The following copy of a notice held in the Devon Records Office was originally pinned to the door of the church in 1850.

ASSISTANT OVERSEERSHIP

Witheridge Parish

Persons desirous of fulfilling this Office are requested to send in written tenders to the Vestry Meeting (under sealed cover and addressed to T H Comins Esq and marked on the envelope "Tender for Assistant Overseership") on or before Thursday the 23rd instant.

The person undertaking this office will have to perform all the duties appurtenant thereto, including the Collection of the Poor Rates. He will also be required to reside in this village and to find two responsible Bondsmen in £250 each as Sureties for his due discharge of this Office, and to attend with his Sureties before the Parish Vestry Meeting to be holden on Thursday the 23rd instant at 5 o'clock in the evening when the Tenders will be opened and the Officer elected by the Rate payers there assembled.

Thomas Commins was at the time the Vestry Clerk. The Comins family were leading church people, and a Thomas Comins (50) was shown as being the schoolmaster at the time of the 1841 census, so the T H Commins referred to in this notice is almost certainly one and the same. Thomas was probably head of the old National School before the new one was built in 1846.