I got an email today from someone in Australia who googled a name in her family tree and was directed to this site 
We’re very VERY distant cousins on the Thomas SMITH branch of my lineage. Thomas was a watercress grower who lived in Lewknor Oxfordshire at a place called Sheep Brook farm. He and his wife Ellen HOLLAND raised twelve children in the mid 19th century. 
Thomas and Ellen were simple, hard working people who would, I imagine, never have dreamed they’d be progenitors of descendants living as far away as American and Australia and that two of their great great children would find there way to each other, one hundred and twenty years after they were laid to rest in the Lewknor parish churchyard, while sitting in their kitchens in front of a thing called a computer. It is an amazing time to be to be a genealogist!!!!
UPDATE: More information on the Smiths of Lewknor and Thomas’s family can be found in this post
Thomas had a son Edward, who had a daughter Emily, who had a son Stuart, who had a son Eric, that’s me. So, my grandchildren had a Great Great Great Great Grandfather called Thomas Smith. Thanks for that !
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the comment
If you’d like me at add any of this information to the tree, let me know. It’s always nice to connect the dots with a distant cousin
Hi Claire, my son Robert and I called in at Lewknor a couple of weeks ago. A great feeling of touching history. There may have been only 11 children as there are 2 Williams, one was his grandson. This may account for the Cricket stumps on the gravestone, 11 for a team ! We have put photos on Facebook and on Robert Downer facebook page. Feel free to add any of this. Eric
How nice that you were able to visit! I was in Oxford on vacation last June but could not persuade my family to take a jaunt to yet another old family church yard. Why do you think there were only 11 children? The 12 I have for him are listed here http://mahoganybox.net/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I249&tree=tc
[...] Transcripts for burials only go up to 1884, but we know from his death certificate that Thomas Smith, watercress grower died 4 February 1885. He is buried in Lewknor Churchyard…see a photo of his grave marker here. [...]
[...] The Filbee surname is found in my maternal grandfather’s part of the family tree. Alice Filbee, and generations of Filbees before her, lived and died in Lewknor, Oxfordshire. Alice (1748–1819) was my 5th great grandmother. She married William Quartermaine in Lewknor on Christmas Eve 1768. Their grandson was Thomas Smith, whom I’ve written about here. [...]