Hi Richard, Many thanks for that succinct rundown on the origins of this name. I have an Ashbel Welch who married Margaret Dorrance 15 Oct 1795 in Windham, CT, whose son Ashbel died in Lambertville in 1882, but I had never thought to pursue that surname. (Source: 'A Genealogy of the Descendants of George and Margery Dorrance Together With Notes on Some Later Dorrance Emigrants to America', compiled by Mrs I.H. Wynne and John D. Morrell, 1948.) Mary Mary Kyritsis Kifissia, Greece