Hi, I have been following this debate but not too closely. I don't know whether my comments might help but IMHO if asked to choose between some-one 'migrating' from Messingham in Lincolnshire or Derby to Newbold in Chesterfield, I would go for Derby. My own people arrived in Sheffield in the early 1900s. Over 3 generations in the 19th century they migrated from the Fens in South Lincolnshire up the route of the present A15 (itself a typically straight Roman road) to a village now incorporated into Scunthorpe. My grandfather, an 'ag lab' then turned east and travelled almost certainly along the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincoln railway route to Sheffield were he settled; at first employed as a labourer constructing the tram way there. Anecdotally, a lecturer at the University of Lincoln and a historian of the Lincolnshire area told me that this was a common migration pattern. The 'push-pull' model suggests that the agricultural recessions of the early 19th century pushed unemployed young men out to look for work elsewhere, whilst the demands for labour pulled them towards industrial centres such as Sheffield. The census records of people living in the eastern part of Sheffield where the steel industry was concentrated support this model. There is a high preponderance of people living in the same streets of housing, born in Lincolnshire in the same villages (or other close by). This pattern of behaviour is said to be seen in the economic migrant communities of the 60-80s. Young men left their communities, settled, sometimes marring local girls whilst others 'sent for' the girl they left behind when they were economically self sufficient and married them. If you look at the early lines of communication, the main ones generally run North-South in Britain as any one who looks in vain to find an East - West Motorway to take him say from Norwich to say Birmingham will tell you. The Derby to Chesterfield road follows the lie of the land along river valleys generally. I don't know whether your man had a specialist skill to sell i.e. a craftsman, but if he were a labourer who had arrived in Sheffield, then a booming industrial city, by the route I have described I think it unlikely he would then have left Sheffield, to travel south to Chesterfield a much smaller and less significant town. Finally, I beg any 'Chesterfeldians' not to take my remarks too badly. If they do then - Pax! My daughter lives very near Newbold and loves it there. Rod S.