Stan & Geoff thank you both for further insight into the workings of the Customs house at Sunderland. I certainly have something to get my teeth into - then all I have to do is connect him to the main "branch" of the family tree. rgds Alan researching SHOUT anywhere/anywhen GRAINGER & HOWELL Robin Hoods Bay & DUR SANDERSON - Norham NBL 19th Century WALKER - Blyth 1880-1920 HODGSON/HUDSON - NRY 1850 - 1900/ South Shields 1900-1930 GIBBISON - South Shields AIR - NBL AUGUST - South Shields 1850 - 1930 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 05:01:06 EST From: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ENG-DUR-SUNDERLAND] LAND SURVEYOR To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" 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! ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:21:24 EST From: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ENG-DUR-SUNDERLAND] LAND SURVEYOR To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" It is "Landing Surveyor" not land surveyor. A landing-surveyor was a customs officer who appointed and superintended the landing waiters. A landing-waiter was a customs officer whose duty was to superintend the landing of goods and to examine them; Stan ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 11:20:37 EST From: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ENG-DUR-SUNDERLAND] LAND SURVEYOR To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" In 1856 the establishment of the Sunderland Custom House was a Comptroller, a Landing Surveyor, six clerks, five searchers, thirty lockers, weighers, and tide-waiters, four tide-surveyors, and one messenger. A Locker was an officer at the Custom House, in charge of a locked-up warehouse, acting under the warehouse-keeper. A Tide-waiter was a customs officer who awaited the arrival of ships (formerly coming in with the tide), and boarded them to prevent evasion of the Custom House regulations, they were supervised by a Tide-surveyor. Surprisingly there are no landing-waiters mentioned, it seems that at time the Landing Surveyor was, in effect, the assistant comptroller. Stan ------------------------------ __________________________________________________________ Sent from Yahoo! Mail - a smarter inbox http://uk.mail.yahoo.com