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Goucher Research Paper

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When I first started researching my husband’s surname of Goucher back in 1993, I wrote to the various Goucher researchers I came across. My husband’s paternal line can be found in the Derbyshire town of Scarcliffe, close to the Nottinghamshire border. The Surname itself though appears quite heavily in the County of Staffordshire and Yorkshire, with a further instance of the surname in Sussex in the South East of England.
One of the researchers I wrote to wrote back to me with two interesting comments. Firstly, that there was always a Samuel in the various family lines. Yes, I would agree with that. My husband’s great and great, great Grandfathers’ were both called Samuel. The second thing that was shared was the story of a large extended family of Goucher’s who migrated to the United States and were well known gunsmiths. The timeframe for the migration was around the 1861–1865 period which is the same time span as the American Civil War, although there has been earlier references found to a variation of the surname.

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From the personal collection of Julie Goucher, obtained from Minnesota Archives & published with permission …show more content…

Some of my husband’s early ancestors in the Derbyshire area were recorded as Goacher and rather interestingly I also have Goacher’s on my maternal line, and I suspect that might be a subject for another day! The reality is that there are around thirty variants to the surname and I am not at all sure I will ever get to the bottom of it

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