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This brief family history is all I ([email protected]) know about Tedstones. If anyone can add to it great. The name Tedstone comes from the Anglo Saxon for thorn bush. In the 17th century the Tedstones owned land near the Welsh borders presumably around Tedstone Wafre and Tedstone Delamere.  According to my father, the Tedstone's dwindled to a last squire who died leaving only an illegitimate son in the village.  This man grew up and married a lady called Eliza Pym (Pim, Prim?).  Eliza was later recalled by her granddaughter who lived to 103 and died in the 1920's.  He bought a database of known Tedstones (Burke Peerage/Halbert’s family heritage). There were only 253 Tedstone households in the world 189 of which are in the UK and concentrated in the West Midlands. That is quite an interesting number as it suggests that over the last 150 years about a fifth of our population has emigrated. Here are my father's recollections: ‘It was Shrewsbury, some time in 1820. Eliza Pim was 5 years old. She was sitting on the stone floor in front of the fire of blazing logs. In her hand she held a buckle shoe. It was old and the leather was cracked, but the brass buckle shone like gold. ‘I like Grandpa’s shoes - will he ever wear them again?’ ‘No, Eliza, he has gone to heaven.’ ‘Will it take him long to get there?’ ‘No, I do not think so, Eliza.’ ‘How old is he, Grandma?’ ‘He is 94 Eliza . . . . ’ Eliza Prim grew up and married a market gardener. They lived at Hopesay in Shropshire, in a little cottage called Penny Gutter. I (ie. Donald Tedsone) visited Hopesay in 1950. Penny Gutter had been burned down to the ground many years before, but there was an old lady there, living in a cottage nearby who remembered my great grandmother, Eliza. Eliza was born in 1815 and died in May 1918 when I was 5 years old. She was a very upright old lady, who wore a black bonnet and black dress and who used to sit in a high backed woodenchair. She had no time for sofas and soft seats and said that when she was a little girl she was made to wear a back board to keep her back straight. And straight it was, even when she was a very old lady. When I as a little boy I am afraid I used to tease her, when she used to say ‘Dunna tease me.’ Eliza had one son and three or four daughters, of which my Aunt May was the youngest. Aunt May was born in 1863 at Hopesay, but left there when she was 13 to take employment as a maid in a house in Birmingham. Eliza and her husband were very poor and could not afford to keep her at home, and in those days there was no work for people as we know it today. A large proportion of the menfolk were engaged as agricultural labourers or were employed as servants in the big houses. When girls grew up their main desire was also to become a servant in a big house. They called this going into service. The people were so poor that a lot of children did not go to school, and grew up without being able to read or write. Although Eliza and her husband were very poor they saw that their children went to school until they were at least 12 or 13 years of age.’ (written by Donald Tedstone) I (Richard Tedstone) believe my father's great grandmother made an attempt to get the estate out of chancery in the early years of the last century but the line of descent could not be proved.  My father's mother, Agnes Tedstone, was a nurse and a strong minded lady (I remember her well) who refused to marry Donald's father.  Donald was born in 1912.  After the Great War she married a patient, Bert Hughes who had TB. He was connected to the Salter weighing machine family and they lived at 2 Beeches Road West Bromwich. Donald himself was bought up in a poor area of Birmingham (Rann Street - now demolished) by a kindly Aunt (Dot? Darwood).