Irish families as septs of Highland Clans

[Geoff Withnell]

You do have to be careful trying to decipher family names. Withnell is relatively a straightforward Welsh name. We had always assumed that my father's mother, born Mary Davies, was also Welsh as Davies is a common Welsh name. However, when we started doing serious research, we found her name spelled variously as Davies, Davis, or Davys - sometimes with multiple spellings on the same document! And the records from the time of her marriage to my grandfather indicate that she was from "up North". Since they lived in Lancashire, England at the time, that would seem to be Scotland, and further research lead to a connection with Davidson Clan.