I know that I must have many 'cousins' of varying degrees in the Kingsclere area but I didn't expect that I could be even remotely connected to my wife's family. It goes back to my teenage years when I was a keen racing cyclist and one of my team mates was a Brian WHITMARSH. Brian was a member of a church youth club and had persuaded the youth leader to provide a set of cycling 'rollers' as a way of tempting people to join the club. 'Rollers' are like the rolling roads used for testing cars and we used to go along a couple of nights a week to train on this equipment (and to chat up the girls). I ended up going out with one of these girls for a couple of years but we drifted apart and it wasn't until quite a few years later we met up again and married. Time passed and we became interested in our family backgrounds. One of my wife's family names is Barnett and she knew only that they had a connection to Pimperne in Dorset. I think I first spotted the name Robert WHITMARSH Barnett and suggested to her that his wife was probably a Whitmarsh. Sure enough this proved to be the case and before long she had made contact with several other people researching the name and now has a number of Whitmarsh cousins and a family line going back many generations. The Barnett family proved to have come from Wiltshire and so far we have the earliest of them as farmers in a small village just to west of Wilton. During her research she had made contact with a Rodney Whale who also has Barnett among his family names. So far he has them only in the eastern part of Wiltshire so there may be no connection between the two lots of Barnett, however he also has Whitmarsh ancestors and eventually it was established that Rodney and my wife have a common 10xgt or whatever grandparent. As you know I am trying to do a 'One Place Study' for Kingsclere, so have lots of data on Kingsclere families. Some time back Rodney asked for help with his Stocker family and I have been able to help him with info on the Ecchinswell Stockers. A couple of days ago he told me that one of these, John Stocker had married, as a widower, a Lucy Parsons. You may remember me asking the list for help in tracing the Parsons as they are one of my problem families. Somehow I had missed this Stocker/Parsons marriage when looking for Parsons connections so it was with interest I had a look at the marriage entry. It turns out Lucy Parsons' parents were Peter Pasons and Sarah Foster. Sarah was a daughter of John Foster who is one of my 4xgt-grandfathers, so Lucy is a definitely a relation of mine. I am not sure what relation John Stocker is to Rodney as I don't have that bit of his tree but it looks like we are connected in some fashion. So via my Parsons/Stocker connection to Rodney and his Whale/Whitmarsh connection to my wife, I am very, very, very distantly connected to my wife. As I said genealogy is a funny thing --- John Lewis <jayellatntlworlddotcom> from Bournemouth, Dorset, UK. using Debian GNU/Linux and GeneWeb genealogy software