There is a reference in a book (found in Oxford City Family History Centre in George Street) entitled The County Families of the United Kingdom,  by Edward Walford, M.A., London 1864, at page 587:

The thought, thrown out by Edward Walford's book, of generations of Lamings in this area of Kent was a challenge, but by delving into the IGI and transcriptions of the main churches in Margate and Thanet generally, I gradually pieced together groups of families with similar names, although of course 'Laming' has been spelled and pronounced in many ways - Lamming, Lamminge, Lamen, Lamin, Lamyn, Lambing, and so on. One name in particular, though, stood out amongst the many different Christian names - that of 'Rejoyce', a name usually given by parents from the Independent churches rather than the Anglican church.

Even so, there are still very many bearing the name Laming in the Isle of Thanet, and even my father's diaries, his previous research, and family stories of seamen, shipping and smugglers didn't seem to help over much except by way of producing a skeletal tree dating back to James Laming.   These included James' children:

William Cotton Laming was born, according to the IGI, on 8th February 1817 and died 4th April 1861. On 5th April 1842 he married Susan Hayne Lindon at the church of St George the Martyr, Southwark, she being from Plymouth in Devon (1881 Census), the daughter of Joseph Lindon (1788-1854) and Susan Hayne White (1792-1835). They had at least eleven children, one of which was my Great Grandfather Robert Laming, and his wife Louise, both of whom my father remembered well as his grandparents, and their eventual burial in the churchyard at Birchington-on-Sea in Kent.

The main breakthrough came with the discovery by my wife of an entry in the 1881 Census relating to this family and their Dutch connections,  and most recently (December 2005) of entries in the Dutch "Nederland's Patriciaat" which pushed the family history back a further six generations.  The mainstay of their research and presentation appears to be a book entitled The Genealogy of the Laming Family, published privately in 1919. This I have not seen, nor indeed was it known to my father when he was doing similar family research some thirty to forty years ago.

Again, the predominant name which helped me to fit several generations into place was that of a girl named 'Rejoyce (Graunt, or probably Grant)', and these are now being added to the family tree, the revised format for which which you will be able to read sometime soon, but in the meanwhile  link here, or use the navigation bar to the left of this page, to see the family dating back to the James Laming of Birchington Hall.  It is, however, now several generations out of date as a result of futher research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements to the owners of the following web sites for information gleaned therefrom - in no particular order:

There was once a family tree on "Tribal Pages" which contained much valuable information about some of the Dutch branches of the family - sadly this has disappeared from the web, but if the owner of those pages stumble across my efforts here, please would he or she get in touch?

A special thank you to Barry J White, whose meticulous transcriptions of the Thanet churches' Registers of births, marriages and deaths have helped me tremendously with my researches. In particular please refer to the following web pages: