We have not located the Foulks surname link from England to the United States -- yet. That there is such a link seems a certainty. As Foulk, Foulks, Foulkes or Ffoulkes, it is a Welsh name. That the Foulks family name is alive and well in the United Kingdom can be verified by simply glancing through metropolitan phone books in England.

The Foulks and Foulkes name can be found on gravestones in the Welsh cemeteries of St. Silin's churchyard, Llansilin, the St. Dogfans churchyard at Llanrhaeadr Ym Mochnant, and St. Melangell's churchyard in Pennant Melangell. (Information from the Antur Tanat Cain Churchyard Surveys.)

The links we are missing are those of William Foulks, who first appears in our research in 1764, when he moved from Philadelphia to Leesburg, acquiring property. We do not know his parents, or their origins, or how he came to be in Philadelphia. And we do not know, for certain, the surname of his wife, Ann. (Although one record suggests that it is "Hill.")

But there are other ancestral links, direct to the Cumbrian area of northern England, and to Wales.

William Morgan was born in 1594/95 in Wales. His name passes to Charles Morgan, then to Charles Morgan Foulks, and continues to echo with two James Morgan Foulks descendants in separate generations. He died about 1671 in Westmoreland County, Virginia. 1594/95, incidentally, is a correct date reference -- portions of England were then using two different calendar systems.

James Taylor was born about 1615 in Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He died on April 30 1698 in "Hare Forest", Va. His daughter, Elizabeth, married Anthony Morgan (Charles Morgan Sr.'s father), strengthening the linkage of the Morgan family to Northern England. It was common for Colonial landowners to give names to their holdings, hence, "Hare Forest." Taylor was said to be a descendant from the Earles of Hare of Carlisle.

So, although the Foulks surname link to Wales can still not be corroborated, the links of this branch of the Foulks family to England are recorded and distinct through our Morgan ancestry.

For the Thom Foulks branch of the Foulks family, these linkages -- just learned by our family members in 1997 -- produce another unique family tie. Thom Foulks, Jr., is married to Wendy Louise Dixon, a dairyman's daughter from Whitehaven, Cumbria. Adding to the family's international character, they met and wed while both were working in the Seychelles Islands, the 115-island tourism-oriented island group in the Indian Oceach. (For their 1984 wedding, they rented an entire island for the day.)

The potential for a distant "cousin-ly" link between Thom and Wendy is obviously remote and probably not likely. But, factually, they do have ancestors who were within about 40 miles of each other in 1500s England. If Wendy's father, Tony, should turn up a Morgan or Taylor ancestor? Well, Chantelle and Tyler could wind up having the same grandfather, many generations ago, on both sides of the family tree. Somehow, that seems highly improbable. On the other hand, their English-Cumbrian/Welsh roots are undeniable. What is more likely, is that they had ancestors on both sides of the Revolutionary War.

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