Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 26 Nov 2008

Returned to work on my images from Salt Lake City and transcribed ten of the Protestation Returns for Eskdale Ward in Cumberland. I approached the Cumbria Journal newsletter editor and she is interested in publishing these lists over time. I sent her the Lanercost list for her perusal. It is especially interesting because the parish records for Lanercost begin in the 1660s and this particular list of names takes you back to 1641-42. Along with the manor records it is possible to go back further in this parish. My images have been quite good and the transcription is fairly satisfactory. I continue proofreading all the documents transcribed thus far. I still have several to do including Brampton which is particularly large.

I also have spent time on FamilySearch transcribing. I am working on the 1916 Canadian census. The images are quite good but the handwriting is particularly dreadful especially with the non-English names. I am following WYSIWYG though and I will try to do at least five census pages a week. I want to get back to doing my FreeBMD transcriptions as well. This past year has played havoc with my "work."

The French Canadian ancestry proved to be most interesting and I just need to get some verification of what I found so that I know that I am on the right track. It is interesting working on ancestry where the records are all there at your fingertips on Ancestry or other websites. These families have been on this side of the Atlantic since the early to mid 1600s.

Updated my T2 haplogroup DNA study although can not get into the server to upload the new pages to my personal webpage. My husband has two perfect matches of his full genetic scan and one of them is from England and this family has remained on the other side of the Atlantic so nearly 400 years separate their two lines - mtDNA is very very slow moving and this is yet another proof of that. There is a possibility that the line in England was originally in The Netherlands in the early 1700s which would be quite interesting. My husband's maternal line is brick-walled in Newport Rhode Island in 1654. No idea yet whether the wife of Robert Carr was from England or somewhere else as he emigrated (with his brother) to the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1635. They had a falling out with the Puritan group there and moved on to Rhode Island for freedom of religion in the mid 1640s and he likely married there. The possibility of marrying someone from other than England remains quite high although she could have been English. This match may be a ballpark answer - remains to be seen. His other match the line was in New Jersey which is where his ancestress lived as an adult (all of her family - sisters included - moved on to New Jersey in the late 1600s).

French Canadian Research

A change from my daily routine of working on my English Research images that I acquired at Salt Lake City was working on French Canadian Research. A very interesting day spent extracting information from ancestry using the Ontario and Quebec Drouin Records. The Quebec Drouin Records are very nicely indexed but the Ontario records are partially indexed. However the major part of the Drouin Records are from Quebec so mostly finished. I also used the Ontario Death, Marriage and Birth Records. I managed to put together the entire line of a family back five generations in just the one day. French Canadian Research is very interesting as you can trace family lines back to the 1600s fairly readily.

I signed up to do Canadian 1916 census on my FamilySearch account and managed to do three pages last evening. The page I did today though will require a bit of tweaking as the handwriting was very poor. I hadn't done anything for a while with all of our traveling but will be able to do some daily now all winter unless we decide to take a trip which often happens quite spontaneously. My husband will find a reference he really wants to see and we are off! None of my research is that accessible on this side of the Atlantic other than the Salt Lake City library but for that I need a lot of preparation. I have already started my next excel file for our visit in September next year.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 22 Nov 2008

I sent the rough list for Lanercost Protestation Returns off to our Routledge/Hetherington/Nixon/Noble working group. Responses back were favourable for sending this off to Carlisle Journal and I will investigate whether or not they like to publish transcriptions otherwise I will just put it up on my website and perhaps send it to the Carlisle Record Office to use if they wish.

I will look at Irthington next for Protestation returns. I am basically finished proofreading the Lanercost and want to let it sit for a bit to see if I can solve the six entries that are somewhat difficult to transcribe.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 21 Nov 2008

I completed the transcription for the Protestation Returns for Lanercost and I am now in proofreading mode. I have three entries that are somewhat curious but for the most part the transcription went very well. I will share this with the Routledge/Nixon/Hetherington/Foster/ study group. We have been working together for about two years now and the latest accumulation of data (Land Tax Assessments) has been most interesting in letting me look at my Oakshaw Routledge family. This is a family that dominated the area known as Oakshaw and included Parkhead, Flatt, Raw, Broderrigg and a few other places. My own direct line - Thomas Routledge and Elizabeth Routledge (both descendants of the Oakshaw Routledge family) emigrated to Canada in 1818 with their nine children, son in law and two grandsons. We still do not know if they came as a group but when they arrived they received land from Colonel Talbot in London Township. My 2x great grandmother would have been 14 years old when she arrived. I will continue the transcription of the Protestation Returns for Eskdale Ward since it will help other members of the group. I am primarily interested in Bewcastle (I already have this transcription from the Carlisle Record Office), Lanercost, Farlam, and Arthuret. Thomas and Elizabeth were second cousins once removed. My other names in Cumberland are Tweddle, Story, Robson and Bushby thus far. All the rest appear to be Routledge and the Oakshaw family were known for marrying first, second and third cousins thus keeping all of their properties in the family.

My other project yesterday was to work on my Hampshire webpages and I have two new Church photographs to put up but the server is being upgraded this weekend so will have to wait until next week. I have a number of pictures that we took at Upper Clatford, Abbots Ann, and Goodworth Clatford that I will add as well. I would like to start adding to the pages of Genuki Hampshire but at the moment the site really works very well and the OPC site is growing quickly. The Knight family has done a really terrific job of setting this up and my little bit of advertisement on Genuki at least gives it another avenue for people to see it, add to it and use it. I did the Knights Enham records and I am working on Abbotts Ann and it is truly a labour of love as the old records are very very difficult to read.

Today we have company to look at our slides from England - these are whittled down to just 1200 but we have maintained the daily integrity so that we can just pass by days that they have seen and do not want to repeat. We will do hors d'oeuvres around 4:00 and I am going to make mini Shepherd's pie, cheese baking powder biscuits and a salad tray with dip just to give it an English flair. For dinner, a sirloin tip roast of beef, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted carrots and green beans with a chicken soup to start. Red wine from Niagara will complete the main course with condiments of pickled beets and sweet and sour pickles. For dessert we will have pound cake (300 grams of butter, 5 eggs, 600 mls of sugar and 700 mls of flour), pumpkin custard, and liqueur. Then tea or coffee as we watch the last of the slides. We have owed this dinner invitation for about two years! Somehow genealogy has completely dominated our lives and we spend hours and hours each day working on our family lines plus doing the group work that keeps genealogy publication moving along.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 20 Nov 2008

Today was supposed to be transcription of the Manor Records of Upper Clatford but I decided to take a look at the Protestation Returns for Cumberland. I already have Bewcastle translated as I purchased it from the Carlisle Record Office a few years ago. I quickly transcribed the Bewcastle Return just to refresh my memory on the earlier writing in this part of the country. I then decided to do Lanercost as that parish is my other strong interest in Cumberland along with Farlam and Arthuret. Lanercost was ten images and all but one were quite sharp. Fortunately I overlapped quite a bit so was able to compensate for the one slightly blurry image. I set up my headings in Excel - Ward, Quarter, Status (Sworn or other), Surname, Forename, Suffix and Standing/other information. I have all the Tweddle and Robson names already from this parish which was about 50 names but the time that I completed the transcription (4 hours later!) I had 271 names from the four quarters - Lanercost, Askerton, Triermanie, and Burdoswell - and Kirkcambeck was also included in this return. I will go back and carefully proofread as there were about 20 that did not fit into the usual names and the letters were not well formed. There were a number of aliases (about 25) and a few locations noted. The number of different surnames was likely close to 70 and will determine that later after proofreading.

I am thinking that this would make a good submission to the Cumbria Newsletter and will think about doing that in January.

I will get back to working on the Manor documents for Upper Clatford this evening. We are putting together a slide show of our trip to England to show to some people who had us over to see their slides for Ireland and another couple. We had over 5,000 images which have been reduced to 1,200 images which is still quite a few but they cover a lot of territory. We will likely go with that many. Our family has over time watched all 5,000, sometimes just glancing!

I am now accumulating the evidence for proving the 4x great grandparents - I actually have four done already of the 64. I am missing material on 8 people although I have ordered fiche and books to help to do so. I have at least 1 that I will not be able to solve likely as the father of one of my 3x great grandmothers is unknown unless it is in the Bastardy Orders which I have not yet checked.

Taking 4 hours to work on 10 images lets me think that working on the 2500 images from Salt Lake City will take me all winter. Certainly the 30 slides for the Upper Clatford Manor Records are going to be a challenge. The writing is Secretary Style and is one of the hands that I have not done a lot of work with although the letters are very well formed.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 19 Nov 2008

The plans for today were to work on the Manorial Documents for Upper Clatford and area. I did transcribe a document listing all the properties that paid taxes in Upper Clatford and actually found one of my ancestor's sisters living in a cottage. This information wasn't dated but her living in a cottage places it in the 1740s to 1760s range. Since I would like to learn more about my King and Blake family in this time frame I will continue transcribing all the images (about 50) of the Manorial Documents. The writing is very ornate so will be a challenge as I get used to the handwriting. My ancestor's sister was Susannah Bever and she never married. She appeared to be living alone at the cottage as her name was the only one mentioned. I rather wondered if Dinah (her older sister) eventually lived with her as her husband died in 1753 and Dinah didn't die until 1783.

I had transcribed part of a document for an individual who was unable to read this interesting two page letter and sent that off to him. The writing is from the mid 1800s and has a strong slant with poor framing of letters so quite difficult to read. I will consider doing more but it will be a "make work" task when I am not working on my own. Although I like to do paleography, my interest is actually in older documents.

We attended the Canadian documentary film - Passchendale. It was certainly all that it was said to be and more. If World War One defined us as a nation then this film defines our film industry. It was the best war film that I ever saw actually. I can remember my great uncle telling us about the trenches as he served with the CEF in France. He was only just there when he was shot in the head with shrapnel. They were never able to get it all out and every once in a while a piece would work its way to the surface of his skin. We used to be amazed that he could live with all that metal in him.

I will continue working on the Manorial Documents. I rather think the 2500 images that I brought back are going to keep me busy for a very long time.

Schultz Family Study - 18 November 2008

A break away from my Salt Lake City material as we pulled together a short note on my husband's Schultz Family. This had been a stunning breakthrough for him at Salt Lake City as he has hunted his elusive Schultz great grandparents for quite a while with an intensive study this last year. We attended the annual Schultz Reunion a year ago September and the family really pleaded with him to do their family tree knowing that he was so successful with so many of his other lines. A family chat session on what everyone could remember rekindled a memory of visits with an older lady who was fortunately on the census. Pulling all that information together with her wedding and finding her on the census prior to marriage with her parents. Working on those parents led us back to her mother's birthplace in Germany via death registration and obituary. At that point we were assuming a relationship between these two families without any concrete proof. Reviewing the parish register microfilm in Salt Lake City revealed that his great grandfather and the mother of the lady being visited by my husband were siblings. What an enormous breakthrough and the entire article will be in the OGS Ottawa Newsletter/Journal.

However before starting the actual writeup of the article we went off to get our Flu Shot at Ottawa City Hall - it is usually a fairly quick affair plus we wanted to attend the Press Conference looking at the cuts planned in Heritage Funding in the City of Ottawa. I listened carefully to all the thoughts and the redundant theme of all those participating was that there is a large monetary benefit to hotels and other services in Ottawa generated by heritage events (numbers such as 3 to 1 to 8 to 1). Although I am very much in favour of heritage events I do feel that they need to somehow generate funds and perhaps the best method would be a heritage tax levied on each and every household in the Regional Municipality of Ottawa (perhaps $25 per year) which would ensure a steady flow of support to these organization. Benefiting groups such as hotels/restaurants could give $100 per year each. The prime use of funding by the city should be to ensure that our infrastructure is maintained and other such necessary details. If extras are needed then it is best to go to the people and ask for funding.

I decided not to make any comments at the meeting and we headed home early. I must admit to being opposed to the Governor General taking a group to Europe at this time for cultural activities.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 17 Nov 2008

I completed the Rugeley Land Tax Assessment and combined the two files for sorting. I acquired some information on my Lea and Wood families but nothing new on the Welsh family. I moved on to the images from the Rugeley Parish Registers and extracted the pertinent information as well as saving the images to the family files for my proofs of my 4x great grandparents which will be my next steps on my Legacy family tree file.

I moved on to the Cheatle family at Ashby de la Zouch. I had photographed the baptism of my 3x great grandmother Sarah and saved that one to her file. I then prepared a chart of all the Cheatle wills in Leicester noting that all the Cheatle families in the 1600s and early 1700s lived within 10 miles of Loughborough. Reviewed the Leicestershire Records Office webpage and I am able to purchase parish register fiche so have inquired about purchasing Loughborough, Long Whatton and Castle Donnington from the earliest to 1800. Perhaps I will hear tomorrow as to the number of fiche this will entail.

My order for the Devon fiche was received today and the fiche are now ordered. I will receive these in the next six weeks. This should give me some new thoughts on my family lines in Devon before 1750. I will also be able to add to my Pincombe one name study.

With the Cheatle family I had the confusion of three William Cheatles having children at Ashby de la Zouch in the 1790s - at least it appeared there were three. One married to a Sarah, one married to an Ann and one married to an Elizabeth. Reading the register at Salt Lake City I was able to show that there were indeed three William Cheatle and that it wasn't a matter of one wife dying and his remarrying. While I was pursuing this information I discovered a will for one of the Cheatle families at Ashby de la Zouch on The National Archives site. I downloaded this and it helped to prove that two of the lines at Ashby de la Zouch were brothers (not mine) and the third was not mentioned in the will. Could still be related but not siblings.

Tomorrow I will switch to the material that I collected for the Andover Manor, the Upper Clatford Manor and a couple of smaller manors. These documents are from the 1500s and 1600s and I think will be helpful in looking at my families there.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 16 Nov 2008

I am continuing to transcribe the information that I accumulated at Salt Lake City. I have now completed the Protestation Returns for Devon (1641-1642) and a quick sort revealed a total of 23 Pincombe/Pencombe/Pinkcombe signers with 1 Bartholomew, 1 Henry, 3 John, 2 Philip, 3 Richard, 4 Robert, 1 Roger, 4 Thomas, and 4 William. The locations include: 2 Abbotsham, 1 Alwington, 1 Great Torrington, 4 Bishops Nympton, 3 Chittlehampton, 3 Chulmleigh, 1 Knowstone, 3 North Molton, 2 Satterleigh, and 3 South Molton. Thus giving us a cluster of Abbotsham, Alwington and Great Torrington and a cluster of Chulmleigh, North and South Molton, Bishops Nympton, Knowstone, Satterleigh and Chittlehampton, The Tax Rolls for Devon 1544-1545 include 10 Pencombe/Pincombe/Pinkcombe listings including 1 Alice (widow of Thomas), 1 Christopher, 2 John, 1 Philip, 3 Richard, 1 Thomas and 1 William. The 1581 tax subsidy lists 9 Pincombe heads including 1 Christopher, 1 Edward, 1 Emma, 3 John, 2 Richard and 1 William. The Hearth Tax of 1664 lists only 1 William at Filleigh. The Hearth Tax of 1674 lists 1 Richard, 2 Thomas and 2 William.

With the addition of the Protestation Returns we have a fuller picture of the Pincombe famly which is known to have arrived at North Molton/South Molton in 1485 with Lord de la Zouch - perhaps they received this land because of their loyalty at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Queen Elizabeth I later appointed John Pincombe, South Molton, as the Sheriff of South Molton (1598). He was the Pincombe who bore the coat of arms attributed to this family. My suspicion is that the Pincombe member who arrived in 1485 likely had two sons with him and it is these two sons from whom the Pincombe family of Devon is descended (lending credence is the distribution of family members in the Protestation Returns with two distinct groups - one centered around Barnstaple and the other around South Molton). The elder son probably settled in the South Molton area as an adult and then his descendants were found at Barnstaple/Bideford with the other son at North Molton and his descendants were found at North Molton/South Molton/East Buckland/Bishops and Kings Nymptons in the 1500s. Looking at the 1544-1545 tax subsidy the locations include: 1 Bideford, 1 East Buckland, 2 Kings Nympton, 3 North Molton, 2 South Molton and 1 Tawstock. Family lore says that the Pincombe family initially at South Molton did move to the Torrington/Roborough/Barnstaple/Bideford area in the 1500s. Our DNA study thus far includes just one person who traces back to the Bideford area and he matches an online Pincombe result at ysearch 23.5/25 who is known to be a descendant of the North Molton/Bishops Nympton family. Hopefully, this winter I will complete my conversion of the earlier data to my Legacy one name Pincombe study file.

I have now begun my transcription of the Rugeley Poor Tax Rate looking for my Welsh/Brockhouse/Lea/Linn/Wood/Diram family lines. These interesting records from 1783 also include the overseer Account book. Thus far I have entered 208 properties with likely another 700 listed. I did not realize how large Rugeley was in the 1700s. It is a mystery to me the occupation of my ancestors although I suspect the Welsh family were Innkeepers. This transcription will occupy me for another week since I collected several years worth of data.

I spent a short period of time reviewing the Parish Registers for Rugeley and need to incorporate this information into my Family Legacy file. I rather think that I will put my Lambden one name study into hibernation since I have not had time to pursue it at all. Perhaps even withdrawing my commitment will result in someone else taking it on. Doing the Siderfin and Pincombe one name family studies is likely all that I can manage at the moment.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 14 Nov 2008

The Protestation Returns for the part of Devon that interests me is nearing completion. It has been a major transcription task but will let me look at all my family names in the North Devon area in particular my one name study for Pincombe. Having this "census" of all males over 18 for this area is a fabulous tool for the 1641-42 time period. Occasionally there is a female name but only very rarely. By this time in the parish registers the forename of the wife is also included on the baptism. I think that the Church was remarkably ahead of its time with the recording of the mother of the child albeit without the maiden surname but that can often be obtained from the wedding lines.

A request for information on a family line in Bishops Nympton prompted a deviation from my avid transcription yesterday. Looking at the Tapp family caused me to look once again at my Blackmoore family connection there. I decided to extract all the Blackmoore family members from the register up to 1660. Although Thomas mentions the Pincombe family in his will, I rather think now that concluding that his daughter married a Pincombe is premature. His brother Anthony has a daughter Johane baptized in 1737 that is a more likely candidate for the wedding in 1655 of John Pincombe and Johan Blackemoore because Anthony died just a couple of months before and Johane was his only daughter still living. Her two brothers would have been 20 and 10 years old at that time. I had stepped away from this marriage because John was baptized in 1622 and thus 15 years older. That actually clears up a confusion in this line although John and Jane did not name a son Anthony - they chose William, John, Thomas and Hugh as the names of their sons. There were three children named Anthony Blackemoore born in this time period so that is perhaps the reason for not choosing Anthony.

Revised my webpage to bring the list of names to the top of the page since it will be expanded and it is the prominent item on my webpage. I expect to add another ten in the next couple of weeks. The trip to Salt Lake City provided me with a lot of female surnames. As these are usually the most difficult to obtain it will greatly improve my ability to prove all my people at the 4x great grandparent level. A task I shall begin once I have transcribed all my documents from Salt Lake City.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 13 Nov 2008

Continuing on with the records that I accumulated at Salt Lake City, I am still transcribing the Protestation Returns for Devon. I have over 250 images of the original records as I filmed them using the 65x magnification film reader. I could have used the 45x and had more to a page and learned that later in the week. Plus I filmed the Cumberland records at 1x and they have also turned out quite well using my 10.0 megapixel camera with anti-shake technology. I am entering all of these into a single Excel file which I will then make a copy of for sorting purposes. I want to accumulate all the Pincombe/Pyncombe/Pinkcombe etc. families for my one name study and since I already have these dozen charts that I mentioned I will be able to locate the founding families in the different areas as most of them do go back to the 1600s. I have at least 30 different lines in Devon and sorting through these Protestations Returns will give me a handle on where these surnames occur most frequently and how they traveled from what might prove to be a "founder" area. As I research further back it is interesting seeing how many surnames have disappeared over time. The Protestation Returns are really like a census of all the adults in an area and an absolute treasure to the genealogist. Taxes, visitations do not cover everyone unfortunately although do give a list of the area at pertinent times.

Most days I receive one or two requests for information on Bishops Nympton where I am the online parish clerk. I am still transcribing the registers from 1813 to the present but it is fairly easy to do lookups in this part of the register. Having transcribed the earlier registers though has greatly improved my information level and if conversations continue beyond the simple BMB records then I also have subsidy records, hearth tax records, wills (prepared by Worthy), Visitations (handy as many farmers are listed as well as the landed gentry), and a number of other items. Today was not an exception and I responded to the two individuals.

I ordered the Parish Registers (early) for Landkey, Molland, Merton and Rose Ash today from the Devon Record Office. I need these to sort out my families that married into Bishops Nympton's families and the parish register microfilms at the LDS are transcripts only. One of the many reasons for going to Salt Lake City was to see what I would need to purchase from England as opposed to seeing the information there.

I also added the Burges family to my webpage. I had a question on the Tapp family at Bishops Nympton and noticed that I hadn't done the Burges family on my webpage and I had pulled their information from the North Molton register earlier. The Tapp family at Bishops Nympton trace back to the Tapp family found at North Molton. I now have 45 family lines on my webpage. I have stuck to lines where I have in hand the proofs to take me back (not just the IGI). The IGI is a great tool though to help you look at possible locations for your family lines. But it is always best to work from the known to the unknown!

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 12 Nov 2008

I finished off the Land Tax Assessments for Devon - I appear to have only copied Bishops Nympton and Twitchen so will add to my list for next time - Lapford, Merton, Molland and Rose Ash. I do have those four for just 1798. It has been a very worthwhile exercise especially for Bishops Nympton and determining the relationship between the Pincombe families there.

I continue transcribing the Protestation Returns which will be a slow process. I am now up to 2500 names in my excel file. I photographed the Returns for a number of counties but I am most familiar with the names in Devon so felt that I would start there as it is all old English text. Although I find it not too difficult to read, the extra practice before going at less familiar counties will be most worthwhile.

Looking at the Brockhouse family in Yorkshire, I have discovered that they were at Rugeley prior to 1700 and it is possible that one generation of the family that I am looking at was simply away from Rugeley for about twenty years as my line is found there again marrying in 1748 and their eight children are all baptized at Rugeley. Found one family of Brockhouse at One World Tree which traces back to Esther Brockhouse (younger sister to Margaret my ancestor). Interesting name and appears to be a variant of Brookhouse - I acquired another dozen of my female ancestresses' surnames in this trip to Salt Lake City which was great progress as they are sometimes the most difficult to find.

With the knowledge that I should have collected the Land Tax Assessments for Landkey, Merton, Molland and Rose Ash I have started my new Excel file for the next visit to Salt Lake City hopefully next September. I have three family lines that I set aside and did not touch on this trip because of the time needed for them would have prevented me from my overview of the information for the counties that I am interested in. These surnames were Knight in Dorset (Winterborne Valley), Lambden in Hampshire (St Mary Bourne) and Buller in London. I probably needed two more days to look at these three in depth at least.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 11 Nov 2008

I have a feeling that this title will gradually change to English Research from Canada and the date which is the name of my blog. But I will carry on with what I am doing with my information that I garnered at Salt Lake City from the Family History Library.

Today I continued to transcribe the Protestation Returns of the South Molton Hundred of Devon. I have two other complete Hundreds to transcribe plus a few other miscellaneous parishes where my one name study members could be found in 1641-42. That fits in with my one name study of this family which is progressing. I inherited the study from two people who had worked on it from the late 1960s to the late 1990s. They both felt the need to give it up and were most happy to pass it on. I actually wasn't the original recipient but he too, after a couple of years, found that he simply didn't have time to work on it as he had other lines he wanted to investigate.

I tend to be a glutton for work and so I took it on from him. There are 12 large charts each occupying half of a metre square sheet. I have entered four of these large charts into Legacy and I continue apace doing so. One of the items that slows me down is that I have the original parish registers on fiche for a number of these places and I was (and continue to) checking each entry with the register where I had the information (or at least the IGI). All of these charts were prepared (hands on) with people in the various areas where this family moved during the 1800s and late 1700s. One of the original people was in the United States and he had a good handle on his family there. He had actually contacted my uncle in the late 1960s for information but my uncle was not willing to do that. I can remember the conversation with my mother on that (his only sibling) and whether she wanted to write to this person. They both decided not to become involved which was a shame really as I didn't get to correspond with him until just five years ago and he has lost some of his earlier enthusiasm. The other person in charge of the One Name Study lived in England and I never did correspond with him but the other gentleman who took it over did do so and passed the correspondence to me by the marvels of a CD across the Atlantic. Marvelous inventions all of these especially the world wide web.

So today I continue to transcribe Protestation Returns but reading my email I had a request from an individual in England looking for one of his ancestors in Bishops Nympton. I looked it up on my transcription of this register (400 pages from 1556 to 1812) and the IGI had transcribed one particular name as Agnis but that didn't work for what I was seeing on the microfilm and I had transcribed it as M_ry and indeed he was looking for a Mary in this time frame so worked very well. These distractions from my intended work are quite welcomed as I am the online parish clerk for Bishops Nympton.

Today I think I shall complete the transcription of North Molton and South Molton for the Protestation Returns which is a lot of names. I have quite a few family lines from this particular area in Devon and the opportunity to actually produce a list of all these individuals sorted by hundred and then by parish was exceedingly tempting as I am back into this time frame with a number of the lines. What started with just the one family at Bishops Nympton has grown by leaps and bonds.

The other item I am continuing with is the transcription of the Land Tax Assessments of the Twitchen Parish having completed Bishops Nympton.

How did I get into Genealogy is perhaps an interesting topic? My husband has been doing genealogy for over 45 years. I have watched him, read census for him, read land records for him and walked through hundreds of graveyards searching for his ancestors in the past 43 years. Never once did a quiver of interest in my own family arise through all of this exploration. I helped with the OGS table for the branch that we belong to at a number of Seminars/Conferences through the years but again no interest in actually doing all of that with my own family.

Two items occurred within about one year of each other that resulted in my taking on this pursuit of ancestors. I did it in my own unique way as well in that I took 42 courses from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies which is a certificate course offered through the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto and is an online course (with some testing through the media of the telephone interview).

The first item that occurred was my daughter and I flying off to Rome in November 2001 which was an adventure in itself. On our way back we had decided to stop in London (UK) for a couple of days. I had never been in England before that and on arriving I had this incredible feeling of being "home." Our Hotel was very close to the British Museum and we saw a great deal in just that short time period. As we walked back from the Underground to our Hotel I had this incredible desire to walk past towards another street and did actually do so before we left England. For another year or so I watched as my husband continued to work away on his many ancestral lines that all ended on the American side of the Atlantic - most lines going back into the 1620s, 1630s and 1640s. American research, I must say, is very difficult and you pretty much need to go to the areas and have a look around and we continued to do that.

A second item occurred in 2003 which was my fourth cousin (I didn't know the exact relationship at this time) writing to ask me to do the profile on one of my emigrant lines (I have five actually as I mentioned earlier with three ancestors born here). Coincidentally my eldest daughter was doing her PhD in the same geographic area he wanted me to write about. I decided I couldn't do it without taking some sort of a course on how to do genealogy and this profile wasn't due for two years. So I signed up for one course on Methodology which, after just one month, turned into an entire years worth of courses and just a couple of months after that I had signed myself up for the next four years taking courses (I graduated in May 2007 with a certificate in Genealogy in English and Canadian sources - double certificate actually).

Surprisingly, I had quite a bit of information at hand as my mother felt that the one person who would take care of all the material that she herself had collected (I think she eventually wished she had contacted the individual looking at family history) was my husband and he had put it all away thinking that when I retired I might just take an interest! Even he was amazed at the gusto with which I went at my courses working hours and hours every week on each lesson and using my family as an example to put into practice all the tools. I soon had everyone back to my 2x great grandparents with the aid of material that my mother had accumulated. Going to the 3x was not overly difficult as I simply purchased records from England but a few places do not sell the records and for those I had to be very inventive - I joined Genes Reunited and met many many cousins on line including for the areas that I needed real records and I became a Free BMD transcriber.

But back to the feeling of being at home. As I researched my family, I discovered that just around the block from our hotel in England had lived my 2x great grandfather and he had a pork butcher shop there. Intuition, serendipity or whatever you want to call it - my ancestors were making themselves felt in my life.

Tomorrow perhaps a discussion on the value of One Name Studies as I belong to the Guild of One Name Studies.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 10 Nov 2008

Today was a sorting day looking at the various items that I brought back and deciding an orderly manner in which to transcribe or otherwise interpret them. My excel file of all the images includes the picture number, the area that was being researched (usually the village/town/city but sometimes the county only), the item that was being photographed and the date. That way I can sort it by image number, area, item or date. In retrospect it will be a workable system. Setting it up initially was a quandry as I didn't know at the beginning how many pictures I would take.

I decided to update my Legacy file as I never do that when I am on the road or away from my main computer researching. I always record all the changes in a word file although might actually enter them into the legacy file on my portable computer. I want to maintain the integrity of my Legacy file though and avoid making quick changes that haven't had time to "gel" in my mind. I had obtained a number of baptism, marriage and burial entries and that resulted in my deciding to update my webpage with five new family lines since I had acquired what I consider to be a sufficient number of details. This time it was the Durnford, Ellis, Hemsley, Hilton and Tanner family names that were added. I now have 39 surnames traced back in varying degrees on my webpage. I also have an *.pdf file associated with many of them (still remaining to do for the new additions today) which includes the marriage partner and date for each generation if known. I can extract the Relationship to me chart from Legacy and put it into an *.pdf file for ftp to my webpage. I have found this to be a very worthwhile use of my webspace as I have been receiving the occasional email from people asking about some of my information or whether I know where their family line fits in.

I believe I shall now split my effort a little between the land tax assessments for Devon and Protestation Returns into a table (I copied the originals) for use with my one name studies on Pincombe and Siderfin. I am considering putting my Lambden study in hibernation simply because I haven't had enough time to really get into the study and perhaps someone else will pick up this study if it isn't being worked on by me. Two studies appear to be sufficient work for me at the moment. I have entered four of the twelve charts that I received from the Pincombe one name study that existed before I took the task on and for the Siderfin I have managed to locate and put into family lines most of the Siderfin individuals that I have found in parish and civil records up to 1900 and these I have added to the excellent family chart made by James Hooper Saunders in 1910.

I am also planning to spend some time each day now on the Genuki Hampshire webpages. I wanted to go to England and see Hampshire myself before I put too much more effort into the pages. I am now satisfied that I can continue with this project and do it justice - not as much as a native Hampshire person but the best that I can do from afar.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 9 Nov 2008

I had thought this blog might run out of thoughts by the end of my recitation of my week at Salt Lake City. However, as I worked through all the information that I brought back I will share my organization of the information online.

My first item to work on was the West Hampshire Subsidy Returns. I extracted my family name and was pleased to see the names quickly fall into the two family lines that are known to exist in this area. I was also surprised to see that they were totally concentrated in the Andover area. Although published records do claim that this family originated in Wiltshire and that one family line moved to the Andover area in just one generation, I am still looking for clues to this claim. I am gradually gathering all the evidence and must admit that with each new source I am finding that the published literature is substantiated by the records. This was an excel chart (I use excel quite a bit and access if I want to combine items and do queries) that I produced and I then went back in and extracted a couple of other family lines that are also mine in this area. I will continue to do that as my family in this area goes back to the late 1400s with the birth of my direct ancestor purportedly said to be 1489 at Eastontown ( a small property now included within the City of Andover). Hence I have ten family lines to extract with my grandmothers in each generation who are known by me thus far.

I had copied the Poor Law Records for my parishes in Devon and there are still more that I will do another time. I started by photographing 1780 for one particular parish when they begin and continued with that through to 1785. At this point I realized that I may not be able to accomplish everything if I am too thorough in collecting results. So I skipped ahead a few years and collected another ten years worth bringing me up to 1829. When I want to transcribe this information, I set up an excel file with all the titles across the page including a numerical reference (1, 2, 3, ...) and the year plus Owner, Occupier (broken into prefix, forename, surname, suffix), then name of property, and the rate broken down into pounds, shillings and pence. Especially having the rate was handy when the images were not as clear as they should be and this was a learning curve for me so some of my images were a bit blurry at the beginning. I realized after typing in the first year that I would be able to use that sheet as a template for the rest and I simply cut and pasted into the succeeding years. I turned the entire copy red and as I found each property and checked all the details (correcting as needed) I would turn the entry black. I managed to get through all of Bishops Nympton in just two days. I then put all the sheets together in one summation sheet and sorted by surname of occupier and there were my families all neatly listed on their farms for a fifty year period. It allowed me to separate out two family lines that by this time were third cousins and by the time these families emigrated in the mid 1850s (several from each line) they had forgotten their relationship but this chart was going to restore that knowledge. Already all that record gathering had proven to be most worthwhile.

I am continuing with the other parishes in Devon - Landkey, Merton, Molland, Rose Ash and Twitchen.

Research Day Six - Salt Lake City

The last day of research and we were at the Library just before 8:00 a.m. ready to do research. This would be a full day from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and we were there right to closing. We were both on the International Floor (B1) and the plan was to look at the German parishes first so that I could see the my husband's families at Brohm. This was a great success story for him as he had been working on them for awhile (he has been doing genealogy for over 45 years compared to my 5 years) and just lately (after a family reunion) had concentrated his efforts working on a likely sibling and taking her information back most successfully. His great grandfather was found in the register and the relationship between the two was proven. He had worked his way further back finding their parents' baptisms and the marriage of the parents of his great great grandparents. A little more pushing today and possible baptisms for these individuals to clarify.

On the excel file we had extracted 15 microfilms for his Huguenot families who had emigrated to the New Amsterdam colony in the mid 1600s. They were Huguenots from Isle de Re (an island just opposite La Rochelle in France) and had been researched by others but we wanted to see the original records which were always quoted in research reports. This was successful for some and not so successful for others. But in total it was an excellent morning of research as it was the first time that I had spent with actual German Parish records films and French Parish record films. We went off to lunch and on returning went our separate ways with me returning to the British Floor (B2).

On my last day there, I wanted to do a little extra research that hadn't been in my excel file. Researching in Yorkshire had revealed a couple of new ancestral locations - Great Driffield being one of them and I wanted to look at the Parish Registers to see if I could move further back with this family. I am getting back quite a way now with this family and was reading the register back into the early 1700s. I had spent a couple of weeks reviewing my early English paleography to be ready for this event and found it fairly straight forward to move backwards through the records. The venture was most successful yielding the marriage of the parents in Great Driffield, the bride's baptism in Great Driffield and most fortunately the priest had noted that the groom was from Hutton Cranswick. I continued reading back into the Great Driffield Register and found the marriage of the bride's parents and her three siblings' baptisms. Two new surnames to add to my growing list of surnames for Yorkshire. I then pulled the parish register for Hutton Cranswick and found the groom's baptism there along with the marriage of his parents and his siblings' baptisms (four). I spent a while looking at these registers searching for the marriages and baptisms and at a later date will review the burial registers.

My purpose this time was to find information on my 4x great grandparents (their parent's names and marriage date) and I was back to the 6x great grandparents with this research effort. It was most interesting though the find all the details and it is a good start for our next research trip to Salt Lake City. When we were reviewing the film on our excel file we made little notes and turned the entry a different colour so that we would know what we had looked at and what we had left out. I have proven back to my 3x great grandparents on all lines (one line is a bit shaky (my mother's mother's mother's line and is based solely on family lore and census plus the registration records that I have from the GRO)). I had hoped that I might be able to clarify this line a little more but it remains somewhat elusive. My mtDNA, which is this line, is relatively uncommon and found primarily in people who trace back to Argyll Scotland and Antrim Ireland. It would appear to be Scot-Irish and certainly many many of the people who moved from Scotland to Ireland in the late 1600s and early 1700s made their way to the Midlands of England (with some coming down directly from Scotland) where I am basically brickwalled. It makes for interesting research though I must admit and I am learning more and more about Birmingham and the counties around Birmingham. Although I have a tentative line back for my great grandmother based solely on family lore, I did not look up any of these individuals yet. The traceback takes me to Shropshire and several smaller villages outside of Birmingham. I had decided before I came that I would not pursue this line without further proof of the parents of my great grandmother than I currently have.

I also spent some time on the Library computers looking at their databases - in particular FindMyPast and the Dockland Ancestors database which had yielded up some of my ancestors at long last hidden to me until I wrote to the London Metropolitan Archives requesting a search of the St Mary Magdalen Parish Registers (Surrey) for information on my family line there. Now the transcribed records were finally on line and I made a few discoveries there.

Surprisingly this had taken me the afternoon and on into the evening because I also pulled out the Poor Law Records and had a look at them. These families were principally farmers (husbandmen and yeoman) so were listed in these records as paying the poor rate. My husband came down around 7:00 p.m. to see how my afternoon had progressed and to let me know of his work. By now the library was becoming fairly deserted (Saturday evening seems to be a fairly quiet time in the library). I had been looking for a couple of books but hadn't found them but my librarian trained husband had found them quite quickly and helped me to photograph them.

One in particular was the West Hampshire Subsidy returns and I had tried to find this book on microfiche or a republication without success for a couple of years. I had heard from others online that it was a handy way to "line" up your families in this area (this proved to be very true once I arrived home and extracted my family lines). I spent the rest of the evening working with this book and a couple of others that were about my villages. A journal that had been published about Bewcastle, Cumberland proved to be most interesting with about twenty articles in total that related to my ancestors there. Another publication was Rugeley Remembered and although it did not go back into the 1700s when my families lived there, the pictures were most interesting and the stories that were related took you back in time to life in this village. Although I strongly suspect that my direct family here ran an Inn they weren't listed but I also know that some of the members were farmers as they were still farming in this area on the census in the 1800s.

We were busy until 8:45 p.m. but finally packed up and on the way back to the hotel we discussed our week at the Library. Absolutely a worthwhile trip but best to be very prepared because the number of records there can quite overwhelm you. I think I was lucky because I knew that I just wanted to be on the British Floor and so wasn't tempted to look at all the other floors. I had planned to spend some time on my husband's records but other than Saturday morning I just didn't make it. When I first arrived on B2 I felt a bit overwhelmed by the rows and rows of microfilm drawers but I had my numbers (not listed separately on this first day) on my computer and this first day I was balancing my computer reading off the films (sorted by country and then by number) that I wanted for Devon. My next time to select films I wrote the numbers down on a slip of paper and that worked very well. Amazingly I never once went to look for a film and found it not there. Since I find very few people researching my names I shouldn't have been surprised but I still was.

That evening we talked about when we would go again to Salt Lake City and we think that next Fall would be the ideal time. It will take us at least all winter to sort through all the records that we picked up. Do we have enough to go back? Yes certainly, I only scratched the surface of some of my family lines.

The next time I would assign a great grandparent line to each day and concentrate on direct family research as this time I concentrated on the county acquiring information on the particular places in which they lived finding the family members as part of this routine. I discovered that I needed to purchase some records as they have not been filmed and I have now started that process for four villages in Devon where I want to trace my ancestors back in the 1600s and the 1500s where the registers go back that far. I did find the Poor Rate Records which are helpful but now want to verify the records found on the IGI for these parishes.

I purposely left out three blocks of research films this time because I would not have been able to complete all my counties if I had decided to concentrate on them. They are already listed for next time and I can add anything new that I find for that interesting pursuit.

Obviously we are now looking at two weeks there as I have eight great grandparents :) . My husband found so much material that he was unable to follow a number of leads that he had simply because the volume of what he found for his searching was sufficient to use up all of his time. He too would find a two week stint to be most useful.

We didn't look around other than our flight in and out so didn't go to Great Salt Lake and we would also like to see the Grand Canyon while we are in that part of the country. We could break up our two weeks of study by taking a couple of days and driving down to the Grand Canyon.

Overall conclusion on our research trip gives it an excellent rating; the Palatines to America group that we went with were very well organized but left us with lots of time to research. This was "German" week at the Library so there were two hour lectures every morning which my hsuband attended. That also used up some of his time but he found them to be helpful with his research. The Orientation Lecture on Monday morning was absolutely excellent and all the people in the library were so very very helpful quickly answering any requests almost before you made them!

Research Day Five - Salt Lake City

The last two days for research at Salt Lake City were left free for me to choose items or help my husband if he wanted any help. However, I hadn't completed my fourth day of research and once again we managed to have our breakfast and be at the library for 8:00 a.m. The library was closing early today because of Hallowe'en so research only until 5:00 p.m. We were going to have a group dinner and discussion on our research which would be interesting to hear how others in our group had managed with their research.

I again pulled the films for the Birmingham Churches around where my grandmother had lived. I decided to spend four more hours reading through the various registers (St Martins is particularly large) looking for surnames. This was not to be a successful morning but I learned more about the people who had attended the various churches in her area. With six siblings and herself, I had lots of names to watch for but success was not to be mine. We went off for lunch at 12 noon today.

In the afternoon, I wanted to look at some of the Staffordshire and Leicester records for Protestation Returns, Wills and other Parish Records. This was a more successful venture and I photographed the parishes that interested me. I found a number of will records for my Leicester family which may be helpful and I photographed them to review later. This family is a real mystery as well. It is a very unusual name and found mostly in six parishes in Leicester prior to 1800 where I am looking for them. Not an overly researched family with the forename,surname yielding only 21 entries on WorldConnect and half of them are the same individual being researched by a family in Australia.

I had also found some interesting fiche to look at for the Staffordshire area. These fiche had been in the restricted area so required me to leave my driver's licence to review them. They were a transcription of the Parish Registers for one of my parishes there. I extracted all my names and this time I typed them all up for a permanent record. I have made very few penciled notes on this visit but have maintained a daily log of items that I photographed - recording the event also on my computer.

The 5:00 p.m. closing arrived and we headed off to the hotel. We were going to have a long walk before dinner. Our dinner was at a nearby restaurant (they featured lamb) and we had a really good group dinner and discussion on our research. I didn't contribute much other than to say that I had thus far spent all five days on the British floor but tomorrow I would be going to the International Floor. I never did make it to the Main Floor where all the family histories are other than a brief stop there just before closing on this day. The Second and Third Floors are all American and Canadian records and I did not make it to those two floors at all. With all my ancestry being English except for three Canadian born ancestors (my mother, her father and his mother), I have managed to accumulate all the records for my families in Canada. We walked back from the restaurant to the hotel - about eight blocks.

Tomorrow would be our last day and I was going to spend some time on my husband's German and French ancestors with him. He had had a most successful week with his research file and had had about 150 films/books in his excel file.

Research Day Four - Salt Lake City

The fourth day and we remembered to book our shuttle back to the airport on Sunday so that is all accomplished. We are hoping that being there two hours early will be sufficient as we have heard that checking in can be a little slower at Salt Lake City (in retrospect we had enough time plus to check in). Down to breakfast and then over to the library. The wheeled case with my computer in it is completely stripped down to keep the weight minimal. I will buy a backpack with wheels though for the next trip as I simply do not need so much room as is available in the wheeled suitcase computer bag. I have my camera in a small case around my neck and lots of pencils just in case I do want to write something down.

Again I have my lists ready for what I expect will be a frustrating day. I decide at the last moment to start with my family line that I know begins at Rugeley and it was an excellent choice. I already knew this line back to my 4x great grandfather for sure except I was missing his wife's surname. I started with the Parish Register and quickly found the marriage registration. It was really hard to read her name so I decided to check back in the register looking for the letters as they appeared to my eye. About ten years after the birth of her husband I found my 4x great grandmother. A most exciting moment. I also found her seven siblings, her mother's young death and her father's very very long life. However, her father was not born in the parish although he had married there in 1748. Her mother's surname, however, was found in the earliest registers. I extracted all of the individuals with her surname or a similar one plus all the others in my family line as I found that the earlier marriages for this family line were indeed my ancestral line and that I could trace back to my 6x great grandparents in this parish and found the death of one 6x great grandfather for sure and several others. The six times grandparents had not been married at Rugeley and my next visit I will pursue the registers in a parish nearby where this name occurs - Farewell. A very worthwhile few hours pursuing this most interesting family.

I decided to skirt around my biggest difficulty with this family line (my mother's mother) and look at the family of my grandmother's father's father's mother. This interesting family is found at Bermondsey, Surrey and as I read the burial register for the same I discovered the burial of my 3x great grandmother's mother in 1785. I had the will of her father from 1796 where he mentions his wife but not the name that I had for the mother of my 3x great grandmother. I checked the Surrey marriage register which is online at the Family History Library on their computers and there was a second marriage for her father about two years later. I continued to read the burial register and found the likely father of this young woman and he died about three months after on the same street in Bermondsey. I continued reading the register as my 3x great grandfather's family is a mystery at Bermondsey. All of his children appear to be baptized there but the marriage is missing (I expect it was a runaway marriage in one of the peculiars so will eventually do that digging). I did find a burial for a possible father of this man in the register on a street not far away. I copied it for future reference and wrote it down because I was going to be looking at this family later. Surprisingly it was now lunch time.

I had avoided the difficult task ahead for quite awhile. I finally went and got the films for the churches in Birmingham near to where my grandmother was born. I wanted to find the baptisms for her and her siblings. Hours later I hadn't found them but had found the baptisms for her mother's family for several generation back. Because my evidence for the female side of my grandmother's family is based on family lore and some census evidence I avoid doing research too far back. I recorded all of these and decided to move on to collecting material from books that I hadn't had a chance to look at. I then went back and copied the Poor Rate for the Rugeley area although I knew that my people here were into Inn keeping and victuallers but perhaps they might have a mention for the other lines. That occupied the rest of the day as I searched out the relevant information plus I decided to take a stab at Ashby de la Zouch.

I had seen the register for Ashby de la Zouch a year or so ago and knew the line that was pertinent to my ancestor (my 3x great grandmother married to the Rugeley ancestor) but there were three males by that surname and I wondered if he had had three wives or were there actually three males. I then started to pull all this family's data from the register and discovered that indeed there were three William's and that my William had had just the one child - my 3x great grandmother. His wife died young (only the first name known) and I copied the Poor Law just to see if it would be helpful. I haven't found his marriage and that is a necessary next step. I wasn't successful this time but I need to look at six areas in Leicester where this family name occurs and find him in one of them. The surname is relatively unusual but the name William is a common one in the family. With that my day was finished in the library.

Tonight we were going to attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsal so finished up by 8:00 p.m. to get ready to do so. A quick supper and we were there by 8:45 p.m. A most fascinating evening and a not to be missed event if you are in Salt Lake City.

Research Day Three - Salt Lake City

Again we were up early and had our breakfast but today we decided to use the exercise room at the hotel since we were very early. A twenty minute workout and we were ready for breakfast and another day of research. Today we also planned to take a slightly longer noon break and walk up to Sam Weller's book store about 1.5 kilometres away from the Library area.

Again we were at the Library for 8:00 a.m. and actually a bit earlier and there is a long line of people waiting at the Library to get their preferred microfilm reader. I think that the English Record floor is perhaps not quite as busy as some of the others but I still haven't visited any other floor yet. I must try to do that before the week is done!

I had my lists of Wiltshire films at hand and quickly found them and set myself up for a couple of hours of viewing. I had a goal this morning and that was to find the maiden name of the wife of my 3x great grandfather. This was the only 3x great grandparent that I was missing and the records for Enford did not reveal a marriage for them there. There was a marriage however that was quite interesting at Woodford and I needed to determine if this one was a possibility. I found it right away and the priest had recorded that they were of the parish. Woodford is not too far away from Enford but still I wanted to look at the parish records earlier in Woodford to see if they were actually "of the parish." I worked my way backwards checking for the two pertinent surnames of this couple and found that the wife's family name did appear fairly frequently in the register but no sign of the husband's surname although a couple of other marriages where the surname was listed from nearby parishes. I pulled these films as well to have a look as my family at Enford appear there in 1741 with no idea of where they were before. I continued to look at the parish records for the small villages around Enford and collected lists of the surnames. I also found Poor Law Records which I took pictures of to help me later with evidencing this particular event.

As I looked at the other parishes I also wanted to find the likely marriage of my 4x great grandfather at Tilshead and the priest, wonderful man, had recorded that the groom was from Enford and with his unusual forename my original thought that this was the marriage was clearly proven. I continued to collect information from this parish record as the bride had been born at Tilshead, her parents married at Tilshead and her only brother also born there as I discovered. Her mother's burial record had appeared as the family name is somewhat unusual. However these parents were not born at Tilshead but the priest had referenced the groom of their marriage as being from another parish which I will follow up at our next visit to the Family History Library. I was being somewhat strict with myself not to go beyond the 5x great grandparents in my reviewing as I wanted to look at every one of my ancestor's counties in my week available.

I had one other item to look at in Wiltshire and that was the father of one of my 2x great grandmothers (my grandfather's father's mother). I have little information for him other than his marriage in Andover where he signed the registration with such a very neat signature (I have the fiche) and then his death record where the priest writes that he was just 44 years old but no other details (my 2x great grandmother was just four years old and his last child). I had a baptism at Collingbourne Kingston which was interesting because he fortunately had a very interesting forename. However, the parish records and the Poor Law Records at a quick review were not helpful but I filmed them to look at them again later.

I just finished in time for my husband to arrive and us to go for lunch and our walk to the bookstore. Being at 4300 feet above sea level is invigorating and the air quite fresh in Salt Lake City. The sun seems very very strong there and we had absolutely beautiful weather. The walk was quite lovely and we spent about half of an hour in the bookstore.

We were back in the library by 2:30 p.m. and preparing once again to work until 9:00 p.m. closing time. I now pulled out the films for Cumberland that I wanted to look at. My family there lived at Bewcastle. They sometimes married people from Lanercost but for the most part all of their records are in the Bewcastle Parish Records. I have a copy of that transcription but wanted to see what else I might be able to find for my families there. My 3x great grandparents had the same surname and it was already determined that they were second cousins once removed. I wanted to photograph the Protestation Returns and did that for my parishes although I had already purchased a transcription from the Record Office in Cumberland but wanted to look at the original. I also wanted to look at the Court Records there but again I have a number of records for this area and was able to move on to Yorkshire.

Now here, I am rather lucky. My fourth cousin has written up this family line and did an excellent job. What I wanted to prove was that my 3x great grandfather who had been baptized at Holme-on-the-Wolds was the son of the couple who had married at Cherry Burton. Interestingly this family lived at Etton and the review of the burial registers for Cherry Burton revealed that this family always buried at Cherry Burton including the eldest brother of my 2x great grandfather. As I searched back through the Cherry Burton registers I gathered all the entries for this family and there is only one family there by that surname and so they all appear to be related. I copied the Poor Law Records as well for these parishes. I shall see if the evidence is clear enough to determine that indeed the family at Etton is preceded by the family at Cherry Burton. Along with that I wanted to look at the records for my 2x great grandmother (wife of the individual baptized at Holme-on-the-Wolds). Their marriage had been at Lund and the register recorded the bride as of Lund. This was a lucky review of the records as I found her parents marriage also at Lund where the priest recorded the groom as being born at Kilnwick and the bride at Great Driffield. I permitted myself the luxury of looking at these two sets of records and was rewarded magnificently. I shall pursue these registers further back another time but needless to say my family tree expanded quickly in that short review of the records.

Certainly my Wednesday had been quite successful as I had managed to more or less catch up to my schedule.

Closing time came and we again opted to have dinner at the hotel with just soup and sandwich. We downloaded our images and backed them up on a spare portable drive that we brought with us. Everything prepared for tomorrow as we made our paper lists of films to pull first thing on our arrival. We were at the midway point in our research week. Tomorrow I would look at my biggest puzzle - my mother's mother's family line.

Research Day Two - Salt Lake City

The second day of Research in Salt Lake City began much like the first with us rushing down to breakfast so that we would be over at the Library by 8:00 a.m. to begin as soon as the library opened. Monday being Family Day the Library closed at 5:00 p.m. but today the Library would be open until 8:00 p.m. (usually 9:00 p.m. ). This time straight in to work and I went once again to the British Floor (B2) . I hadn't completed my Monday wish list but had made a very good start.

Today I continued to look at Devon as I still wanted to look at a couple of books that I had found. This I completed quickly as the books are quite straightforward to find filed on the modified Dewey system which suits their library. I then moved on to Somerset where again I have a lot of fiche already for the area and a lot of other records but wanted to see the original microfilming of the book on one of my families - Siderfin. This family had been heavily involved in Somerset in the 1600s and 1700s with a gradual moving away in the 1800s and by the 1900s it was quite difficult to find that surname in Somerset. The microfilm was excellent and I had a fresh new copy of the family tree so carefully produced by James Saunders in 1910. My copy of it was somewhat blurred on the folds. It satisfied me that I had interpreted it correctly thought and after a few photographs I moved on to making images of the protestation returns (I have the transcription but it is most interesting seeing the original returns).

Lunch time arrived and we headed off for our usual walk and hearty lunch returning by 2:00 p.m. to the British Floor (B2). Tuesday was supposed to be a Hampshire/Dorset/Wiltshire day and so I began with Hampshire. Again I have a lot of fiche for the areas of Hampshire in which I am interested. My families, bless them, stayed in virtually the same area from the late 1400s to the early 1900s. I was fortunate to have a driving trip in this area in the spring and having done so feel most familiar now with the small villages that they lived in during this time period although we did not do any travelling in Andover where I would have found their earliest roots. While we were in Hampshire though we were lucky to visit all of the Churches that they attended, and I found the house where my grandfather and his siblings were born and raised plus his father was also born and raised in that same house. A lucky find certainly but I did know that it existed still in 1940 from letters that went back and forth. A search on Google had revealed that their were still houses in that area and the visual showed that these houses were ancient enough to have been there in the 1820s on.

Back to research at the Library and at this point I wanted to look at any Church records that I didn't have and the Poor Rate was available for Andover. I know that my family were drapers in Andover with some being on the land. I photographed those records as I scanned them and there are family names there so that is to pursue. Interestingly, I missed posting to my blog yesterday because I started transcribing from my images and had a most successful day transcribing the Tax Assessments for one of my Devon villages. I also found Manorial Records for the various places in which my people lived in Hampshire.

We decided to work right through until closing before we had dinner so I next moved to Dorset where I haven't been able to purchase any parish records. I am the online parish clerk for Winterborne Clenstone - one of my ancestor's parishes and actually have acquired a number of records for Dorset other than parish records. The census reveals a great deal about this small village of usually less than 100 people. The population was stable with about 1/3 of the people being different in each census through the 1800s as agricultural labourers moved about the Winterborne Valley. Again we visited this area in the spring and it is quite beautiful with few people about which is perhaps the way it always was. One of my ancestors at Turnworth had a family of twelve children and we did visit this beautiful village and the Church where my 2x great grandfather's brother was Parish Clerk for 30 years (neatly recorded on his tombstone actually). I also found the tombstone there for my 2x great grandparents who lived in this small village. Although they were married at Winterborne Stickland they lived their entire married life in the small village of Turnworth where their story is one of sadness and joy. They had eleven children including two sets of twins but only three of these children survived to adulthood including my great grandmother was who the eldest. How my greatgrandmother moved from Turnworth to Upper Clatford where she married my great grandfather is somewhat of a mystery although there was another Knight family in Upper Clatford and at some point I shall trace that family and see if there was a connection.

We have lovely pictures of the many little villages that we visited in the Winterborne Valley and includes the Winterborne itself - a beautiful little stream that winds through the countryside. The Poor Law Rate is available for most of these villages and perhaps I shall be lucky and find some bits of information on them to help me to give a more living face to these ancestors although I am a bit lucky in that my grandfather shared his stories of visiting this area as a youngster of ten years when a large birthday party was held for his great grandfather of 85 years in 1885. The entire family journeyed to Turnworth to celebrate and visiting the village one wonders where they all stayed as he always said there was about 500 of them. I thought perhaps he was just like me thinking a group much larger than it was but as I researched this family (and it is huge) I now think that likely there were 500 there. My 3x great grandfather and his wife had seven children and three of these children married siblings in the Knight family and they had enormous families. My own line had had misfortunes with children dying young but such was not the case for the other two sets of siblings plus his other four children had had large families. My line didn't emigrate although my 3x great grandfather's siblings of whom there were six had had three of these family lines emigrate to Canada and Australia. But easily by 1885 there would have been 500 to celebrate.

The closing time was beginning to be apparent. The library announced it was time to go and purchase anything that you wished to do before closing. Then the warning about computers shutting down and finally the library lights came on announcing the end of day two which had again been a highly successful review of the records and another 700 images to add to my grouping. I was careful whilst taking images to record the details about each film so that I would easily be able to separate each group of images. Of all the images that I took roughly 1/4 of them are headers to help me to group each set for useful transcription later. This is a very essential task as the amount of material that is available to you at the Library is absolutely enormous and the rows and rows of microfilm drawers were barely used by me in spite of looking at 175 different items in my six days.

Dinner this evening was at our hotel and the restaurant there is excellent. We had had a heavy noon meal and so I opted for Chili in a bread bowl which was quite excellent and then a couple of hours looking at tomorrow's work. Today I had not caught up to my schedule but had made a good dent in it. I still had Wiltshire records to look at and would start with them in the morning. Wednesday was meant to be Cumberland and Yorkshire where my ancestors had for the most part stayed in their respective areas and then suddenly packed themselves up and emigrated to Canada in 1818 and c 1832 respectively (Cumberland in 1818 and Yorkshire in 1832).

Research Day One - Salt Lake City

In order to make the best use of the Family History Library which opens at 8:00 a.m., it is best to arrive punctually at 8:00 a.m. There is always a lineup of people eager to enter and begin their research and some have preferred microfilm readers. In my week there I found that I most liked to be in the row that had regular microfilm readers on one side (and there are plenty of these) and on the opposite side of the row were microfilm readers that were 45x and 65x the regular magnification. For some film these readers were absolutely essential.

We began with an Orientation Lecture which was exceedingly good and covered all aspects of using the Library. It was about one hour and absolutely essential to making the most efficient use of the facilities.

When I prepared the excel file of all the films, fiche and books that I wanted to look at one of my columns separated each item into English county. I should mention that my people in just six generations back had managed to come from fifteen different counties.

A little history would be helpful at this point. My first emigrant ancestors came to Canada in 1818 from Cumberland County with their nine children, son in law and two grandsons. These were my 3x great grandparents who both carried the surname Routledge. One of their daughters married an emigrant Yorkshire man who arrived in Canada around 1832. So far just two counties and these two families stayed within their counties all the way back as far as I have traced thus far. The Yorkshire man married one of the Routledge daughters and one of their daughters married my next emigrant ancestor a Pincombe. The Pincombe family (from Devon) arrived at New York Harbour 7 Jan 1851 and travelled to Gennessee to be with an older brother of my 2x great grandfather. They then moved on in the early spring to Canada. As it turned out the Pincombe's wife was from Somerset. As I trace her line back I have connections to Gloucestershire and London. So now the number of counties is increasing quickly. The son of this union married my next emigrant a Buller from the Midlands who arrived in 1908. Probably by then most people had given up on this ancestor marrying as he was already 41 years old but marry he did. My Buller line is perhaps the most elusive of all. Just looking at a couple of generations back I am already looking at Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Surrey, Somerset and London. My mother was the daughter of this couple and my father came to Canada as a child of nine with his parents in 1913. He was born in Hampshire as was his father and his father back to the late 1400s (and they lived within two miles of Andover this entire time). My grandfather's wife was also from Hampshire but her mother was from Wiltshire. Also my great grandfather had married a woman from Dorset and my county count continues to increase and just within six generations back from me. Just to add one more to the mix, one of my lines moved to Hampshire from Berkshire thus giving me the final total. As I move back further to my 4x, 5x, etc grandparents, I add ten more counties which was rather a surprise given that I didn't think people moved around very much.

Back to the microfilm readers and the excel file. I sorted my excel file on the counties to give me a pattern with which I could organize my days at the Library so as to accomplish as much as possible on my first visit - once I arrived there I realized that I would be back again simply because of the enormity of the written library which I would scarcely be touching plus all their databases which are available to you on their computers. Plus I kept finding new little villages because of the details in the records where I needed to look up the microfilm but I recorded them for another time.

I had decided on a plan where I would look at my selections for Devon and Somerset on the first day. I developed a Research Plan which would give me information that would let me prove my 4x and possibly 5x great grandparents since I have proven back to my 3x great grandparents. I already have a lot of microfiche for my ancestor's parishes in Devon and Somerset so I was concentrating on other material that was available to me. By being very strict with myself and photographing the records that I wanted to use for various proofs, I was able to take 700 pictures on my first day (most of them are legible as I checked to make sure that was the case - I purchased a brand new 10.0 megapixel camera for this event) which included the records that I wanted to verify from original registers that I did not have. I was to be somewhat disappointed in this as the LDS do not hold the original registers for Devon in its entirety. I will order several parishes fiche from the Devon Record Office in the next little while. However, they more than make up for this with the original microfilmed records that they do have and I was soon very very busy and the day flew by. A quick lunch and then back again. Monday is Family Day so the Library closes at 5:00 p.m. Probably lucky for me as my eyestrain was starting to show. It was a good first day though as I accomplished all I wanted to do for Devon including some books that I wanted to look at. I didn't get much done on Somerset but I own a lot of records for Somerset and I was able to accomplish this later.

We had a group dinner that evening at a nearby restaurant. It was about a six block walk for those of us who declined the shuttle. We were a group of 36 with most having Palatine ancestors including my husband of course which is why we belong to the group :) . Salt Lake City offers quite a few really nice places to dine and our hotel, by the way, was right next door to the library. Out the back door of the lobby and down a short laneway to the sidewalk and we were at the back of the library heading for the front door.

Tomorrow I will post Day two which was another exceedingly interesting day.

Researching English Records at Salt Lake City

Last week we spent the entire six days Monday to Saturday looking at records at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. We had prepared a list in excel of microfilm/microfiche/books that we would like to view. These were separated into several different spreadsheets labeled USA/Canada, England, Germany, and International (mostly French). Since my ancestry is entirely English I only entered items into the England spreadsheet for my research.

We arrived at Salt Lake City and it was a lovely sunny warm day - unusual weather for the city at this time of year apparently. Since the Library isn't open Sunday and we had missed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir we decided to go for a walk which proved to be an excellent plan. We walked up to the Capitol Building and from their high staircase viewed the mountains around us. The trip in by plane had shown that we were on a plateau surrounded by mountains and the views of these mountains in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains (Sierra Nevada Range) were fabulous.

Back to research though which began with a talk Sunday evening about German Research. We came with the Palatines to America Group of which my husband is a member due to his Palatine ancestry (some of his Palatinate ancestors arrived with the 1709/1710 migration) and others came in 1725 with the last group arriving in 1753. With the two hour time difference and having arisen at 3:30 a.m. to catch our 6:30 a.m. flight, I found that I was falling asleep so excused myself and left all of those other people to learn about their German research. Good plan as I was wide awake the next morning for our 8:00 a.m. Introduction to the Library lecture given by the Family History Staff. This is an excellent lecture and prepares you most adequately to then use the collection.

I headed immediately for the B2 (which is the 2nd basement) where British Records are maintained. Be prepared for long lengths of filing cabinets holding microfilm rolls. On this day I learned to make a list of the films that I wanted to start with so that I could collect them immediately and then sit myself down and review them. I had a list of 195 films, fiche and books that I really wanted to look at. Amazingly I managed to get through 170 of these. I deliberately left out two groups of documents because I realized that I would not be able to give them the intensive review that I wanted to do and they were actually beyond my 4x and 5x great grandparent level. I have proven all my lines back to the 3x great grandparent level now and wanted to acquire material to look at the 4x great grandparents and the 5x great grandparents if readily available. Plus I wanted to verify all those parish records that I had found online and see if there was any extra information and there was. A few lovely gifts that let me definitively prove links that I had worked out with the evidence at hand. Interestingly I had managed to look appropriately at all my evidence in hand and correctly choose the next ancestor back. That shows how valuable our tools are that we can access online. But the written verification in the original records is "icing on the cake" and the extra tidbits give us some "meat on the bones" for our ancestors.

I will write about each day of research in the days following. Then I will discuss what I can do with the acquired information since I have come home with 2500 images in various forms of documents that are all applicable to my research.