I wonder if there is anyone here who claims descent from the RIDDIFORD family of Thornbury? If so, you may be related to the pop singer Kylie Minogue and her sister Dannii. But you probably knew that already! Morgan John Riddiford (1876-1948) was the great-great-grandfather of the Minogue sisters on a female line. He was born at Thornbury in 1876 and in the 1891 census, aged 16, he was a prisoner in Gloucester Jail. What he was locked up for is easily found in Ancestry's England & Wales Criminal Registers 1791-1892 and there is a newspaper account of the police court hearing on the 19th Century British Newspapers website. Actually, it was for assault at Thornbury on a serving girl of 14 called Mary Ann Tandy, for which he was sentenced to 5 years' penal servitude at Gloucester Assizes in November 1890, Morgan Riddiford married Mary Ford at Bedminster, Somerset, in 1898, moved to Bristol and in the census of 1901 he appears as a tram inspector. They then moved again to Wales and in 1911 they are in Nantyffyllon, near Maesteg, Glamorgan. Morgan's great-granddaughter, Kylie and Danii's mother, Carol Ann Jones, was born at Maesteg and went to Australia with her family in 1955. All of this is well documented on the Internet and has been well publicised in national newspapers, so I am not revealing any secrets about living people. In any event, the records are in the public domain and on the Internet. What I am interested in, as a regular researcher into the ancestry of the famous, is where the Riddifords came from originally. Research in the IGI suggests that it is overwhelmingly a Gloucestershire surname, especially around North Nibley, and the earliest date I can find is 1594, but that is an unsourced private submission by an LDS member and therefore unreliable. The earliest officially extracted record I can find is at North Nibley in 1616 of a Jone (sic, presumably Joan) RIDIFORD. Can anyone go back further with the name? It does not seem to appear in either of my main surname dictionaries (Reaney & Wilson and Hanks & Hodges' Oxford Dictionary of Surnames). I wonder also if anyone recognises the name of the girl, victim, Mary Ann Tandy? She too appears in the 1891 census but I can't find her after that. -- Roy Stockdill Genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE