In a message dated 13/04/2005 01:32:26 GMT Standard Time, [email protected] writes: Now Edward Downing and Mary Heard had three children, as far as I know, and a Thomas was the second son. The first, Dominick, was named after Mary's father and they did not have any Williams. Based on an ASSUMPTION that they continued naming their sons after the grandads, I guess at Thomas and Elizabeth Ashton as the parents of Eddy. This seems a very sensible assumption - but a word of caution! I have seen it stated as a matter of unarguable fact that there was a formula for naming infants, and while this did happen in some families it certainly wasn't universal. I have looked at 8 generations of my DOWNINGs in Norfolk, England from 1600 to 1850, and during that time one family named the first boy after its paternal grandfather, and the next after the maternal grandfather; five gave the first boy the same name as his father. The others got names "out of the blue". In at least two cases the wife's father's name was not used for any offspring at all. Many people don't give enough attention to death registers when trying to solve problems such as the two Edwards. The death rate among children was so high that there are many cases where you can decide which of several children is the right one by identifying death for the others. For instance, in Diss, Norfolk, parish registers between 1700 and 1720 there were ten recorded deaths of DOWNING children identifying the parents - "Feb 25 1713 Ann, dau. of Will. and Margaret DOWNING". These deaths helped me to positively identify several of my ancestors. Unfortunately deaths don't really figure in the IGI, so you need to see the registers by other means. Happy hunting, Adrian, Hampshire, England