I have the list of Pittsylvania, VA, marriage abstracts done by Mike K. Williams, and I have noticed two entries in that: (1) the abstract of the marriage of Robert P. Dick to Mary E. Adams, daughter of George Adams, in 1848 has this: "(mkw NOTE" usually spelled 'Dix')." I think that note was added with the assumption that Robert was part of the Dicks/Dix family of Pittsylvania County and other nearby areas of Virginia. However, Robert P. Dick was none other than Robert Paine Dick of Guilford County, NC, who may have lived in Pittsylvania briefly, but he soon returned to Guilford, where he was born and grew up, and where he had a long and distinguished legal and judicial career. The men in this family were well-educated, and they never used the plural form of the surname in their own papers. And the Guilford county clerks almost always used the singular form to refer to this Scots-Irish family, and the plural form to refer to the Quaker Dicks/Dix family in the same area. So, while there will be a lot of variation of the surname in records from other areas, the Guilford area records are pretty consistent overall -- perhaps in a determination to distinguish one family group from the other. I am the administrator of the DNA study on this surname at Family Tree DNA, and we have tested descendants of both groups, and so I can tell you that these two families are not related. However, the surname could easily have taken a different form when dealing with different county clerks in different counties. I have seen references to a Dick or Dicks family in early Pittsylvania County. I do not know of any connection between the Guilford family and the Pittsylvania family, but one wonders how Robert Paine Dick met his bride in the first place. It is possible that she could have visited family or friends in Guilford. The earliest record of the Scots-Irish family in the Guilford area was when William Dick appeared on a 1768 tax list of Rowan County, in the area that later became part of Guilford County. If someone knows of any possible connection or link between the families in VA and NC, I would be glad to know about it. (2) the abstract of a marriage of "Thomas R. Dick" of Surry County, NC, to Manerva Trammell, daughter of Wm. and Eliabeth Trammell, in 1854. I had not spotted this before, and I am extremely interested in that. It is possible that this is actually Thomas H. Dick of Surry County NC, who was born in Guilford and moved to Surry in the late 1840's. "H" can easily be confused with "R." Thomas H. Dick was a cousin of Robert Paine Dick. The groom's age, 65, is the same age that Thomas H. Dick would have been, and Thomas H. Dick's first wife Anna Hall died about 1850. Does anyone known anything more about this marriage and the bride? I will have to get a copy of the marriage bond, to compare signatures, but I have just discovered this marriage in the book of abstracts. The 1860 census record on this family is less than clear. Manerva Trammell was age 38 at the time of the marriage, while her husband was 65. In the 1860 census, Thomas is shown as "infirm" and living in his son-in-law's Benjamin Griffith's household; and there is a M. E. Dick, age 32, listed after him. M. E. Dick could be a daughter whose name in the 1950 census is somewhat different. Manerva Trammell would have been age 44 in 1860, if the marriage bond information is correct. She could have died before 1860. The 1870 mortality schedule shows that Thomas Heath Dick was a widower when he died in October 1869. I'd like to sort this out, and see if I can determine whether the Thomas R. Dick who married in Pittsylvania in 1854 is actually Thomas H. Dick, my ancestor. Surry and Pittsylvania are close to each other, as are Guilford and Pittsylvania, and these marriages suggest the possibility of a relationship of some kind between the Dick/Dicks/Dix families of those counties. There was also a Dicks/Dix family in early Surry County, but I've never been able to find a connection between them and my line. It seems that Thomas H. Dick moved from Guilford to Surry to improve his health, in the common belief that the air of the mountain foothills and the water from the springs in the area would have restorative powers. Katherine Dick Benbow ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com