Sally Phillips wrote to the Louisa Co., VA rootsweb the following e-mail, which, to me, is rather exciting. This was in response to my earlier message about the Lost Records of Virgina (the finding aid on the LVA website.) Since I wrote to several lists, I am sending this message to those other lists also. I think her message is enlightening about some aspects of colonial life in Virginia. E.W.Wallace Her message This is a follow-up to the Lost Records thread. Check out the Colonial Records Project on the Library of Virginia website. I recently found hundreds of references to my ancestor's shipping family. By the absolute mass of references, and by many synchronicities re names of people and ships, I was able to prove (albeit not definitively) that the family was a merchant taylor family in the 1600s and 1700s, operating between London, the eastern seaboard of America and mostly Virginia, and Caribbean ports. I didn't know the term merchant taylor, but an on-line Phillips guru told me that -- Also, the term "merchant taylor" originally referred only to men who traded in cotton and wool and skins, but gradually merchant taylor came to mean anyone who traded in anything. Merchant taylors owned ships and traded in all sorts of goods. At one point, I ordered an LDS film that listed the names of men who belonged to the merchant taylor guild of London in the 1600s, and I remember seeing the name William Phillips. Descendants of this Phillips family lived in Louisa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries -- William Phillips (husband of Ann Lewis), Lancelot Phillips, etc. Sally Phillips My response - from E.W.Wallace Merchant Taylor - found in LVA Colonial Records Project What an exciting find! Although I don't have such outstanding ancestors, at least in England, I got excited about this find. Because my maternal grandmother was born in England in 1872, I do a fair amount of English research--easier now that much of the material one needs is now on line. (And my English online friends are most helpful. One grew up in a small village/hamlet where my people had been in the 1880s and told me about the large landholders in that area.) For those who can more or less prove they have English roots [you need to know a place, most of the time] this variant of the search engine google.com may be of help to you google.co.uk I used this URL and plugged in the search term merchant taylor As our contributor found out, in the early days, this seemed to be a guild. I believe there were other links, but I did not stop to examine them. _Merchant Taylors - Home_ (http://www.merchanttaylors.co.uk/) The Merchant Taylors' Company is one of the Great Twelve Livery Companies of the City of London. Founded in the 13th Century as a religious and social ... www.merchanttaylors.co.uk/ - 12k - _Cached_ (http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:crsIca5bkKoJ:www.merchanttaylors.co.uk/+"merchant+taylor"&hl=en&ct=clnk&c d=2&gl=uk&ie=UTF-8) - _Similar pages_ (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=related:www.merchanttaylors.co.uk/) (I hope the google material prints legibly. If not, try it yourself.) If our researcher can get to England [or can hire a researcher through the Society of Genealogists headquartered in London], she may find a lot of material in the Guildhall Library -- not too far from St. Paul's Cathedral. It is a good place to rest and troll the open shelves on a rainy day in London--when the streets are running with water. The Society of Genealogists has a webpage--google for it. This little building is *stuffed* with film, microfilm, and books. But, at times, one may find the non-professional staff are a little snippy about Americans. Why? Because we don't understand their copiers which use a different size paper. You should know that!!!! sniffed one. I hope we treat our tourists with more kindness! Some of the records of Northern Neck counties, more than those clustered around the James River, have some interesting records from time to time about mariners--but not too much detail, unfortunately. Since tobacco was Virginia's most important export--nay, it was the currency of the day--it had to get to markets to be sold!!! And the market was England!!! Years ago, I had to read a book for a modern English class called The Sot Weed Factor. I think it was mostly about early Maryland, but it must have been about the same in Virginia. E.W.Wallace **************New MapQuest Local shows what's happening at your destination. Dining, Movies, Events, News & more. Try it out (http://local.mapquest.com/?ncid=emlcntnew00000002)