ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the sources that are available, and also the numerous pitfalls some of them by no means obvious. A preliminary enquiry into the distribution of Devon family names today, using only one source, produced some useful quick results, but they call for much further work. Maunder is a peculiarly Devon name, and Guppy lists it as such. It seems to be the same as Mander in other parts of the country. The Suffolk hearth tax assessment for 1674, which fortunately has been printed, shows that the four parishes inhabited by Finchams in the 1520s had become eleven parishes 150 years later. A count of the number of different names for Newton St Cyres in 1642 gives 101 names. There are a great many more records which could be used to trace the distribution of Thirsks in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
