Hello List,   I research the Essex PEASEs, and have done for a long time - about 50 years now. Before the digital age it was difficult, however the internet has made things so much better, and the brilliant Essex Record Office and SEAX site makes it better still.   Some years ago I discovered the American branch of the Essex PEASEs and made contact with some of them. The majority of them descend from two PEASE brothers who emigrated from Great Baddow, via Ipswich in the early 1600s. Last year an American descendant came to Essex and I along with a number of English PEASEs with Essex roots met up together in Great Baddow, DNA samples were taken of one English person with proven Essex PEASE descent, and subsequent testing confirmed that the American PEASEs and the English branch were related. I have a number of databases of PEASEs many of them with London area links and welcome anyone on this List who has a PEASE in their family to contact me.   About 2004 SEAX threw up a very interesting item, namely that further information on the PEASEs could be obtained from the National Archive (Kew)'s Ancient Document Collection. A few trips to Kew provided me with a wealth of info. Needless to say I have been even busier with more research on this family and have now got the Great Baddow PEASE line back to circa 1224  with two generations prior to that; these are a subject of further scrutiny to compare dated evidence of contemporaries of the named, but not exactly dated PEASEs. Whilst more work has to be done, I am slowly putting together a wealth of evidence on this big family with a view to producing a written document on my findings in, hopefully, the not too distant future.   The really interesting thing, to me, is that this family of PEASES were not in the least bit posh, although some were aspirational, and canny, and clearly seemed to have had a strong sense of their own worth and identity.   My own interest in this family is my late sister's husband and my nephew, whose ancestors emigrated to London and its environs from Billericay and whose direct line via Rayleigh, Rawreth, Hatfield Peveral, Colchester and surrounding parishes goes back to Layer-de-la-Haye, where I am, at the moment, stuck on Thomas PEASE, who witnessed the marriage of his son in 1761 at LDLH, the son Thomas PEASE was born somewhere circa 1740 and died by 1816 when Probate occured. There are Quaker and strong non-conformist links as well, and the proven GB line had Quaker members in Earls Colne, and my line had a family story about Quakers.   My planned annual trip to Chelmsford will hopefully unravel some more kinks. I welcome questions and queries and look forward to making new PEASE links.   Thank you.   rita a GERRARD