My grandmother Ivy said that the Nation family came from France originally and was Nacien. We have traced Nations  to Somerset Cornwall and Devon, the earliest settlement so far being at Bishops Lydeard in Somerset. Many were  Presbyterian Ministers and the current line of Nations that I am related to really start with John and Anne Nation and  their son Kellow (my 5 x great grandfather) who started a tobacconist business selling snuff in Exeter. His son William  Nation continued this and was also a barrister having studied law at Cambridge. He married Elizabeth Codrington and  died in 1831. His eldest son also William inherited a large fortune in those days  (the equivalent of £11m today) and  went into banking. This seemed popular in Exeter; amongst William's fellow bankers was one John Baring. William  married twice, first to Harriet Hamilton and when she died, to Mary Jane Collyns. By the time William died in 1861 he  owned probably four houses, Rockbeare Manor outside Exeter, North Petherton Manor, a town house in Southernhay  in Exeter and almost certainly a house in Dawlish where many of the Nations were buried in St Gregory's Parish  Church. His only son by his first marriage, William Hamilton Codrington Nation (my namesake) never married and  wrote plays and poems. When he died at a hotel in Dover in 1931 he left roughly £30m. His father's son by his second  marriage Charles Codrington Nation was my great grandfather and was an Anglican priest, being variously vicar rector, canon and rural  dean of Grantham, Barrowby, Buxton, and Lindfield (West Sussex).