Hello Di My family too was adamant about the spelling of their name!! In every generation however there was a change right back to the 1600s. In the early 1700s I had 7 children in one family baptised and every one had their name spelled differently in the register. This didn't resolve fully until the late 1800s when many more people were literate and made the decision on spelling based on family lore & custom. I have Grenville, Greenville, Greinville, Granville, Grenfell in my mum's family. I ignored a Leng in the right area in Durham for years - to my peril. They were Laings I thought and the local dialect would make that sound like Leng to the clerk! My husband even went to primary school as Foster and when he was to go to high school in England his dad said he had better put an r in it as he had found it on his father's birth cert! The clerks just wrote down what they heard so while your dad may have been adamant about the spelling of his name, the further you go in family history the less sure you will be. My ancestor too was a school master but not until the mid 1800s when they were all trained and certified through National Examinations and most training schools were Anglican in England and Presbyterian in Scotland. Before that there were only very limited educational qualifications for teachers. The churches often ran Sunday Schools and the military had some organised education for children. There are some good small books on the subject - one by Colin Chapman, "The Growth of British Education and Its Records" ISBN 1 873686 05 6. It should be available in genealogy libraries in Perth. Regards Jill in Sydney > >Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:31:30 +0800 >From: "James Haywood" <justoz@iinet.net.au> >Subject: Re: [B&D] 1696 bristol >To: <bristol_and_district@rootsweb.com> >Message-ID: <000501cab114$07117f90$0201010a@acer86e9bf2e61> >Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; > reply-type=original > >Hi Kathleen, > thank you so much for your kind offer, I would dearly like to see if any >of my BRINDAL/BRINDLE family were in Bristol at that time, I'm trying to >find out where they came from originally and this could help so much. >I've found a John BRINDAL/BRINDLE who would have been born around 1750 in >Clifton, he was a School Master but no more info from before that. The name >was spelt with the A L at the end but have often found it spelt with the LE >which makes me think they may have come from another country (maybe France >or Germany etc..), my Dad was always adamant our name was spelt with the AL >at the end and I have found all the BRINDAL's related so far. > >Any help very much appreciated. > > >Many thanks >Di Haywood >Fremantle Western Australia.