Malinda Jones wrote..... >>HI Roy......my biggest brickwalls are in places other than Yorkshire....at least I think they are. For instance.....my John Douthit was born 6 May 1709 in Coleraine, Londonderry, N. Ireland. His forebears were supposedly part of the King James (II ?) plantation of Ulster. Prior to that , there was a Dowthwaite in Aberdeen that was supposedly his progenitor and before that the jury seems to be divided between theories of they're being French Huguenots or being from Dowthwaite Hall somewhere in Ingland. I haven't mentioned the huge number of spelling variations this name has inspired....e-searches are futile because of it. I haven't learned enough about doing Irish research to be able to follow the threads. It's the same story with my Scotch-Irish Reeds and Carsons. I don't know the origins of my Keevers.....they spoke German , but I've been assured that Keever is not a German name. Kever is Dutch...so maybe that's it.<< I CAN'T help, I'm afraid, with German/Dutch ancestry or Reeds and Carsons. Irish ancestry is notoriously difficult to trace because so many records were destroyed in the various "troubles". There were numerous plantations - i.e. invasion of English and Scottish settlers into Ireland - beginning under Queen Elizabeth I and continued by James I, Charles I and Oliver Cromwell and later. However, you may just possibly be on the right tracks with your suggestions for your Douthit/Dowthwaites. I have looked up the surname DOUTHWAITE/DOWTHWAITE/DOUTHET in the definitive work, A Dictionary of English Surnames by Reaney & Wilson, and this gives the derivation of the name as being from a place called Dowthwaite in the county of Cumberland or from, as you say, a Dowthwaite Hall in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Cumberland and Yorkshire are virtually adjoining counties, BTW. I do not know where Dowthwaite Hall was (I would be surprised if it still existed) , but I will try and find out. However, we are talking Middle Ages here for the derivation of surnames. I doubt a French Huguenot origin for the name. Dowthwaite, the place name in Cumberland, seems much more likely. "Thwaite" is a very common suffix in hundreds of place names and surnames in the north of England. It derives from the Viking Old Norse word for a clearing, meadow or piece of enclosed land. I do hope you turn out to have Yorkshire ancestry. Not for nothing do we Yorkshire folks refer to it as the "Texas of England"! Roy Stockdill Editor, The Journal of One-Name Studies The Stockdill Family History Society (Guild of One-Name Studies, FedFHS) STOCKDILL PREST YELLOW BOLTON WORSNOP GIBSON MIDGLEY BRACEWELL SHACKLETON BRADLEY MOODY in Yorkshire North & West Ridings MEAD YOUNG in Somerset, Wiltshire & Gloucestershire Web page of the Stockdill Family History Society:- http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roystock ”Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith (scholar and humorist 1771-1845)