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This article comes from Lynn Greiff who has been researching quite extensively the history surrounding the area where the Merrill family lived.
The wool industry - I've been researching the Merrill part of my family history (connected through Nathaniel - Sarah Merrill/Samuel Kellogg, Martha Merrill/Isaac Kellogg) and came across all your postings on the Merrill family forum on the gen forum website. One of the questions that was posed was why Nathaniel and John Merrill may have left Suffolk. I've attached an article I found which may help in explaining why they left - the declining wool industry in East Anglia. My Kellogg ancestry originates in Debden, Essex and the three Kellogg brothers who came to Mass. mainly left Essex for this reason. Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex were the heart of the English wool industry. Suffolk and Essex had a huge number of people leaving during the "Great Migration" compared to other counties. The religious upheaval during this time can be taken into account as well as a reason for leaving, but economic decline within the wool industry was a major factor in why so many families left this part of England.
Thomas Meryell - As far as Thomas Meryell as the primogenitor of the Merrill line - other than wills or a probate record it may be unlikely to find anything concrete to prove the direct lineage to Nathaniel and John Merrill as the English parish BMD records don't begin until 1538 during the reign of Henry VIII.
Huguenot or not - Regarding the speculation of the Merrill surname having Huguenot origins I hope I'm not being impertinent by suggesting that I think the theory is rather thin. Having Huguenot ancestry myself I've been able to research and visit places in England where the Huguenot lived. The first wave of the refugees arrived in Canterbury and a large number of them settled there - a side chapel of Canterbury Cathedral was given over to them by Elizabeth I and to this day a service is held there once a month in French for their descendants. Some of them then migrated north and settled in London (this is where the silk weavers of northern France came and caused a significant hiccup to the industry in France). Many others fled from France to the Netherlands and came over to England in the 17th century with a Flemish engineer named Cornelius Van Leyden to drain the fenlands of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. These refugees were called Walloons. My line were land speculators who first came to Canterbury and then moved north to the fenlands. The Huguenot were very insular and for the first couple of centuries in England and married within their religious sect. If the first Merrill was Huguenot then there would be a repetition of the same Huguenot surnames marrying within the family over the years. Likewise with Merrills marrying other Huguenot. If anyone is interested in pursuing the Huguenot theory then the records kept with the Huguenot Society in central London will be able to help. Though you have to prove your ancestry to actually see the folios of records you can e-mail them a query and they are able to tell you if your ancestor is recorded and where. These are the surviving christening and marriage records that were written in French alongside the English parish records. There are no death records. Most of the Huguenot who settled in East Anglia were concentrated around Thorney, Cambridgeshire - which is some distance from Suffolk. The Huguenot fell into the main categories of silk weavers, ditch diggers and land speculators who came to the fenlands and the Merrills of Suffolk appear to have been yeoman farmers. Another discrepancy. Though this is all supposition there are numerous reasons to believe that the first Merrill was not Huguenot.
St. Mary's church, Wherstead - Due to vandalism many English village churches are closed outside of scheduled services these days, preventing passers by from visiting which is a very sad state of affairs. I'm not surprised that there were no existing Merrill stones in the church yard. Most English grave stones are usually made of limestone - especially those from the 18th - 20th centuries rather than granite and these decay rapidly and are soon unreadable. They were very easy to carve. As a result, though you do find stones from the 18th century in church yards most are illegible. Those that remain are usually near the entrance to the church and belonged to a prominent local family. Few could afford stones - most markers were wooden. Many had no marker at all. I no how disappointing it is to explore a grave yard hoping for evidence of an ancestor and finding none. Though they are there, you have no visible proof of it.
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