Vousdens Worldwide

The search for Ella's Vousden family

2009-11-25T16:10:00.010Z

Today we have solved another small Vousden mystery.

In February 2008 I was contacted by Gavin Grant in New Zealand who asked simply: "My grandmother Ella Beecher birth 1879, mother's maiden name was Vousden. I would like any help finding her and her link to the Vousdens."

I searched for an Ella (or Ellen or Eleanor) Beecher with a mother whose maiden name was Vousden, to no avail. Five months later, my correspondent had tracked down Ella's marriage record, on FIBIS (the Families in British India web site) Bengal Marriages. She had married Ernest Thomas Fulcher in Bombay on the 15th May 1903. Her father's name was William Beecher, so now we were looking for a Vousden married to William Beecher. This was a bit more to be going on with, but still we could not find Ella's mother.

All this searching for the Vousden connection was based on a letter from his Aunty which said "Grannie's parents were from Kent, her mother's name was Vousden of German origin".

By now Gavin Grant knew that Ella's birth date was 25th August 1879, the same year as her husband Thomas Ernest Fulcher, August 4th 1879. Moreover, he had Ernest's service records from the First World War (he was stationed in India, Burma and Ceylon). It made interesting reading: he enlisted in 1892 and retired in 1934 in Ceylon as a Major. He was now seeking out his Ceylon Defence Force records for 1907-1934 and following up the "Shipping Lists" for any more information that might be gleaned about the India connection.

Meanwhile, we were still pursuing Ella, and the possibility that William Beecher was a stepfather and her mother may have married a William Beecher after she was born and that is why her maiden name is not showing as a Vousden as she would have remarried in her married name. Still to no avail.

Today, more than a year later, I heard again from Gavin after his breakthrough in finding a 1922 passenger shipping list for the Ship "City of Valencia" Liverpool to Ceylon, wherein were Ella Fulcher (née Beecher), his mother N'Eilya Fulcher and her sister Marjory (author of the letter that initiated the Vousden quest). Their last address in England was in Plumstead, London, S.E.18. He had then searched on the same address in the 1911 census which came up with a William Beecher Domestic Gardener aged 80, a widower. Then the 1881 census revealed the following: William Beecher b1831, Francis his Wife (née Skinner) b1839 Hadlow Kent, John son b1865, Harry son b1871, Esther Frances daughter b1875, and Thomas Beecher b1878. All the Beechers were born in Tonbridge, Kent.

The shipping list and the censuses all have the same address, which narrows things down but is not conclusive. Gavin now thought that Ella was Esther Frances Beecher b 1875, and I think he is right in this, but it was still a mystery that his Aunt Marjory stated that Ella's mother's name before marriage was Vousden. He concluded: "I can't seem to find any proof to substantiate this. Was Frances Skinner previously married? I would appreciate any of your thoughts and suggestions."

It took no time at all to realise that indeed I did know the answer. The clue was in the surname SKINNER! I recalled a Vousden family tree given to me a year or two ago that included a Vousden/Skinner marriage, and quickly turned up my record of a 3 year old Francis (sic!) Skinner in the 1841 census, living next door to a William Vousden. Little Frances was living with her widowed mother Sarah Skinner, and her parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Brooker, in Hadlow, Kent.

So, to cut the rest of the story short, it was not Ella's mother Francis Skinner who had previously been married, but Ella's grandmother Sarah-Anne to give her full name, who was a Brooker, married to a Skinner, widowed, and re-married to William Vousden.

This turns out to be the Fulcher family story about their Vousden connection, almost as re-counted by Gavin's Aunty Marjory in her letter. It was not Ella Beecher's mother's maiden name that was Vousden, but Ella's mother's second marriage to a Vousden. Also, at least one of Ella's brothers adopted the Vousden surname after his mother's re-marriage.

Job done.

Death Ends Long Series of Sorrows for Martha Vousden

2009-09-04T01:18:00.012Z

The title of this post is taken from a report in the Washington Times of 5th July, 1910, Last Edition, Page 3 (left). It concerns the life and death in Hillsdale, Michigan, U.S., of Martha Vousden, the identity of whom we will return to later.

I can do no better than reproduce the report word for word.

"At the age of seventy-two Martha Vousden, spinster, is dead at the county farm. Born in England, she followed her betrothed to America tracing her way through the forests of Michigan until she found him at Hillsdale, wedded to another.

"She never returned to her home, but worked at various hotels in this city and elsewhere in southern Michigan for a number of years until confined to the county home a dozen years ago.

"She was badly crippled, having been in two fires, the last one at Marshall, when she fell from the second story to the sidewalk below, breaking through an iron grating. She was injured permanently."

If Martha was 72 years old when she died in 1910 then she was born in about 1837 or 1838. If so I am fairly sure that this Martha was the daughter of Samuel Moses and Hannah (née Watts) Vousden. Moses, as he was generally known, was born in Goudhurst, Kent, England in September 1799. He married Hannah on 10th July 1823 in her nearby home village of Hawkhurst, where they settled to live. Moses worked as a carpenter.

Martha was the fifth of seven children, born in 1836 or 1837. She was at home in the U.K. censuses of 1841, 1851 and 1861 but I have not found her in the 1871. I think she had left for America before then, in search of her betrothed. Her father Samuel died in 1865, and her mother died in 1868.

In the U.S. 1880 census Martha was working as a cook in a hotel in Quincy, Branch County, Michigan, aged 40 years, just as the Washington Times reported. She lived another 30 years, never returning home to England. Notwithstanding the gloomy picture painted by the newspaper report, I hope that she found some happiness in Michigan during those years.

Vousdens and slavery in the US

2009-07-29T20:44:00.016Z

I have discovered a Ben and Mary Vousden and their five children, in Mississippi in the early years of the nineteenth century. I found the reference to this family (via Google Books) in Statutes of the Mississippi Territory and Such Acts of Congress as Relate to the Mississippi Territory, published in Natchez, Mississippi in 1824.

In 1822 the State of Mississippi revised and consolidated all statutes in force at the time, including laws relating to the slave population, and this book is the revised code. Chapter 24 is a Summary of private and local Acts, and sub-titled Sales of Estate by Executors, Administrators, Guardians, etc.

In a section called Persons Emancipated, on page 578, we find "Mary, late the wife of a free person of color, named Ben alias Ben Vousden of Adams county, deceased whom the said Ben purchased of Major Stephen Minor, she being at the time of said purchase, the wife of said Ben."

An act passed December 10, 1816 emancipated Mary, a negro woman, slave, also the five children of Ben and Mary: Louisa, Rachel, Sandy, Mary Ann and Benjamin.

The same act made the county court of Adams county responsible for the children's education, requiring that they "shall be taught to read, write and cypher as far as the Rule of Three, and to be treated and provided for in all respects as apprentices." Also, it provided that " the said children shall have the surname of Vousden and shall be entitled as heirs to the estate of said Ben, alias Ben Vousden, deceased."

A census of the Inhabitants of Mississippi in 1816 - Adams County includes the Estate of Ben Vousdan.

This act of emancipation and the fact that Ben is "alias Vousden", means that his former owner was a man named Vousden. I think I have identified the slave owner, one William Vousden, described elsewhere as "an Irish gentleman of education and means". He was also a very wealthy man.

His mansion and plantation, known as "Cotton Fields", lay on both sides of St. Catherine Creek, at the crossing from Washington to Natchez, beginning at the Dry or Dewitt's Bayou. He was amongst the first to introduce the cultivation of cotton for export in the area.

The early French settlers in the Grand Village of the Natchez settlement district, from the 1720s onwards, established farmsteads and, in two cases, large tobacco plantations between the bluffs and St. Catherine Creek. One known as the St. Catherine Concession was located on St. Catherine Creek.

Natchez was the state’s most active slave trading city in the decades prior to the American Civil War, where enslaved Africans were bought and sold. Natchez played a significant role in the southward movement of the existing slave population to the waiting cotton plantations of the Deep South. Between 1800 and 1860 more than 750,000 slaves were moved from the upper to the lower South, as tobacco declined and cotton replaced it in the economy.

The 19th century slave trade in Mississippi was linked to the growth of the textile industry in England, which had created a voracious market for cotton by the end of the 18th century. Cotton planters in Mississippi and in neighboring states quickly found that slave labor made their business highly profitable. Many slaves were living on the century-old tobacco plantations.

Slave sales at Natchez were held in a number of locations, but one market place eclipsed the others, the market known as "The Forks of the Road" at the intersection of Liberty Road and Washington Road about one mile east of downtown Natchez. (Today, Washington Road is named “D’Evereux Drive,” which changes to “St. Catherine Street” at the Liberty Road intersection.)

Enslaved people were brought down the Natchez Trace to the Forks via Washington (D’Evereux west) Road. Those walked over from the lower southeastern states were brought to the Forks via Old Courthouse Road. Those shipped around on the Atlantic Ocean and down and up the Mississippi River highway routes were off-loaded at Natchez-Under-the-Hill's wharfs and walked out to the Forks via St. Catherine Street.

The last sales at the Forks happened just months before the Union troops occupied Natchez in July 1863, bringing the Emancipation Proclamation and ending slavery in the area. Freed slaves flocked to town from the surrounding countryside, many settling here at the Forks near an encampment of black, Union soldiers who may have used the buildings as barracks. Thus the Forks of the Road market became a refuge for hundreds of emancipated people.

But back to William Vousden. In the Spanish Census of the Natchez District of the Mississippi Territory of 1792 (heads of households only) he is listed in Santa Catalina district as Guillermo Vousdan. Moreover, Ancestry.com's Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s has 4 results for Guillermo or William Vousdan, but at present I don't have access to these records.

That is most of what I have unearthed so far. I wish to trace both William Vousdan and also Ben Vousdan and their families.

Agnes Annie Vousden (1881-1947)

2009-07-28T11:21:00.008Z

In November 2008 I received an enquiry from a Vousden descendant in New Zealand about her great uncle Hillary Charles Vousden. We sorted him out and I learnt that my enquirer is the grand daughter of his sister Agnes Annie, born in Goudhurst on 28 November 1881 who emigrated to New Zealand with her husband (or husband to be?) Ralph. They had two children in Christchurch, where she died in 1947, three years after Ralph.

Earlier this month I received an enquiry from a Vousden descendant in Australia. She had just discovered her father's birth certificate, upon which his mother is listed as Agnes Annie Vousden. It turns out that my two enquirers are first cousins who had lost touch with each other over the years. I have put them back in contact now.

Our common ancestors are my 5 times great grandparents Thomas Vousden and Sarah Borman, me through their son Thomas, they through their son William and his wife Mercy Hyder, amongst whose children were George Thomas, father of Agnes Annie.

Agnes Annie was one of twelve children of George Thomas (1851-1939) and Martha (née Lovell) (1859-1927) Vousden. In birth order they were: John William, Hillary Charles, Agnes Annie, Winifred Maude, George Thomas, Mabel Victoria, Edith Lucy, Sidney Edward, Gertrude Beatrice, Fred James, Alice Minnie Kathleen and Daisy Rose Violet. They are all my 3rd cousins 3 times removed.

Their great grandfather George was in turn one of the twelve children of John (1817-1895) and Jane (née Dadson) (1820-1870) Vousden. They were Mary Jane, John William, Mary Anne, Samuel Hilary, George Thomas, Edward Alfred, Mary Anne (a second), Anne Elizabeth, Frederick Charles, Sarah Anne, Edwin Pryor and Jack. Jane Dadson's father was Hilary Dadson, hence the name of one of Agnes Annie's brothers and one of her father's too. John was widowed by Jane's death in 1870 and in the same year he re-married to Annie Clouty.

John was one of eight children of William (1777-1857) and Mercy (née Hyder) Vousden: Sarah, William, Thomas, Mary Ann, Richard, Liberty, John and James Hyder. William's brother Thomas was my 4 x great grandfather.

Another Mary Ann Vousden - my great grandfather's sister

2008-10-02T21:47:00.009Z

In July 2006 I posted a message on genealogy.com's online Pickess Family Genealogy Forum about Mary Ann Vousden's marriage to William Charles Pickis. She was my great grandfather Daniel Vousden's sister. They married at West Ham Parish Church on 25 June 1904.

I should mention that there are of course many Mary Ann Vousdens. Another one of them is the subject of other articles on this blog.

Today I received a message from Mary Ann and William's great grandson and now I am looking forward to hearing from my new-found cousin.

Edwin's Story

2008-08-21T22:09:00.006Z

Today I received a copy of the fascinating book Edwin's Story and a Vousden family tree that takes a contemporary family back to Richard Vousden (1735-1807), my 5 x great grandfather's brother.

Edwin left a handwritten account of his life through to the early 1930s.

Edwin Vousden (1859-1936) was born in Brenchley, worked on a farm from the age of 11, and then went into service as a groom, working in London and Gloucestershire. Finally, in 1897, he became a baker and grocer in the village of Liddington, Wiltshire.

The family tree and the information in the book add greatly to my knowledge of the Brenchley branch of the Vousdens, started when Edwin's great grandfather Richard left Goudhurst to marry Mary Jarrett there in 1759.

Mary Ann Vousden - more on Sister Marian

2006-10-24T16:37:00.004Z

Since my first posting on Mary Ann Vousden less than a fortnight ago I have pursued her from London to New Zealand and back to Hastings, Kent. Whilst I have not yet found a civil record of her birth, or a baptism record, nevertheless I have conclusively identified her.

I obtained a copy of the book 'Community of the Sacred Name, A Centennial History' by Ruth Fry, an account of life in the Anglican religious order in Christchurch in which Mary Ann spent her years in New Zealand. From this book I gleaned one or two more facts about her life, and a photograph that includes her.

I also obtained Mary Ann's death certificate from which I learnt that she died on 2 July 1920 at 19 Brook Street, Hastings, Kent of cancer and bronchitis. Her death certificate provides two vital clues as to her family origins. Firstly, she was described as "Spinster Deaconess. Formerly Hospital Nurse. Daughter of James Vousden a Timber-hewer (deceased)." It is very rare indeed to find a father's name on a UK death certificate, especially for a 75 year old woman, but this was not the decisive piece of evidence.

The second clue was that the registrar was informed of her death by "E.H. Woodyer, sister". At first I thought this person might be a nursing sister but I checked the UK national marriage index and found a Vousden-Woodyer marriage between an Elizabeth Hider Vousden and William Woodyer, in Lambeth, Surrey (now south London) in the April-June quarter of 1870. Elizabeth Hider is known to me, she had a sister Mary Ann, and their parents were James Hider Vousden and Elizabeth nee Waghorn.

I then found James and Elizabeth and their children in the 1851 census, in Goudhurst, including daughter Mary Ann, aged 6. This age is an exact match for the Mary Ann Vousden already identified in the 1871 and 1881 censuses. Clearly, the 1851/1871/1881 census ages and the age given on her death certificate all point to a birth year of 1844/5.

Mary Ann Vousden's grandparents were William and Mercy Vousden, the same couple who feature in an earlier blog: Walter Vousden and the Town Crier of Niagara Falls. Her great grandparents, Thomas and Sarah (nee Borman) Vousden were my 5 x great grandparents, making us second cousins 4 times removed, and so yet another "stray" Vousden is re-located into Goudhurst.

Mary Ann Vousden - Sister Marian

2006-10-11T18:34:00.003Z

The Biographical Directory of Anglican Clergy can be found online at www.kinderlibrary.ac.nz/information-sources/anglican-clergy-intro.asp. It is a database of biographical information on clergy and deaconesses of the Anglican Church in New Zealand, Polynesia, and Melanesia.

This Directory has been compiled by the Reverend Michael Blain, with the assistance of many volunteers, librarians and archivists. He welcomes corrections and additions, together with the source of the amended information and we have been in contact over one of the entries - Mary Ann Vousden.

Mary Ann trained as a nurse and whilst working at the Marylebone Infirmary in 1890 she was persuaded by Frances Torlesse, whose mother's brother was Edward Gibbon Wakefield who formed the company that began the systematic colonisation of New Zealand, to move there. Sister Mary Ann consulted Florence Nightingale who wrote her a letter of good wishes for the venture.

Mary Ann left for New Zealand on 5 November 1890 and in January 1892 she was admitted as probationer Deaconess in the Anglican church in Christchurch. In 1893 she became matron of the Female Refuge, a charitable institution where she had the care of young women facing confinement. Marian Vousden, as she was now known, took her final vows and was professed as Sister in the Order of Deaconesses on 21 December 1900.

In 1905 Sister Marian was temporarily in charge of a Home for Inebriates. For another five years she continued working at a Samaritan Home, until in 1910 she fell ill and returned to England the following year. She died on 2 July 1920 in Hastings.

This Mary Ann Vousden is one of the more elusive people in the Anglican Directory, especially from a genealogical standpoint, which to be fair is not its main purpose . The Directory gives her birth date and place as 23 December 1839 in Goudhurst, Kent and lists a number of possible census entries, including for 1861, 1871 and 1881.

The suggested 1871 and 1881 entries are convincing. In 1871 she was a nurse maid in the family of James H Harrison, barrister notary of the peace and JP residing in Kensington, London and in 1881 she was a day-nurse at St. Thomas Hospital in Lambeth, Surrey. She was aged 26 and 36 years respectively, both suggesting a birth year of 1845 or thereabouts. Her birth place is given as Goudhurst in both censuses. Mary Ann died in 1920 at the age of 75 years, which also points to a birth in about 1845.

However, the suggested 1861 census entry, of a 6 year old Mary Ann, daughter of John and Jane Vousden in Goudhurst, is not so convincing. This age is not consistent with a birth in 1839 nor with the age of the woman in Kensington and Lambeth in 10 and 20 years time. Moreover, the 1839 birth date is at odds with these two census records.

There is another discrepancy in the Directory's biographical detail. It says that she nursed in the Crimea War with Florence Nightingale, and the source for this statement may be Ruth Fry's Centennial History of the Community of the Sacred Name, an account of the Anglican religious order in Christchurch to which Sister Marian belonged.

Florence Nightingale left England for Turkey on 21 October 1854 with 38 volunteer Roman Catholic and Anglican sisters and lay nurses, arriving early in November 1854, and she returned to Britain on 7 August 1857. In 1860, with a public fund raised in tribute to her services in the Crimea, Nightingale founded the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses at Saint Thomas’s Hospital in London. The opening of this school marked the beginning of professional education in nursing.

Mary Ann Vousden was working at St. Thomas's in the 1881 census. The problem is that it is not credible that she could have nursed in the Crimea with Florence Nightingale, because she was only a child at the time. It is possible, however, that she might have known Nightingale from her time at St. Thomas's.

As well as my interest in Sister Marian as a Vousden, there is another family interest for me in this story. Frances Torlesse, who persuaded her to go to New Zealand, was a niece of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, whose son Daniel married Angela Attwood, whose father Thomas was the first Member of Parliament for Birmingham, England's second city. Angela is my third cousin four times removed, that is, her 2 x great grandparents George and Mary Attwood are my 6 x great grandparents.

James and Martha Vousden - back to Goudhurst

2006-09-13T01:23:00.002Z

On 2 September I wrote about James and Martha Vousden in Saskatchewan, Canada (1901 census). I had obtained a copy of their marriage certificate and then I sent for James' birth certificate, confident that he would fit into the main body of Vousdens from Goudhurst.

And indeed this is the case. The copy certificate of James's birth (26 July 1847) names his parents as William Vousden and Sarah Presnail, both of whom were already in my extended family tree. William and Sarah married 25 June 1834 at Brenchley. William was the son of William Vousden and Judith Sills, this William was the son of Richard and Mary (Jarrett).

Richard was born in Goudhurst in 1735 and he married Mary in Brenchley on 15 April 1759. I believe this is the first Vousden marriage at Brenchley, and the first Vousden baptisms at Brenchley follow soon after.

Richard's brother Thomas, and his wife Sarah (Borman), are my 5 x great grandparents. Thomas and Richard were sons of John and Sarah (Wousley) who married at All Saints, Maidstone on 20 November 1733. The parish register describes both my 6x great grandparents as being "of Goudhurst".

I have traced them back to the 1500s in Goudhurst, a further five generations with reasonable surety - all John Vousdens! We do seem to have been a little short of imagination when it came to naming children.

Walter Vousden and the Town Crier of Niagara Falls

2006-09-04T18:40:00.001Z

I discovered the Curious Fox web site some months ago, but made little use of or reference to it. It describes itself as: "The village by village contact site for anybody researching family history, genealogy and local history in the UK and Ireland. Every UK county, town and village has a page for family history, local history, surname and genealogy enquiries."

Anyway, recently I took another look and found someone searching for a Vousden. I joined as a paid member so that I could send a message to this "mailbox". David Stephenson's request was: "I am looking for info on Richard Vousden who lived in the Cranbrook area around the 1880's. His only surviving son was Walter Vousden, who married a Eliza White a native of Staplehurst. They moved to Eastry in 1890."

After exchanging a couple of e-mails we worked out that Walter was the son of a Richard and Mary (Jenner) whose household in the 1841 census I knew of but had not hitherto connected into the larger Vousden "family". In 1841 Richard was living at Iden Green in Goudhurst and working as a gamekeeper.

I now looked harder than I had done before for Richard's baptism and from the 1851 census I found that he was was born in Sandhurst, Kent. Like Goudhurst, Sandhurst parish records are not in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) but with the help of Google it took only a few minutes to find an online transcription. Richard was baptised on 20 August 1809, the son of William and Mercy Vousden.

Richard was not baptised in Goudhurst as were his numerous brothers and sisters. However, in my records there was a gap of five years between Thomas born in 1807 and Liberty born in 1812, and already I had an idea that William and Mercy (also known as Mary) may have left Goudhurst for a time and returned.

William was the brother of my 4 x great grandfather, Thomas Vousden. Richard was a gamekeeper to T.W. Roberts Esq. according to the parish register entry for the baptism of his son William in 1841. Richard's brother Liberty was also a gamekeeper, at the Glassenbury estate, and it is recorded that in December 1838 he pursued a group of poachers, as a result of which eleven men were charged with various offences at the Assizes.

David knows a lot about the lives of Walter and Eliza, one of whose children Blanche was his grandmother. It turns out that one of Blanche's sisters had a son Derek who is now the Town Crier at Niagara Falls in Canada. The City's web site gives some detail about Derek's job on the Town Crier page.

James and Martha Vousden - from Kent to Canada

2006-09-02T18:44:00.003Z

Whilst researching for the Vousdens Abroad - Canada page on the One-Name Study web site I found that in the 1901 census there was only one Vousden family in that country. This was James and Martha and their children in Saskatchewan, and I found them also on the 1881 census in England, before their emigration.

A couple of weeks ago I was re-checking old entries on the Rootsweb Vousden Message Board and I spotted a request in 2002 by a Joan Hedberg for the following information: "Trying to find anyone that knows of Vousdens, Elizabeth, parents, James and Martha. What I know of them they were in Ernestown, Lennox and Addington in Ontario late 1800 to early 1900s. Elizabeth married Wesley Lester in Ernestown 21 March 1892 and they had a son born Ernestown 24 May 1893, Bap 21 Mar 1894."

One and the same family! No doubt. And no reply had been posted in over 4 years. A quick e-mail and an equally quick reply from Joan confirmed that we were talking about the same family. One of Joan's Lester ancestors had married Elizabeth Vousden and we are now working together, trying to track Elizabeth's father James through his early life in Brenchley, Kent, England.

I have obtained a copy of James and Martha's marriage certificate and this tells us that his father was William Vousden, a labourer. I have now sent for James' birth certificate. Meanwhile, Joan has found the Vousdens on the 1851, 1861, 1871 census as well as Elizabeth Wheatley and daughter Martha on the 1861 census.

We are making rapid progress, and I am confident that we will soon have James fitted into the main body of Vousdens from Goudhurst.

And it so happens that Joan also has Brown ancestors and she lives near Vancouver just a few miles away from my cousin Linda.

Vousden One-Name Study - First Post

2006-08-29T18:18:00.005Z

It is almost six months since I registered my grandmother's maiden name VOUSDEN with the Guild of One-Name Studies and more than three months since I launched my dedicated web site to the Vousden name. The site is devoted to Vousdens Worldwide, including the origins of the Vousden surname.

Even in these past few weeks I have added new names to my list of Vousden correspondents, and cousins, and succeeeded in helping some of them discover more about their own immediate family. However, the Vousden One-Name Study is concerned not with my Vousden family but with the name, and for me at least a principal aim is to find out where the Vousdens came from.

Over the past 400 years Vousdens have been strongly centred in and around the village of Goudhurst in Kent, England. They have lived here since at least the second half of the sixteenth century and today more Vousdens seem to trace their ancestry back to Goudhurst than to any other place. I would like to know where they came from to live in Goudhurst, or whether they have "always" been there. And I would like to know the origin and meaning of the name.

At this time I do not have answers to these questions. The 'conventional wisdom' amongst many Vousden researchers is that we descend from Huguenots escaping persecution in France, but I have yet to find any evidence for this. If you have it, or any other thoughts on the matter, please let me know!