Because the Viking settlements in England were in the North, many surnames there end in -son. Not so in the South. My wife, born in London and raised in Essex, and known there as Glennis Ann Wainwright, searched long and hard in the records of London and Middlesex without finding an ancestor with a -son name. Eventually she found a great-grandmother named Sarah Cheese, baptized in Westminster, St. Ann's Soho, in 1824, whose parents, James Cheese and Harriet JOHNSON were married at Clewer, Berkshire, on 14 April 1819. Glennis wants you to know that she is the 'real' JOHNSON. Berkshire is due west of London, definitely in the South. JOHNSON is definitely a northern name. So how did it get there? James and Harriet apparently lived just across the River Thames in Taplow, Buckinghamshire. Clewer, just outside the gates of Windsor Castle, may have been a posh place to get married. Harriet Mary JOHNSON was baptized in Taplow 6 December 1795, daughter of James JOHNSON and Martha Brown his wife. At their marriage in Taplow on 30 July 1772, he was called James JOHNSON of Burnham. The age given at his burial in Taplow in 1832 would have him born about 1769. Burnham is a couple of villages east of Taplow. Glennis and I were in England for three weeks in May and June and as we were driving east on the motorway the day before we were to leave, we were passing Burnham and, just for the hell of it, turned in. We found the Burnham Library and perused their local-history section. We were there long enough to see that JOHNSON had been a name there of some significance. There was a Sir William JOHNSON of Burnham Grove. Of course we all know that the most fun way to do genealogy is to start with an ancestor that we would like to have and work down. Does anyone know anything about Sir William? Rock