My direct ancestral line in Kingslere is COOPER > FOSTER > SMITH but with links to most of the other common names from the locality. As 'owner' of the "Kingsclere Families" website and database I have an interest in any surname with any sort of link to Kingsclere and the surrounding parishes. Currently there are just over 58,000 persons in the database, not all of whom have an obvious link to Kingsclere. This database doesn't include my Welsh ancestry but I am going to add them shortly as there are only 800 persons in that collection. During the course of my research I have found a couple of 'distant' links between myself and my wife. Joy and a cousin are doing their own database linking the surnames FOOT & GURD and currently have 25000+ persons in it as part of a GURD ONS. Their database is hosted on the startx.co.uk domain and is to be found at http://startx.co.uk:2317/FootGurd A few weeks ago I started looking into my son-in-law (Tim LEVY/LEVI) family and found that he has family connections with North Somerset, in particular his Mother's maiden name of WADHAM who I have traced back to the 1500s in West Hatch near Taunton. This surname has a long history in Somerset and North Devon, and the widow of Sir Nicholas Wadham of Merrifield (a manor near Chard) founded Wadham College in Oxford. I though I had found a link on Tim's paternal line with a Tadley Levy family but it turned out I had followed up the the wrong Henry William Levy and that his family actually go back to a Philip LEVI born about 1814 supposedly in Whitechapel, Middx but I haven't been able to find a baptism there. I have had fun and games with Census entries for his grandmother's father, Her marriage certificate names him as John Revel BAKER and that seems to be what he was recorded as in 1911 1911 Census: The Palace, Hornash, Wayford, Som BAKER, J R, head, married, M, 61, stone quarry quarry gravel drawer, Marlebone London but in the previous censuses he was recorded variously 1901 Census, Orbain Road, Fulham Charles Baker, head, 51, horsekeeper, Marylebone 1891 Census, Meyrick Road, Battersea: John Baker, head, 41, hag? driver, London 1881 Census, William Street, Fulham: James C. Baker, head, 33, groom, Norwich In each of those census his wife is a Martha born ca1850 in Somerset but even when an actual place is recorded the 1901 has her born Lopen and the 1911 in Merriott. I am happy that these Census entries relate to one family with children from 1881 appearing in 1891, the youngest children from 1891 listed in 1901 and the last child of all Rachel (born 28 Sep 1893 in Chelsea and Tim's grandmother) listed in both 1901 and 1911. I am waiting for Rachel's birth certificate to arrive to get her mother's maiden name and hopefully then find the marriage. The only possible marriage found so far is really a couple of years too late Marriages Jun 1877: BAKER Charles & GODDARD Martha Jane, Yeovil 5c 723 as the eldest son John Baker (listed in 1881 and 1891) was born in 1874. Such are the trials and tribulations of family history research and the above description of my 'tribulations' goes a little way towards explaining why I haven't been active on the Kingsclere list lately. I wish all on the list a happy and prosperous 1910 and may all your brick walls come tumbling down ;-) -- John Lewis Debian & the GeneWeb genealogical data server