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« on: Wednesday 09 April 08 02:06 BST (UK) »
Hi Beverley,
There are likely to have been several different 'Gwatkin' families, which makes it more diifficult for you to find your Gwatkins
The name developed from the Welsh patronymic system. If your name was Howell and your father's name was Walter, then you might have been called Howell ap Gwatkin. ('Ap' meaning son of, and Watkin being a pet name for Walter. The Welsh for reasons unknown to me, seem to have been inclined to stick a 'G' in front of a 'W' when it was preceeded by the 'ap'. They did the same for William, hence the surname 'Gwilliam'. If anyone knows for sure why they did this, I would love to hear from them! Perhaps saying apgw was easier than saying apw?)
When people had to choose last names in the sense we mean now, some people just dropped the 'ap' or the 'ap G', and called themselves 'Watkin' or 'Watkins', and others, only a few families from my very preliminary look at it, but more than one, dropped the 'ap' and called themselves 'Gwatkin'. (There are a few 'Gwalters' too.)
This is a long-winded way of saying that if you want to contact people in your Gwatkin family, you will need to narrow things down a bit.
I assume that the person who gave you the information about Martha Gwatkin got the information from the IGI. It is not possible to work out from the IGI who Martha's parents were. There are only two Martha's on the IGI records who are likely to have been the Martha in question, and although I know which of these I would favour, the IGI information gives an incomplete record of the people who were around at the relevant time. You would really need a will or something of the kind to give us more of an indication of the direction in which to search.
Thanks for giving me something interesting to investigate!
Ana