Sunday 11 November 2012

Summer 2012


Genealogy in Kent has been suffering badly over the last year. The old and wonderful Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone has closed and the archives now shares premises with the main library. The closure and move meant that the archives were unavailable for about 6 months and the re opening has not been without teething problems, (least said soonest mended as my granny used to say.) However there are promises that with records from other archives coming to Maidstone, we will eventually be better off.  As the Maidstone Library and History Centre opened, so the Canterbury Cathedral archives closed for maintenance and will have been closed almost a year by the time it reopens in Jan/Feb 2013. I am looking forward to finally being able to get back in amongst the records of both archives in 2013.

One of the major highlights of  my job are the visits from overseas clients for whom I have done research and who then come over to see for themselves the places that their ancestors knew. In 2011 David Fletcher and Kenny Williams let me share their holiday and we visited a number of fascinating places connected to David’s Barham, Filmer and Argles  ancestors. Thank you so much to the present  owners of the various homes we visited, for allowing us such generous access  to your time, knowledge and properties. In 2012, the Williamsons  and I spent a great few days touring their ancestral parishes. They, like David Fletcher were also interested in the Barham family  and I am finding more and more often that my growing number of American clients are related to each other. The Baker family of Biddenden, and Sissinghurst seem to be of particular interest to my American clients.

Saturday 10 November 2012

Introduction


On the subject of family history there seem to be 2 different types of response.

Some people will discuss for hours the excitement of discovering a 3 x great uncle whose day job was as a tailor in North Wales, but who also managed to become a respected Bard, or the 2x great grandfather who seems to have married many more times than he was widowed. The other response, perfected by my husband is a pained look and a muttered “I don’t talk to half the family I know about, what do I want more for?” Oddly, most of my maternal family are easy to find, and down the centuries seem to go out of their way to leave some small mark of their time for me to find, whereas most of my husband’s ancestors, when they appear at all, lurk in the registers, hiding behind ink blots, and misleading census information as though they don’t want to be disturbed. A fanciful thought, but perhaps the interest in Genealogy really is in the genes!

Be that as it may, enough people have contacted me through my work with questions that can’t really be answered short of launching full time into teaching family history rather than doing it, so I have decided to write this log (very sporadically I suspect) of the every day resources I use and possibly the more unusual finds I make. I intend to be purposely vague about my client’s identities, as it is after all their information. Of course if a client decides they would like me to be more specific in the hopes of finding new leads to pursue then I will

December 2008


Alas, all my good intentions and new year’s resolutions to keep this log up to date have proved difficult to live up to, but in the same way that a few months ago New England families were keen to search their past, now I have had a flurry of interest from people hoping to prove their Hugeunot roots.

Thanks to their interest I have also learnt a good deal more about the “Walloon or Strangers,” community in Canterbury and the Stranger’s church. They brought their weaving and cloth making skills to the County and also their trading connections with France. There is still a French chapel in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral holding regular services and the register for the Strangers church is held as a transcript by the Cathedral archives.

In the log below I mention that Simon Evans and I are now producing personal dvds and family histories for clients. I’m pleased to say they are proving really popular and we have now got a web site at www.familylives.co.uk where you can find out more about our activities

As many of you will know I have been fighting a largely losing battle with computer technology for the past few months and must first thank my regular clients for their loyalty. In the absence of access to cyberspace, waiting eagerly for the post to arrive rather than click on my e-mail box has been rather fun and very nostalgic, but a web log that doesn’t log is a pretty redundant feature. I hope I am not speaking too soon when I say that I think I am back and hopefully able to update this page a little more frequently than I have been doing!

I have been receiving a lot of enquiries from old New England families keen to pursue and confirm their 16 th/17 th century Kentish research. Hall, Stedman and Barnes are names that I am actively working on at the moment and my Barnes client is particularly keen to contact others whose family left the Tenterden and Benenden areas of Kent in the 1600s, particularly if they found their way to Massachusetts.

I have also been lucky recently to have been asked to tackle quite a few specifically Kentish surnames. If you are an Elgar, Cheeseman or Hogben for example, the chances are you have ancestors from pretty close to where I am, this minute, sitting and there are many other names, which although not quite so exclusively Kentish are none the less pretty likely to hail from this corner of the world, so please step forward all Millens, Harmans , Sladdens, Houghams, Moncktons and Bournes.

During my enforced sabbatical from the internet I have also joined forces with my old friend Simon Evans who is a talented and very experienced film maker and broadcaster. We are offering a service that will place your own family history on DVD and will be tailor made to include your family memories, photos, videos, colour slides etc and interviews as well as setting the story of your ancestry against the social history of each generation.

The resulting DVD is proving popular with families celebrating golden and diamond wedding anniversaries as well as births and new marriages.

You already know about me, but to learn more about Simon go to www.openproductions.co.uk

A flurry of interest from several people in Australia has sent me to the Quarter Session records and the parish chest material a number of times as well as to local newspapers.

One search involved a twenty year old woman sentenced to transportation to New South Wales and through the quarter session material I was able to find witness statements concerning her crime, gaol calendar references to her stay in prison prior to her being put on board ship, newspaper reports of her crime and ultimately reports of the shipwreck in which she died only days after leaving Woolwich. I’m glad that her short life is being remembered and researched by my client.

Another search has been for a family that accepted free emigration to New South Wales from Mereworth. This assistance was offered to poor parishioners to try to relieve the burden on the parish during the very lean years of the 1830s. This family story had a very different outcome to the first sad tale. They built a very good and successful life for themselves in their new country and their descendents have gone from strength to strength. These two searches remind me of a job I had several years ago, when I was quite new to research and was “practising,” on a friend’s family. It transpired that his great, great grandfather had been transported to Australia for stealing lead from his own roof. It was of course his landlord’s roof, but he must have been in a fairly desperate state to take such a risk. His transportation left his wife and three children abandoned and she died of consumption a few weeks after his departure. The children were raised by their grandmother and he married again in Australia and had three more children. As I say I was rather inexperienced at the time and it was by luck rather than good judgement that I discovered that his Australian family were also researching their roots and I was able to put the two branches of the family in contact with each other. Letters, photo’s Christmas cards and I believe at least one visit have since transpired.

A year or so ago a client wanted me to research the Eastry Union Work house records for her and this month I have had the good luck to be asked to go back to them. I will not be too specific about the details, as my client is in fact writing a book herself about the truly astonishing trials and tribulations of her family. I look forward to reading it once it is done and will certainly give it a plug on this site.

I’m sure like all other records, Work house records must vary in quality and usefulness dependant upon how diligent the record keepers were, but they can give fascinating, moving and utterly absorbing insights into the lives of the very poor and indeed the people paid to oversee them. They are worth reading even if you don’t have a family member to find. The times were hard and the attitudes authoritarian and unforgiving, but in the records I have searched I have seen no sign of wanton cruelty or bullying, in fact there seemed to be a real attempt to care for the bodies and souls of those who came through the doors. Unfortunately even small rebellion was likely to be seen as a sign of mental defectiveness or moral weakness and in need of a cure. As my client’s ancestor found to her cost, 1900 was not a good time to be a stroppy teenager. It is possible to get bogged down in acres of reports about the costs of keeping up the fabric of the building (Assessment and Committee books), so if it is people rather than accountancy you are interested in, the main registers to search for are the Admission or Creed registers which give the basic information of name age parish and reason for admission. The Guardians’ report books and the Master’s report and log books are fascinating and should be used in conjunction with other journals, as often an incident is indexed and then referred to as a minute in one journal and elaborated on in the other. At Eastry at least, all inmates were seen by a doctor within a day of their arrival and a Medical day journal was kept by the Doctor which meticulously recorded every patient he saw. He also examined them before they were discharged. As you read you see the progress of children, coming in to the workhouse, often being fostered out into the community for a few shillings. Rarely were siblings re-homed together. A strong lad who could help with farm work would be placed almost immediately and you will find little else about him except the regular payments made by the Union to his carers for his keep, whilst his sickly sister may spend her entire childhood in the work house working in the laundry, hospital, or kitchen, popping up regularly in the medical records with coughs and colds and boils until finally she too is sent off into the world with a new coat and nearly new boots.

I continue my search for the Collins/Collings and Elcombe family. Vigilance is needed here because I know from experience that Collins is a very common name in this area and I have researched three separate families and as yet found no connection between them. The information my client gave me had the family living in Ash in 1881 and with the aid of the earlier census’ I have placed his line in Wrotham. The last census gave Tudeley as the birthplace for my client’s ancestor in 1803. I have now taken the line back to about 1720 with just the parish registers for Brenchley and Tudeley and the earliest Collings that I have been able to find for him has surprised me by leaving a Will. He was clearly quite a wealthy landowner and one of his sons continued in fair comfort for another generation, but the remaining children and the generations after that became agricultural labourers until they started to work their way into trades in the 1840s and 50s. Was this family yet another casualty of the changes in farming that led to the Swing Riots in 1830?

The Elcombes are tricky. The name shows up in the villages around Ash and Ightham right back to the 16 th Century, but unfortunately there is a gap in their line at 1750 that I have not yet been able to plug. That’s the problem with this game; you are bound to get stuck eventually. I imagine it’s a bit like surfing, fun whilst it works but you know you are going to get beached at some point.

I continue to churn out Wills for another regular client. I think she is papering her walls with the information I send her, but it is exciting for me. Most of the searches I do are for the ordinary working people of the time and I’m very proud to be descended from these hardy souls myself, but a foray into the lives of the rich and influential is an eye opener into how the other half lived (and by and large how little they trusted their nearest and dearest.)

You can find and download copies of Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills online at the National Archives web site (£3.50 each) but Kent has several other smaller Courts where Wills were also proved. Whichever County you are researching in it is well worth asking your local records centre what other Courts operated in your area.

Occasionally you find yourself researching someone that you feel must have been an unusual character and possibly born out of their time. Georgi anna George is one such soul and if she doesn’t get back to the script soon her extraordinarily patient 3x great grandson is going to give up on her. Her given date of birth ranges from 1820-1835. In some censuses she is not old enough to be her daughter’s mother. At one point she was in the workhouse at another she was an annuitant, but no Will can be found that mentions her and her daughter’s father’s name is a bit changeable too. She eventually married an American soldier and I hope she lived happily ever after. The only thing she is consistent about is her place of birth, Dover, but I’m beginning to think she fibbed about that too. Inspiration is needed on this one as logic certainly hasn’t done the trick.