My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Pashler - a name which was more common In the 18th and 19th centuries than it is now. Virtually all of the Pashlers that we have found can be traced back to a relatively small area of farming country which includes parts of what was once Huntingdonshire and neighbouring Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire. However, they fall into several groups which have not yet been interconnected and so we do not yet know exactly where the Pashlers began.
Two significant Pashler families occupied the neighbouring Lordship Farm and School Farm in the village of Tilbrook, Bedfordshire in the early 18th century. The heads of both families were named John, each married someone named Mary around 1750-1753 and were almost certainly closely related.
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My direct ancestry has been traced back to a Samuel Pashler, my 6x great grandfather, who married a Mary around 1725-1728. This family farmed in and around the villages of Molesworth and Great Catworth in Huntingdonshire for the next few generations.
My 4x great grandfather, William Pashler, married Elizabeth Scuffham in Molesworth in 1802. One of their sons, another Samuel (born about 1806), married Ann Dickens in 1826 but died only 3 years later at the tragically young age of 23. Another son, my 3x great grandfather John Pashler (1811-1871) married Mary Gray in the nearby village of Titchmarsh, Northamptonshire. Mary was almost certainly daughter of William Gray of Titchmarsh who married Jane Fortescue, and a witness to her marriage was her brother Lewis Fortescue Gray (1809-1858). The Pashler and Fortescue families were clearly close and another Fortescue, Gerrard, married Mary Pashler, a niece of John, in 1863. The photo right is courtesy of Don Edge who owns the Fortescue website and shows Mary on her 95th birthday in 1934 (she lived to within a few months of 100).
But it is my 2x great grandfather, William Pashler (1840-1915), who was perhaps the most successful, becoming a wealthy farmer and landowner at Brook End, Great Catworth, and marrying Mary Measures from another local farming family (see Measures).