Hi John and All Pleased you find this story fascinating. I always worry that people without an obvious connection with the names will not be interested.and curse me for sending too many irrelevant messages to clog up their servers! When I first subscribed I thought I had only a vague connection with Hawkesbury with the marriage of Daniel WATTS & Sarah WATTS in 1804. I didn't even know where Hawkesbury was! Now, through the help of everyone on this list, I seem to find that the WATTS were connected to just about every family you can think of. I've learnt about the geography, geology, trades, agriculture, transport, .... all sorts of things - not forgetting the pubs of course. Perhaps this is an appropriate time to thank the Pond Dipper for all his hard work in the early days and a great big thank you to Robert MILLARD for setting up his website and letting everyone share our resources. Without you I wouldn't have such huge files. THANK YOU!!! Carole PS. For Robert - No, I don't want any favours at the moment! Original Message ----- From: "john stinchcombe" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 11:53 AM Subject: RE [HWK] Toghill-Watts etc > Greetings to all on a dismal Jan day, > Sorry I cant help with the detail of this fascinating story,but find it reassuring to have continuity of local names over time. In the 30's I lived at Hamswell (bottom of Freezing Hill and c 2/3 way between Hawkesbury and Royal Crescent,Bath) and in our parish,Cold Ashton, we had both Toghill and Pritchard families--both now gone I think. > Also,isn't it rather surprising that so few Hawkesbury people found their way to Bath for employment in it's heyday--did Badminton soak up most of our spare labour,or havn't I looked hard enough? By comparison some folk turn up in Bristol,if only for clandestine marriages. john s > > ps have just remembered, I used to cut hay for Thomas Toghill in his retirement (by tractor mower) and he fuelled me with red currant pie from his garden at Vine Cottage; in earlier days he cut our hay by horse mower starting about 5am----waves of nostalgia > > ______________________________