Some tidbits to digest!! A recent newsletter from our DNA testers, Family Tree DNA, discloses that the name, Luddington and Ludington, is of British Isles origin. Research by a group there shows that many, many names, including ours, originated in the British Isles sometime in the past and in some cases a local parish/shire/county has been determined to be the actual area from whence the name first appeared. I think this is something that we all knew from our own studies, as no one that I have seen, who has our name, has ever found their origin from any place other than the British Isles. My study includes our Wm Luddington, 1607/8, as the first of the "Name In America" but also discloses that other Ludds/Luds arrived after that. Some others appear in USA and Canadian census/immigration reports as arriving from England and Ireland at various times long after our Wm arrived in 1637/38. And we have Luds in Australia too but they got there long after ( perhaps 200 years or more) our Wm was first to step ashore in New England. After the N American continent was opened up in the 1800's for new citizens, many Ludds decided to take part. Without going into the studies to actually count them I am guessing the about 25 other Ludds arrived on our shores. I know of 3 lots that came to Canada alone. I am sure there are others that we have missed, but will appear in the next census release as having arrived from the B Isles at some time since 1930. ALL of the members receiving this newsletter belong to the family that originated from Wm. Luddington/Ellen Nicholl, but there are other members out there that belong to other branches ,eg, the Australian branch. Do you know of any of them?? Did you know that we have members who derive from the Afro-American Luddington name? I have conversed with some of them and they feel that the name originated from an area of Texas shortly after Texas got it's independence, and even before it became a state. We know that Robert E Ludington ( 1816-1859), a grandson of Col Henry, emmigrated from NY to TX about 1835 and had a working ranch there in Matagorda Co. He had three sons born there and shows in an 1850 census as having two female slaves. He died in 1859 and his wife and sons packed up and moved to Chicago IL shortly after that. Was he the origin of the Afro-American Luddington name?? Ron ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com