The following may be of interest to someone on either of these lists. It's from a paper published in the Dublin Historical Record -Autumn 1993, titled 'A Pious Dublin Printer' written by Rev. D.A. Levistone Cooney. I found it interesting because when we were children we used to swim in 'Dugdale's Hole' in the local river Erkina. "Of the birth of Bennett Dugdale I have been able to trace no record. When he died at the beginning of 1826 his age was given as 69, and that makes it probable that he was born in the year 1756. This is confirmed by his own claim that when he married Mary Shafton in 1779 he was in his 23rd year. His Christian name "Bennett" would seem to suggest the possibility that his mother came of the Bennett family, though this need not be so. She died at Bath in 1799, and from her will we learn her name was Mary. She left a bequest to her "eldest son" Richard, who was a jeweller in the city of London. The common practice of naming eldest sons after their fathers might suggest that Bennett's father was also Richard, and this theory would seem to be supported by the fact that he named his own eldest son Richard. On the other hand, Bennett's boy could have been named for his uncle; Bennett gave his own name to none of his sons. Bennett's place of birth is also a matter of conjecture. The Registry of Deeds in Dublin preserves copies of leases made in the 18th century by or to Dugdales of what was then Queen's County, now Laois. There have been Bennetts in that county since the 14th century, and one wonders if perhaps Bennett Dugdale was from thereabouts The fact that his mother lived in Bath, and his brother was a London jeweller has suggested that the family were English. It is, however, easier to explain a Dublin man seeking his fortune in London, and a widow being attracted to fashionable Bath than to explain why an English lad should have been apprenticed to an Irish printer. There were Dugdales in Dublin in the 17th century, and on balance it is probably safer to assume that he was descended from one of them. We have no information about his schooling."