foong Flour Company 福豐麵粉廠) and the Li family of Hefei, Anhui (Li Hongzhang 李鴻章).
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