Letter: Rodolfo Fogwill obituary (The Guardian -UK-)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/sep/05/letter-rodolfo-fogwill-obituary

Lynn Fogwill writes: In his obituary of the Argentinian author Rodolfo Fogwill (28 August), Nick Caistor wrote that: "Fogwill tried to convince me his surname was English, claiming he had ancestors in Fox Hill, in Sussex".

For the record, Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill did indeed come from an English family. His grandfather, Samuel Henry Fogwill, left Devon in 1899 or 1900 for Argentina, where he married an Argentinian woman. Together they raised a family of 12 children. All of the more than 50 Fogwills in Argentina are descended from Samuel Fogwill of Kingskerswell, Devon.

Some of them continue to correspond with and visit their cousins in Devon as well as my family – Fogwills from the same family who came to Newfoundland in Canada. The Argentinian Fogwills are also connected to Fogwills in Burgess Hill, Sussex (not Fox Hill, Sussex), although they are not immediate family.

Samuel worked for a very large Argentinian landowner managing several large estancias (rural estates). When Edward, Prince of Wales, went to Argentina in the mid-1920s, Samuel acted as a translator between the prince and the landowner when the prince purchased several polo ponies which had been trained by Samuel.