HISTORY OF TOLLAND, SOMERSET,
A RURAL ENGLISH PARISH
By John Benjamin Wolcott
Revised July 2020

For your generous gift of $50 U.S. or £50 or more to the Tolland church, we will send you an electronic copy of this 118-page booklet, which you can print on your computer and put in an inexpensive binder to peruse at your leisure or give as a gift. Sending this electronically will allow us to avoid expensive printing and mailing costs, so that your entire gift can go to the Tolland church, to be used for the preservation and maintenance of the beautiful little church where our forebearers gathered and worshiped for over seven centuries.

Donations should be sent to Wolcott Family Society Treasurer, Cynthia Kirwan, 101 N. West St., Seymour IL 61875,
with your e-mail address and your check marked Tolland Church Building Fund, payable to: Friends of the Tolland Church.
English donations can be sent directly to Linda Bennett, Goulds Farm, Wiveliscombe,Taunton, Somerset TA4 2RN.

Information about Tolland was begun being collected for the Wolcott family in 1849 by H. G Somerby, who found information from parish church records, wills, and the 1525 Lay Subsidy Rolls. The information was added to by English historians, Eric Poole and Robin Bush, in the 1980s.

In preparation for the 2018 Wolcott Family Society visit to Tolland in 2018, additional material about Tolland was collected and presented to the group in a talk given by John B. Wolcott at the Castle Hotel in Taunton. Forty American Wolcotts attended the Reunion. The group received a warm welcome from the Tolland people, with a packed church on Sunday for a service led by the Rt. Rev. Ruth Wolsey, Bishop of Taunton, a pig roast luncheon at Brompton Ralph for the Wolcotts and the residents of Tolland and Brompton Ralph, and visits to properties formerly owned by Wolcotts.

Additional information was collected in 2019. A project to preserve the information for others to use and to raise funds for the Tolland church was presented to the Wolcott Family Society in 2020. These 118 pages are the results. Information in them was gathered from the publications of the Wolcott Family Society, organized in 1905, documents preserved in the British National Archives and the South West Heritage Trust, and various other publications and internet sites by John B. Wolcott. The material was given to the Wolcott Family Society with the understanding that it would be used for promoting donations to the parish church of Tolland for the preservation and maintenance of the Tolland church.

END OF FILE; click to return to Wolcott starting page