In a message dated 07/12/2007 20:39:01 GMT Standard Time, [email protected] writes: I have recently found a reference to Thomas SHOUT at the baptism of his children in the 1790's (at Spring Garden Lane Chapel) he is noted as Land Surveyor at the Customs House in Sunderland. Can anyone suggest whether this means that he was employed by HMC for the purpose of levying tax on property perhaps? rgds Alan Alan: Given that he worked for HM Customs, it seems to me that he was probably more of a "Land Waiter", ie a Customs Officer who was concerned with the payment of dues arising from land-based activities, such as the manufacture of eg paper. This was as compared to a "Tide Waiter", who was concerned with duties applying to goods brought into the country via a port. Otherwise a "conventional land-surveyor" would most probably have been self-employed, having contracts with some of the large estates. There were very few of those, ones such as the Bells (a family business) of Tyneside predominating. It was only with the Tithe maps of the early 1840s, and then with the Ordnance Survey of the 1850s onwards that the sort of people one thinks of as land surveyors became numerous - their ranks to be further boosted when local authorities came into being, with their panoply of planning departments etc. Geoff Nicholson Former Professional Genealogist but now happily retired after over 30 years in practice!