Hello everyone -- (Apologies in advance for the length of this post. I hope, however, it gives some helpful information to anyone who's not sure how to go about researching possible Huguenot connection in England.) This is a response to a post from Eunice <eunice@cubbage.freeserve.co.uk> on 21 Feb re: her FLEET ancestors of Weedon, Buckinghamshire, ENG. A family story told to her suggests the name was once VAN FLEET (Holland > England) and Eunice would like to know how to go about proving/disproving this story. Eunice, the family story you've been told may be true or may have at least a grain of truth in it. These things tend to get edited and changed a bit as they are passed on verbally to family members through many years. Just a quick story of my own to illustrate this point. Recently, I was contacted by a researcher about a name we are both interested in which is AMOS (my maternal great grandmother's surname). The area is Canterbury, Kent, ENG. The researcher told me that there was a story in her family that her AMOS ancestors were Huguenots who fled from France. I was skeptical about this story because I had never learned of any connection of AMOS to Huguenots in spite of my 15 years of researching this name in East Kent. I felt sure the Huguenot connection, if there was one, was from another surname which had married into the AMOS line. After digging around in all my own accumulated AMOS information, I found the Huguenot connection -- it was through the marriage of a John AMOS to Phebe LANSELL in Canterbury in 1746. LANSELL is a name which pops up among French Protestant records in Canterbury and elsewhere in England. So, you can see that this story was true up to a point -- there were indeed Huguenot connections to in this AMOS family but they began through the LANSELL surname, not AMOS. Anyway, back to Eunice's particular situation. I can only repeat what I think I have said before on the list to researchers who are attempting to determine a Huguenot connection in their family tree. That is, there is no way to determine this connection except by research back through the generations until you can, hopefully, connect your family line to individuals mentioned in French Protestant records. Begin with the earliest ancestor you know of and the location where you know they lived. Search the records of that time period and location for any mention of them or related families. For example, Eunice, if Weedon is the earliest location you know of, begin searching there. If you find nothing, work outwards gradually into surrounding parishes to see if they are to be found in nearby areas (people often tended not to move very far in past centuries). Eunice, you didn't mention a time period but if dates are fairly recent (post 1837), you have the advantage of the UK civil registration indexes for births, deaths and marriages which can lead you to valuable information on birth, marriage or death certificates. Before 1837, there are the parish registers which list baptisms, marriages and burials. There is no central index for these registers so you must have a parish in mind where you can start looking. If you are looking later in the 19th century, there are the censuses (every ten years between 1841 and 1891). However, you have to know of a specific location to start looking because the only one that has been fully indexed for the whole country is the 1881. I'd also recommend going to the GENUKI site (www.genuki.org) -- that's Genealogy in the UK and Ireland -- and go to the section on Buckinghamshire to see if there is anything there which can help you. For example, there may be information on how to join the Buckinghamshire Family History Society (FHS) and there may be a surnames list for Buckinghamshire. Also, it might be a good idea to join a Buckinghamshire mailing list and post a query there. To find out about such a mailing list, please go to our list website at http://www.island.net/~andreav/index.html and look for the heading Other Mailing Lists in the Beyond the Basics section. Lastly, don't forget to check on the LDS site (at www.familysearch.org) in the IGI to see if you can find any valuable clues there about your (VAN) FLEETs. This won't give you complete information but might tell you where else to look for this surname in Buckinghamshire. Anyone else got further advice to offer Eunice or others in a similar situation? Andrea