From: "Brian Binns" <bnbinns@gmail.com> > The surname ETCHES has been around Nottingham for years. > That becomes clear when you look at Surname Atlas and the distribution of the name in the 1881 census. There were 345 people called ETCHES throughout Britain, 61 of them - the greatest number - in Nottinghamshire. Next highest number 59, were in Yorkshire West Riding, followed by 44 in Derbyshire, which seems to suggest some Nottinghamshire Etches families had crept across the adjoining county borders. This is a very common factor when you are examining the likely epicentre of a particular surname. When sub-divided into Poor Law Unions (registration and enumeration districts), the largest number of individual entries were in Nottingham itself (22), followed by Derby (20) and Sheffield (15). There were only 23 people with the name ETCHER in the whole country in 1881 - none at all in Nottinghamshire - and not a single EITCHER. This leads me to believe even more that the George Eitcher spoken of by the OP was originally a transcription error or a "rogue" family with the wrong name, especially since there are only two Eitchers - George and his presumed son George William in the whole of FreeBMD and none at all in any census apart from Mary Eitcher (George's wife) in 1891, nor are there any in the IGI when one switches on exact spelling. For the OP - I have just discovered that both ETCHES and ETCHER are registered with the Guild of One-Name Studies. If you go to our website at www.one-name.org and follow the links, you will be able to discover the name of the person doing the study. It's a lady in East Yorkshire. Maybe she can help. She also shows ETCHELLS as one of her names and this, of course, is the name of the well-known genealogist Guy Etchells, a friend of mine, to whom we all owe a huge debt of thanks since he is the man who by confronting TNA with a Freedom of Information request forced them to issue the 1911 census two yeas early! -- Roy Stockdill Professional genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE