BURROWS & DODWELL

[Tony]

Interested in these two families of Oxfordshire.
Extensive tree to share with any distant relatives or other contributors.

[Lesley Robertson]

Interested in these two families of Oxfordshire.
Extensive tree to share with any distant relatives or other contributors.

Tony, you might attract a bit more attention if you provide a bit more information - these are not terribly rare surnames. A few forenames, places and (even rough) dates give people something to work with.
Lesley

[Tony]

Yep, got it Lesley.
I was giving it a broad sweep hoping to fill in irritating recordless gaps in a big tree and to perhaps hook an earlier unfound Dodwell progenitor dude (who cameth unto Long Crendon Bucks from God knows where pre-1696 and settled there, but seers wiser than me have said he may have originated from the Oxford area - possibly or possibly not being related to the DODWELLS of Gloucestershire).

[Geoffers]

Have any of the Hearth Tax returns been published for either Bucks or Oxon? This may give you a spread of the surname over a cluster of parishes and a likely place to beginneth looking.

Any settlements surviving for Long Crendon?

Hath he wealth enough to leave a will?

[Tony]

Good pwoynte Geoffers - I do have lots of genealogical material and other stuff - especially relating to Dorset (I have a large glass-fronted bookcase in the sitting room full to overflowing with exclusively Dorset literature of one kind of another*).
Unfortunately my antecedent family tendrils are so widely spread over the land that cost and shelf-space becomes a factor in trying to match fifty counties with genealogically-useful printed matter. The libraries over here are no help of course.
As we have all found out with most records, unless you know specific place and specific dates and some key link to a specific individual, like say an unusual occupation (badger nurdling comes to mind) finding the right name in a likely place doesn't equate to finding the right dude.
One must be careful not to get stuck pursuing endless fruitless lines of enquiry and inadvertently overshoot the allotted fourscore and ten and the really big breakthrough still over the horizon.
. . .
*Such as 'Mary Chafin's Original Country Recipes' (of 17th century Dorset) which includes an all-time favourite of mine - 'Ragout of Hog's Ears', and another: 'Lady Lear's Little Hollow Bisketts'.
Also the phraseology is of the amusingly quaint 'take a fair-sized hare' kind.
I was also lucky to obtain the 3 volume set of 'Old Buildings of Weymouth' many years back - compiled from the notes and copious beautiful architectural pencil sketches of Eric Ricketts featuring a great number of buildings of architectural and historical significance now long-disappeared from the town.
Just wanted to get all that off my chest.

[Geoffers]

One thing you might try is to use the free searches available on

Oxfordshire Heritage

I don't know if Bucks RO has anything similar, but you could always try
Access to Archives

You might locate something to give you some ideas.

[Tony]

Thanks Geoffers. It really has become possible to be an armchair genealogist hasn't it . . . but is that a good thing?

[Pennie]

You may find it interesting to know that in the index to the 1641/2 Oxfordshire Protestation Returns (which cover approx. 50% of the county) the surname DODWELL is recorded for the parishes of Brize Norton and Rousham.

Checking the PRs for Brize Norton, there is one marriage and a couple of burials for DODSWELL in the mid 1600s. If these are of any interest please let me know and I'll let you have the full entries.

Pennie

[Tony]

Pennie - Thomas DODWELL's wife Anne died in 1667. So if you see anything that could conceivably be them that would be of great interest. I have been to RAF Brize Norton but it never crossed my mind to wonder whether the place might have a family connection.
Thanks for the possibility - shot in the dark though it may be.

[Pennie]

Do you have Thomas and Anne's marriage?