As a member of family Townsend, I do not agree with the explanation of the origin of our name in your material. My father said we were descended from a Norman family named Toussaint. That is someone born on All saints day!Cryptologists have confirmed that if you go back to before Samuel Johnson and his time, Townsend is a corruption of Toussaint. It is not difficult to see that in those days the S was a huge letter in old manuscripts with a big loop above the line and also below thus the u is easily corrupted into the double U. This would explain why some spellings of the name have an h viz. Townshend.It is so easy to say he came from the end of the Town! This view is perpetrated throughout the literature and everybody accepts that view as it is the easy option.