Chris,
I am so delighted to hear from you and will reply in depth when I go back to Sydney at the weekend.

Sadly, my brother in law who we did the research for, has brain tumours and he is now in the terminal stage. I am not sure whether he will comprehend that a descendant of Samuel Luther has been in contact by the time I get there.

It did give him a lot of pleasure to find out about the family in UK and about the family in New Zealand. At one stage D. owned an apple orchard there and he had a number of business associates there.

When a number of two of nephews and a niece visited, (who are closer in age to him than his brothers, as he was the youngest son) they were all very interested in what we had found and he was delighted to regale them with some of our discoveries. He did keep trying to turn Recabite into Jacobite and I said Nooo !!

I have three nephews as well and they are also interested in their Hirst family history. One of them owned a vineyard and so was very interested to hear about the vineyard in NZ.

Thanks for making contact and I look forward to hearing more about the family from you.

Julie