Any Info. on the last name Garstin?

Question:

Any Info. on the last name Garstin?

I'm having a hard time finding information on my last name- Garstin. Does anyone know where it came from or what it means. Also, there are many Garstins in India but I am mostly Irish. What could the reason for this be? Any information would be great. Thank you!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?o...

The above file on rootsweb may open some brick walls. And it seems to illustrate something that I say often.. that a name is not always reliable in terms of "origin". The earliest ancestor here is shown as born in Ireland in 1810... but a daughter is born in Calcutta in the 1830's. The guy is a minister, probable missionary. If you take a few minutes to browse the info on the daughter's kids, you see evidence that they traveled all over the world, but remained "British" subjects. Notice that there is an alternate spelling of Carston... I won't judge which is the "right" spelling, and spelling doesn't really affect relationships. You need to be alert to it, in order to try alternate spellings when looking for records.
In fact, alternate spellings is one of the biggest factors in good research. I've seen people "throw out" legitimate proof of a relationship... it "couldn't be right" if the spelling was off. BIG mistake.
The fact that only 2 children, both daughters, are in the file, does not mean that there were not other children. It only shows what the file owner has in his records. There is also no reason to rule out that Dad didn't have brothers, or cousins.
You might want to drop an email to the file owner here, since he already has collected data on this family, and might have clues for yours.
This is such a fun file, I should save it. My friendly advice (as always) is to clarify if you are looking for the name or your own lineage. Starting with yourself, and working backwards with solid documentation is (I think) the most reliable way to understand your ancestry.