pre-1500 data in England
singhals
I understand that I have a better chance of a definitive answer over
on Medieval, but I really don't want to sub to yet another list for
just an occasional question, so ...
I was recently using a family history to refute/confirm a lineage
I've been given. Author is said to be reliable, and he has
documented and footnoted up the yahzoo. And, the facts I can check
in official records match what he says. Still, he slapped in a fancy
photo of the "family crest" ...? So I'm not vouching for his
reliability?
He cites the ancestors of a man (our immigrant) born ca 1719; I quit
copying with the generation born in 1524. Did I quit too soon or too
late? (g)
Cheryl
singhals <sing...@erols.com>
Ian Goddard
Dunno. It depends on the area and what records survive.
As a f'rinstance in my area Kirkburton parish has PRs going back to
1541. The neighbouring parish of Almondbury doesn't go back that
far but still well into the C16th. Court rolls for the manor,
Wakefield, although mostly unpublished, go back much further (the
entire township of Austonley was in mercy for not being represented
at one sitting in the middle of the Black Death). As the court
rolls contain a lot of transfers of property from father to son
there's a reasonable amount of genealogical data in there.
OTOH Kirkburton's registers have a /big/ gap at the beginning of the
C17th which has to be bridged by BTs - and the copies don't always
seem to have made it from parish to cathedral so that whole years
are missing. In fact there's a run of 10 consecutive whole years
that didn't make it and they're not the whole of it. Almondbury
also has some smaller gaps and considerable under-recording - there
appear to be four generations of William Goddards without the birth
or marriage of any of them being recorded.
So it's possible to get well back on pretty standard genealogical
materials but there may be a few cracks which have been papered
over. You need to become really familiar with the materials for the
area concerned. It might be worth posting on s.g.m and s.g.b to see
if you can pick the brains of someone who knows the area, maybe has
access to more material than is available online and can warn you of
problems.
--
Ian
The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang
at austonley org uk
Ian Goddard <godd...@hotmail.co.uk>
bob gillis
> I understand that I have a better chance of a definitive answer over
> on Medieval, but I really don't want to sub to yet another list for
> just an occasional question, so ...
>
>
> I was recently using a family history to refute/confirm a lineage
> I've been given. Author is said to be reliable, and he has
> documented and footnoted up the yahzoo. And, the facts I can check
> in official records match what he says. Still, he slapped in a fancy
> photo of the "family crest" ...? So I'm not vouching for his
> reliability?
>
> He cites the ancestors of a man (our immigrant) born ca 1719; I quit
> copying with the generation born in 1524. Did I quit too soon or too
> late? (g)
>
> Cheryl Singhals
The English records go back to the 1300s and even 1200s.
So he puts in a family crest. that does not negate his research.
With your usual lack of details no one here can have an opinion.
bob gillis
bob gillis <robert...@verizon.net>
Ukes
Were his sources for his earlier generations visitations?
If so, and he tied into them correctly, you probably didn't go back
far enough. Furthermore, in that case his using a photo of the
family crest was probably justified.
singhals
>
> Were his sources for his earlier generations visitations?
>
> If so, and he tied into them correctly, you probably didn't go back
> family crest was probably justified.
>
> Ukes
In the prefactory material he mentions using visitations, yes. I
didn't notice them in the footnotes, but TBH -- his footnotes are
printed in type that requires a magnifying glass. It wasn't until I
got my Xeroxes home and had a magnifying glass at hand that I
discovered they are also cryptic and require a flow-chart. The ones
on the pages I copied are of the "p145 fn 26 supra" sort.
Cheryl
singhals <sing...@erols.com>
singhals
What I copied of the ancestry :
Paul, b 1524 ; married 9 Oct 1606 Hester Catelyn (dau of Thomas) in
Woolverston Par, Suffolk; Paul d after 1614 but bef Hester's 13 Apr
1624 remarriage to Daniel Duckfield. [A.M. Burke's "Key to the
Ancient Parish Registers" shows a Woolverstone Par in Suffolk with
records from 1539, a Woolverston Par in Bucks, and a Woolverton Par
in Somerset -- both of whose records begin well after 1600.]
William, son of Paul and Hester, bap 18 Nov 1616 St Martins in the
Fields, London; married Probably 11 Jun 1640 Joane Acton, in St
Dunston Par, Steffney, London. [Burke, op cit, shows no St Dunston
Par, but two St Dunstan Par, in London; Steffney is almost certain
to be Stepney, but either way has no entry in Burke, op cit.]
Fortunatus, son and evidently only child of William and Joane, born
ca 1640 in London, d 1683 in Virginia. [Clearly not bap in St
Dunstan or it would have said so.] From this man's grandchildren to
the present, I can collorabate the line I'm interested in.
Paul's ancestry shows as William, Paul, William, William again,
John, and William.
Duckfield's Will cited as being probated in 1656 names a Fortunatus
then residing in Greenwich, Kent. Cited source is -- verbatim --
"See p. 15 fn 26 /supra/" A great many of his citations say
something very similar. Worse, one has to track back from where one
is reading in an 1100 page book to where he first mentioned footnote
26.
In May 1666, Fortunatus witnessed in Stepney, Middlesex, a POA
referencing property in Virginia. In Dec of the same year, 1666, he
witnessed POAs in Virginia.
The research strikes me as oddly uneven. In some places he cites
what are clearly archival references not easy to locate; in others
he fails to cite records that ought to be easier to find than a
witness to a POA. He knows what a man did for a living in one year,
but not where he lived in that year ... that sort of thing.
singhals <sing...@erols.com>
bob gillis
> > Were his sources for his earlier generations visitations?
> >
> > If so, and he tied into them correctly, you probably didn't go back
> > family crest was probably justified.
What are visitations? I have never heard hat term used in US sources.
> > Ukes
>
> In the prefactory material he mentions using visitations, yes. I
> didn't notice them in the footnotes, but TBH -- his footnotes are
> printed in type that requires a magnifying glass. It wasn't until I
> got my Xeroxes home and had a magnifying glass at hand that I
> discovered they are also cryptic and require a flow-chart. The ones
> on the pages I copied are of the "p145 fn 26 supra" sort.
>
> Cheryl Singhals
If his citations are numbered or there is a numbered bibliography,
the "p145 fn 26 supra" means "page 145 found in Citation or Source
26 above".
Ian Goddard
singhals wrote:
> What I copied of the ancestry :
>
> Paul, b 1524 ; married 9 Oct 1606 Hester Catelyn (dau of Thomas) in
> Woolverston Par, Suffolk; Paul d after 1614 but bef Hester's 13 Apr
> 1624 remarriage to Daniel Duckfield. [A.M. Burke's "Key to the
> Ancient Parish Registers" shows a Woolverstone Par in Suffolk with
> records from 1539, a Woolverston Par in Bucks, and a Woolverton Par
> in Somerset -- both of whose records begin well after 1600.]
Paul who?
All out of my area but someone in s.g.britain may well know but...
born 1524, married 1606? He left it a bit late didn't he? Do you
get the impression that your source skipped a generation or three
here? I don't know about a Woolverston in Bucks (Eve on s.g.b would
certainly sort you out on that) but there's a Wolverton which is now
absorbed into Milton Keynes.
> William, son of Paul and Hester, bap 18 Nov 1616 St Martins in the
> Fields, London; married Probably 11 Jun 1640 Joane Acton, in St
> Dunston Par, Steffney, London. [Burke, op cit, shows no St Dunston
> Par, but two St Dunstan Par, in London; Steffney is almost certain
> to be Stepney, but either way has no entry in Burke, op cit.]
St Dunston certainly makes no sense. Burke not withstanding see
http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/genuki/MDX/Stepney/parishes.htm for St
Dunstan in Stepney. If you're not familiar with ancestor hunting in
the UK you may not know about Genuki. It's always worth Googling a
place name together with genuki to find about the churches, where
registers were lodged, maybe street directory entries etc.
> Fortunatus, son and evidently only child of William and Joane, born
> ca 1640 in London, d 1683 in Virginia. [Clearly not bap in St
> Dunstan or it would have said so.] From this man's grandchildren to
> the present, I can collorabate the line I'm interested in.
You'd think a name like Fortunatus would stand out but born ca 1640
isn't a good time to have been born and still be traceable later.
There was a war on from 1641 onwards. Because it had religious
overtones it wasn't unknown for vicars to be ejected from their
livings. e.g. from Frances Collins transcription of the Kirkburton
PRs:
"Hester Whitaker wife of Gamaliell Whitaker vicar of Kirkburton who
was slaine the xiith day att night January instant and buried the
xvth day.
Note Tradition states that Mrs. Whitaker was shot on the stair-case
of the Vicarage by one of the party of Parliamentarian soldiers who
had come to take her husband prisoner. Mr. Whitaker then gave
himself up, and was carried off by them to Manchester, where he died
in a fortnight of grief and ill-usuage."
The neighbouring parish of Almondbury has a gap from 1644 because
the vicar died and nobody was appointed to replace him until 1647.
After the war PRs were replaced by civil registers until the
restoration. Often these were not preserved.
> Paul's ancestry shows as William, Paul, William, William again,
> John, and William.
>
> Duckfield's Will cited as being probated in 1656 names a Fortunatus
> then residing in Greenwich, Kent. Cited source is -- verbatim --
> "See p. 15 fn 26 /supra/" A great many of his citations say
> something very similar. Worse, one has to track back from where one
> is reading in an 1100 page book to where he first mentioned footnote
> 26.
Sort of write-only citations ;)
> In May 1666, Fortunatus witnessed in Stepney, Middlesex, a POA
> referencing property in Virginia. In Dec of the same year, 1666, he
> witnessed POAs in Virginia.
>
> The research strikes me as oddly uneven. In some places he cites
> what are clearly archival references not easy to locate; in others
> he fails to cite records that ought to be easier to find than a
> witness to a POA. He knows what a man did for a living in one year,
> but not where he lived in that year ... that sort of thing.
Ian Goddard
> What are visitations? I have never heard that term used in US
> sources.
>
> bob gillis
Herald's visitations. Periodically the Heralds from the College of
Heralds went round an area and collected pedigrees from notable
families. There's a selection at
http://www.uiowa.edu/~c030149a/choosefamily.html together with some
collections of Wills.
Pam
> What are visitations? I have never heard that term used in US
> sources.
>
> bob gillis
They are heraldic visitations which were made to verify the validity
of claims to coats of arms. They were compiled pedigrees, although
not always accurate. See
http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=6542.
"Pam" <misc...@fuse.net>
Ukes
> > > Were his sources for his earlier generations visitations?
> > >
> > > If so, and he tied into them correctly, you probably didn't go back
> > > far enough. Furthermore, in that case his using a photo of the
> > > family crest was probably justified.
>
> What are visitations? I have never heard hat term used in US sources.
>
In England, beginning in the 1500's, government officials went
around investigating whether people who were displaying coats of
arms were legally entitled to do so. People who displayed coats of
arms had to provide proof that they were entitled to do so, which
involved evidence of their ancestry. The information that was
collected provides a lot of information about these "armorial"
families.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraldic_visitation
Ukes <duke_of...@hotmail.com>
L. L. Scott
> > What are visitations? I have never heard that term used in US
> > sources.
> >
> > bob gillis
>
> Herald's visitations. Periodically the Heralds from the College of
> Heralds went round an area and collected pedigrees from notable
> families. There's a selection at
> http://www.uiowa.edu/~c030149a/choosefamily.html together with some
> collections of Wills.
>
> The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang
> at austonley org uk
Try the work Visitation at Google Books
http://books.google.com/books?q=vistiation+england&btnG=Search+Books