The Waters Family

“Born in 1781, Thomas Waters Senior appears out of nowhere, an illegitimate child bearing a surname that would prove prophetic: Waters would spend his lifetime at sea. No amount of searching had been able to definitively determine his origin, or why he was given this surname. This child would rise to become a major in the British Royal Marines, from which comes the motto “By Sea, By Land” for which this book is named. There are no modern-day descendants bearing his surname, but the Waters legacy has been carried forward through female lines in family names such as Hewson, Cairns, Dickey, Mulligan, Cox, Evans, Kessler, Smyth, Cowan, Gosselin, Turvey, Mills, and Prashner. The modern-day western Canadian Hewson family, to which I belong, descends from two of his sons, Thomas Waters Junior and Benjamin Waters.”

From Foreword by Margaret Hewson in By Sea, By Land: The Hewsons Look Back