This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: VALLIS Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/EUC.2ACI/3171.1.1 Message Board Post: Hi Dorothy Thanks for replying. Alhough VALLIS is the 'accepted' name I have found also VALIS, VALLES, WALLIS, VAILS, VILLIS, FALIS, FALLIS, VILLICE, VALLICE (note that often when found they are often a transcription error - also i know there are many many WALLIS which are NOT related). Never VATERS to my knowledge! The VILLIS branch is specifically originating from the Somerset levels (marshlands) and could be transmutation based on local 'broad' accents... In records they are written as mostly VILLIS but VALLIS and VILLIS start to be interchangeable even in the same family outside of the core VILLIS area.... earliest VILLIS names I have found are 1600's in Stogursey, Somerset. There are also a lot of VALLAS families- mostly early to mid-1700's based in London, small (old) port of Ditcheat in Somerset and around Portsmouth UK according to IGI and other records. Definitely some of them are Hugenouts. I suspect that they may all be local derivatives of VALLIS. I have found an early VALLIS family member recorded in Warminster, Wiltshire in the 1550's - and certainly if one looks at all the VALLIS names recorded over some centuries it is definitely centered within a 50 miles radius of the two prime shire border towns of Frome(Somerset) & Warminster (Wiltshire) - as both of these where important centres of the wool trade in the 1650-1800 and in the industrialisation of the late 1700/early 1800 the VALLIS families appeared to migrate based on economic necessities at the time - many migrating to London, Birmingham etc. or emigrating overseas (i.e NFL, NB, NZ, AU etc.). NFL is a slight exception - as this clearly was a 'business venture' by some quaker Vallis families in Poole, Dorsetshire. There is however a strong concentration of VALLIS based around Headingon Quarry, nr Oxford from as early as the 1720's - clearly as masons and other labourers for the building of university colleges etc. @ Oxford. Some of the earlier Somerset Vallis families where experienced stonemasons - and I suspect they followed their trade. Many of the other VALLIS families can be followed along the building of the canals and then railways, probably as labourers if they where not already engaged as agricultural workhorses.....and then in the Victorian era as servants. I did find an early female VALLIS family member who lived in S. Wales...and whose marriage took me all the way back to mid 1100's in the mid-Welsh/English border region - with a direct connection to a early Princess of Wales ( NOT Diana!!) around 1200. Unfortunately I lost the file with all the carefully researched genealogy notes (not by me i hasten to add!). Long answer to a short question Dorothy - but I thought I would share the info I have found on the Vallis families so far.... Regards - HiFly