I have been researching the details about my ancestors for the past 17 years. In the early days I had a full time job which restricted how much time I could spend on this hobby but now that I have recently retired I am able to spend much more time exploring our past.

I started by looking in all of the UK telephone directories. I found only 15 'Morles' listed. I wrote to these 15 people asking if they would provide a family tree of their immediate family. Taking this information, which all 15 kindly provided, I added information researched at the Central Record Office in London. It became apparent that, although there were not many of us, we were not all obviously related. In the interests of clarity I initially labelled the different parts, or branches, of the Morle family tree with the letters 'A' to' F' and each person was allocated a number within that group. As I uncovered more detail and built up family trees, I became 'Colin A84 Morle'. In the Morle genealogy data I will always be 'A84'.

It is hoped that eventually all of these groups will have links established. During recent months I have found the links that allow me to join together groups B, D, E, F and G. This leaves groups A and C to be resolved.
I visited the County Record Office in Taunton, Somerset, a number of times and Census and Local Parish Birth/Marriage/Death information was examined. This involved spending many hours staring at microfilmed images of poor handwriting looking for the occasional glimpse of the elusive word 'Morle'.
I have made fair degree of progress with my own direct descendants and have a complete family tree back to the year 1800 and a 'guestimated' tree back to 1713. From 1700 to well into the 1800's the 'A' branch of the Morle's were centered around the Williton area of Somerset and mainly employed as farm labourers. There were other strong groups of Morle's not far away at places such as West Bagborough with others in Aisholt and other surrounding villages in the Watchet/Bridgwater/Taunton triangle. See Map.

There are not many Morle's. In some ways this has nade the genealogy easier because I simply assumed that we were all related and indeed it is looking like we are. Whilst looking for Morle's I have come across records of people with the surname 'Morl'. These people may also be related and I will add them to my To Do list. I am sure you have had to carefully spell your surname to people at some time or other. I have come across parish records that show people, all in the same family, christened as Morle, Morl or Morol who later appear as a marriage or death record as Morle!

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