Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Bishops Nympton Parish Register - 6 Jan 2009

Time to take the tree down; traditionally we never take the tree down until Epiphany. It always seems like Christmas until January 6th. We usually decorate on the eve of Advent I (end of November, beginning of December) so the season lasts for five weeks - Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. This year we didn't get out the battered Christmas China. Most of the pieces are still very nice after 25 years but the plates have chips here and there. I actually missed them Christmas Day (as did everyone else) but we were simply too busy this year and forgot to do that.

Yesterday I finished Fiche 5 of Bishops Nympton and I am at 475 pages of text in word (single spaced). There has been a lot of detail in the register but now we are into forms and the detail still there for some of the priests isn't quite so colourful. I am up to 1774 with the Banns and the next Fiche (6) continues on with Banns and then a couple of prints on the 7th Fiche and then I am into the forms for 1813 which includes baptisms, marriages and burials. It is somewhat hard to believe that on just six fiche (Fiche one occurs twice with the oldest called Fiche 1 and then the 2nd Register is also labeled one) there has been so much information. The priest wrote in small hand on the pages and there might be as many as eight years on facing pages. I am going to take a break for a few days from Bishops Nympton and look at my new Devon Fiche.

I was glancing at Landkey trying to learn more about the Manning and Upcott families there. I found a Walter Manning baptizing children there in the right time period for Thomas (1630s) as we know that John Manning son of Thomas was baptized in 1655 at Landkey (son of Thomas Manning and Elizabeth Upcott). I do find an Elizabeth Upcott baptized at Witheridge (daughter of John Upcott and Marye) in 1634. Is this my Elizabeth? Still working on that. I am trying to prove the 4x great grandparents at this point so I may wait until we go to Salt Lake City once again to work on this line since Thomas and Elizabeth would be my 7x great grandparents.

Today I shall look at Rose Ash for the Vicary family, Merton for the Rowcliffe family (and there is a Pincombe family there I have discovered) and Molland for the Pincombe family. I already found the baptism of my great grandfather William Robert there. I have seen it on the IGI but I wanted to have the original image. Elizabeth Rew (his mother) appears to have been a "closet" methodist although all of her children were baptized Church of England and she attended Church of England after her marriage. The area of Somerset (Selworthy) where she grew up had a large Dissenter following. It is interesting how people tended to hide their religious views if they were different from the Establishment even in the 1800s.

We went looking at new laptops yesterday and found one that was interesting (and a good price) but all sold out by the time we had come to a decision. We will keep looking as Ed needs a new laptop. We also want to purchase one of the small laptops when we go to Europe the next time. It could just be in a small shoulder bag and save the large briefcase that Ed carried all the time last trip. They actually have them for less than $500 now so we will watch for a sale. I would like to pay $400 for the laptop plus the service contract and we are actually seeing a couple of brands that would fit into that criteria. As the number of them selling increase the price appears to come down so we will wait until summer to purchase anything like that. We are still thinking of Europe in 2009 but it may be 2010.

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