The IGI Records of Devon list 125 Taskers, including one of the earliest family groups in England, based on Stoke in Teignhead, a small village east of Newton Abbot in south Devon. There Thomas Tasker (probably born about 1517) and his brother William (born about 1520) gave rise to a whole host of Taskers covering a period of nearly 200 years.

It seems likely that Thomas had five children: Thomas in 1539, Mark in 1543, Joan in 1545, Elijah in 1547 and Gillian in 1548. William meanwhile had a further five: Edward about 1538, Stephen about 1542, Alice in 1542, William in 1545 and Elizabeth in 1548. Then a John Tasker married Elizabeth Tasker in 1553, with four children, and another John – or posibly the same one – married Joan Fox in 1584 with a further four children, and then there were Taskers throughout Stoke in Teignhead until the end of the 1600s.

Meanwhile,
in Barnstaple, Awdryand (?spelling) Tasker married Margaret Hedden on 30 October 1557;
in Braunton, Phillip, son of Matthew Tosker, was christened on 15 July 1565;
in Withycombe Raleigh (now a suburb of Exmouth), Joan Taskar married William Edger on 10 September 1575, then John Tasker married Joan Halles on 16 November 1589;
and in Charles, Devon (some 10 miles East of Barnstaple) John, son of John & Mary Tasker, was christened on 20 February 1591 but sadly died two days later.