This is a message to all the descendants of William Washburn, the immigrant ancestor to Long Island. Researchers from the Nichols family are closer to solving the identity of the wife of William Washburn. It appears that the origins of Francis Nichols of Connecticut may have been found in the little town of Sedgeberrow, which is only about 4 miles south of Evesham in an arm of the county extending down into the county of Gloucester. Tantilizingly, the parish registers of Sedgeberrow reveal a large cluster of Nichols families there, including the marriage of Francis Nichols to Frances Wimarke on 24 Jan. 1599, and the baptisms of a son John Nichols on 21 May 1603, a daughter Jane Nichols on 11 or 14 Nov. 1605, and a son Isaac Nichols on 27 Dec. 1617, in addition to several other children. There is no burial record in Sedgeberrow for Jane Nichols, leaving the possibility open that she may have been the wife of William Washburn, since his widow at death was named Jane, and there was some kind of kinship between the Washburns and Nichols families, but disappointingly there was no marriage recorded in Sedgeberrow between William Washburn and Jane Nichols to confirm this. Some Nichols family researchers have hired a professional genealogist to study this, and I understand that an article is forthcoming in probably "The American Genealogist" which will undoubtedly mention the Nichols-Washburn connection. Keep your eyes open for it. There is a great map of this part of Worcestershire to be found at the Worcester County section of the GENUKI. The URL for Worcestershire is: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/WOR/ ...and the link to the map is at: http://med441.bham.ac.uk/cgi-bin/makemap.pl?plain=1&map=WOR&xcoord=16&ycoord =15 (I hope the URL isn't too long to make it through the email...) John A. Maltby Redwood City, CA jamaltby@creative.net