If you are a Baverstock, or have a Baverstock in your ancestry, then at some point way back a direct ancestor came from a very small, though ancient, village in Wiltshire. The name was acquired not just by the major landowner in the village but also by those former inhabitants who had moved from the village to settle elsewhere, becoming first eg John from/of Baverstock and then John Baverstock.

The village can be found in the Doomsday Book as Babestoche:

The church itself holds Babestoche TRE (ie ? in Time of King Edward) it paid geld for 3 hides. There is land for 3 ploughs. Of these 2 hides are in demesne, and there is 1 plough, with 1 slave, and 4 bordars with 2 ploughs, and 6 acres of meadows and 4 acres of pasture. It is worth 60s.

Babestoche has been translated as babbas farm, babba being a nursery name and stoc meaning farm ? therefore possibly a dairy farm but stoc can also mean place and the holding being of the church has seen it defined as ?little holy place?. The original wording as Babestoche also possibly explains the early surnames of Babstock and Baborstock both of which I have come across within the Dorset Baverstock lines.

The main Baverstock line in Dorset all seem to descend from a William Baborstock who died in Alderholt Park, Dorset in 1725. He left a Will which named 6 children, 2 sons William and John and 4 daughters Mary (eldest), Elizabeth, Jane and Joan. Mary appears to have remained unmarried but the other 3 married in Cranborne and their marriages can be found in the early Cranborne registers. Elizabeth married John Major in 1710, Jane married William Compton in 1714 and Joan married Richard Yardley in 1722.

Only one of the two sons married ? William, presumed the eldest by his being named first in his father?s Will died a year after his father in 1726. He also left a Will naming his sisters and brother and thus helps to confirm the family. The younger son John married Elizabeth Ranger in 1726 and from the research I have done would appear to be the ancestor of any person tracing their line back to a Baverstock in the Blandford area of Dorset ? more specifically Pimperne, Cranborne, Horton, Woodlands and Gussage. Later this same line extended to Poole, Wimborne, Sturminster, & Weymouth as well as odd ones elsewhere.

There is a line which traces from a Babstock in Sherborne abt 1800 who appear to become Baveystocks but these are distinct from the Baverstocks who descend from John Baverstock and Elizabeth Ranger in the early to mid 1700s.

John Baverstock died at Pimperne in 1774, followed by his wife Elizabeth a year later. In his will, dated 1768 he mentions 4 children, 3 sons, John, William & Charles and a daughter, Jane. Jane, at the time the will was made, was married to Richard Street in Horton, however by 1774, she had predeceased her father by 3 years.

Of the three sons, two, John & William have Baverstock descendants today, but the third son, Charles?s male heirs had died without issue by the mid 19th century. His descendants survive through his daughter Ann Mary Baverstock who married William Ryall and had issue found in Thornford Dorset. Ann Mary Ryall?s gr grandson Benjamin Baverstock Ryall was buried Thornford 1939.

John Baverstock, the eldest son of John Baverstock & Elizabeth Ranger married Mary/Ann Brewer in 1748 and had numerous children baptised in Cranborne. Their son, John Baverstock married Hannah Cherrett and through his son Charles, is my 4x gr grandfather. The second son, William Baverstock married Mary Long in 1760 and had 13 children although five died in infancy, 4 sons survived and married to ensure the Baverstock name through William continued.

The puzzle still for me to solve is where William Baborstock was prior to 1700 as I have found no baptisms for his children in this part of Dorset, the earliest mention seems to be the marriage of his daughters from 1710. The question is did he come direct from Baverstock in Wiltshire ? Alderholt is a village where it used to be said you could stand in the middle of its stream and touch 3 counties, Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire - or did he move to Dorset from Baverstock via somewhere else. If so, maybe that is where his children were baptised and his wife is buried. The answering of one question in family history is merely the prelude to the next.