Ashton-Tate
In June 1982 Cole hired Rod Turner as the director of OEM sales for Ashton-Tate. In a few weeks Turner solved a sales commission plan issue, that had been bothering George Tate for some time, with the top performing salesperson (Barbara Weingarten, now Guerra), and Tate and Cole promoted Turner to be Vice President of world-wide sales three weeks after his initial hire. Turner was approximately the 12th employee of Ashton Tate. Since the company was truly boot-strapped, using no external venture capital, the founders did not make a practice of hiring experienced veterans, and most of the team at Ashton-Tate were young and enthusiastic, but inexperienced. Jim Taylor was responsible for product management in the early days, and worked closely with Wayne Ratliff and the other key developers on dBASE II. In 1982 Perry Lawrence and Nelson Tso were the two developers who were employed at Ashton-Tate, while Wayne Ratliff employed Jeb Long from his royalty stream.
Ashton House, Cumbria
The house was built in 1678 probably for John and Sarah Yeats: their daughter, Mary Yeats, died there at the age of 25 in the mid 18th century. It was inherited by John Yeats Thexton in the first part of the 19th century and by Edward Yeats Thexton in the latter part of the 19th century and then passed to Charles Frith-Hudson, who had married into the Thexton family, at the start of the 20th century. It became a wedding venue in the 21st century.