My father's name was Daniel Brown. I have known that my grandma Brown's maiden surname was Vousden for as long as I can remember, probably because it is an unusual name. The name Daniel was also given to my grandma's brother, her father, his father, and to his father's brother.

It was this long line of Vousdens named Daniel that led me to Goudhurst, where I found that my 3 x great grandfather William Vousden had been baptised on 24 August 1800 at St. Mary's Parish Church, one of the three sons and three daughters of Thomas Vousden and Elizabeth Luck. The sisters were Elizabeth, Ann and Mary. The other two brothers were Thomas, named after their father, and Daniel, the first of the long line of that name.

In about 1990 my cousin's wife gave me a sheaf of family papers, some no more than scraps, collected by my father's sister. Amongst them was a copy of the Attestation of a Daniel Vousden into the Ninth Regiment of Lancers at Maidstone Barracks on 26 August 1852.

I did nothing with these papers for several years, but when, finally, I started the family history research seven years later I started with the Vousdens. My grandma's birth certificate revealed that her parents were Daniel Vousden and Agnes Turpin. I obtained my great grandfather's marriage and birth certificates and found that he was born in 1865, the son of Daniel Vousden and Mary Ann née Davies. This latter Daniel was a clock maker, an exact match with the occupation of the Daniel who joined the Ninth Lancers in 1852.

Daniel began his military service at the Cavalry Depot in Maidstone, Kent, on 26 August 1852 and he was discharged on 18 March 1854 at Dublin, having transferred to the 21st Foot in February 1853. After a short-lived army career, Daniel returned to clock making, had a brief spell as a tobacconist, and then, by June 1870, when daughter Alice Maude was born, he was an Innkeeper.

Daniel married Mary Ann Davies on 7 August 1859 at St. Olave Church in Southwark, Surrey. In the 1861 census Daniel and Mary Ann were living in Lambeth with their 6 month old daughter Sarah Ann. By 1871 they had left London for Guildford, where Daniel became the Innkeeper of the "Railway Arms", Farnham Road, Guildford, also known as the "South Western" hotel at the railway station in Guildford. This was to be the beginning of a long association of my Vousden family with public houses. When he died in 1874 Daniel was described as an Innkeeper at Farnham Road, Guildford. However, he was remembered by his earlier trade of a clock maker at the marriages of his son Charles in 1888 and of his daughter Minnie in 1900. The Railway Hotel was situated close to the entrance to the railway station. It was pulled down in 1963 to make way for a pedestrian subway.

FROM INDIA TO THE CRIMEA, AND BACK

Daniel was the youngest of four children of William and Sarah; the others were James, Thomas and Rebecca. Rebecca married John Arthur Warden, a letter carrier, in 1858 and they were living in St. Pancras when she was widowed and later died in 1881. Her three brothers were all in the army. James died in 1846 in Agra, East indies. In 1841 Thomas was an army private stationed at the North Infantry barracks at Walmer, Kent. He was a corporal when he married Catherine Horrigan in Gillingham in 1843, an officer when he married his second wife Mary Jane Burkitt at Rye in 1863 and a halfpay captain in the army at his death in 1872. He took part in the charge of the 21st Royal North British Fusiliers at Inkerman, 5th November 1854.

An Olando Norrie watercolour shows the Inkerman scene when the regiment charged and repulsed an attack launched by two Russian Battalions. Lt Col Ainslie, later mortally wounded, is on horseback. To his rear right, with drawn sword is Sergeant Major Thomas Vousden who became quartermaster after Inkerman. The original Norrie watercolour is held at the Regimental Headquarters of The Royal Highland Fusiliers in Glasgow.

Thomas and Catherine had one son, William John, born in 1845 in Perth, Scotland. William John Vousden followed in his father's military footsteps and rose to high rank. He died in Lahore, India in 1902, leaving a wife and one child. William John's father Thomas retired from the army to live at Stream Farm at Peasmarsh near Rye in Sussex. One of my outstanding research tasks is to find out if this is the same farm at Peasmarsh where ex-Beatle Paul McCartney lives.

FROM GOUDHURST TO BROMLEY

Daniel's attestation states that he was born in Bromley, Kent in 1830, and I soon found the record of his baptism at Holy Trinity Parish Church in that year. He was the son of William Vousden and Sarah, but to this day I have not found a record of their marriage, or Sarah's maiden name. We know only that her birthplace was not in Kent. Rebecca was also baptised in Bromley, two years earlier than Daniel. The birthplace or places of their two older brothers are not yet known. However, it is clear that at some time probably in the 1820s, William left Goudhurst to live in Bromley. William was a stage coachman and later a coach proprietor. He died at the young age of 38, in 1839, in Bromley, where he was buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity.

In the 1841 census his widow Sarah was 40 years old, still living in Bromley Town with her two youngest children Rebecca (12) and Daniel (10). She was a dealer in china at that time, but I have not yet found her, or Rebecca, in the 1851 census. Sarah moved to Camden Town near St. Pancras, London, perhaps to be closer to her daughter, where in 1860 she died in her home at 85 Bayham Street after a heart attack, aged 61 years.

I have a library-bound copy of 'The Monumental Inscriptions in the Church and Churchyard of Bromley, Co. Kent', transcribed by Richard Holworthy in 1922. It contains details of well over 800 monuments, many of which have now been lost.

The only Vousden entries are on one of these lost family graves.