Hi Thanks to Carole for unravelling the qustion of William NICHOLS and Mary Jane WATTS. I was beginning to think that this was all getting a bit distant from my own family, and the remembered that my gt-grandmother Rosina COOPER was staying with Mary Jane's parents George and Jane at the time of the 1861 census. This was before Mary Jane's birth, but it seems a fair bet that they all knew one another fairly well. It is also another reminder that there is often a connection between seemingly unconnected people. I have recently identified the young women living as a domestic servant with one of my Lawrence family in Illinois. She was the orphaned daughter of the daughter of his mother's half-sister. She had been born in Ontario, but her parents had followed other members of the family to Illinois. I am not sure about Brian's theory regarding TOGHILL and THURKILL. The Gloucestershire R.O.database lists wills by Nicholas TOGGELL (Hawkesbury, 1579) and Agnes TOKILL (Hawkesbury 1583), and the name seems to originate in the South Gloucestershire area. There is a story that one of the TOGHILL lines starts with a foundling discovered on the hill, but the name apparently predates that event. Incidentally, we went to the picnic site on Tog Hill before crashing the car at Tormarton last Saturday. Bob Lawrence ************************************** R.P.& A.L.Lawrence The Hazels, Sheepwood Road, Bristol, BS10 7BS, U.K. Phone: 0117 9504314 ************************************** ¦-----Original Message----- ¦From: Brian Morgan [mailto:[email protected]] ¦Sent: 19 January 2004 09:19 ¦To: [email protected] ¦Subject: [HWK] TOGHILL - WATTS - NICHOLLS ¦ ¦ ¦Hi, Carole ¦She could be Mary's aunt? I've had such examples, where the relationship ¦turns out to be not to the householder but the spouse. ¦Tog Hill is a famous (and recently notorious) hill on the Wick to ¦Marshfield ¦Rd where it is crossed by the Freezing Hill road. At the top of the A420 ¦turn left (as from Wick) and you go on to Doynton, M4 and Hawkesbury. ¦I expect you already know that TOGHILL is a variant of THURKILL so the ¦coincidence of the names may be just that. I used to think that TOGHILL was ¦a surname after the place. ¦Regards ¦Brian ¦ ¦ ¦==== ENG-GLO-HAWKESBURY Mailing List ==== ¦Please remember when you post messages that SURNAMES should be in CAPITALS. ¦ ¦============================== ¦Gain access to over two billion names including the new Immigration ¦Collection with an Ancestry.com free trial. Click to learn more. ¦http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=4930&sourceid=1237 ¦ ¦