Great Driffield

I spent the morning looking at the Great Driffield parish registers at the Family History Centre. Most of my names there are from my Gray line (my great grandmother Grace Gray's ancestors). The Gray family was from the East Riding of Yorkshire and from the parishes of Lund, Hutton Cranswick, Great Driffield, Cherry Burton, Holme on the Wolds, Etton and Kilnwick on the Wolds. This group of parishes all lie together about 15 miles from the North Sea in a parallel fashion. I have also looked at the parishes of Skerne and Watton which are part of this group and have not yet looked at Lockington and South Dalton mostly because I do not have even one entry thus far from those two parishes.

The Great Driffield parish registers go back to 1556 and will be very interesting if I find my Harland and Wilkinson (and possibly other lines) lines in this parish back that far. I photographed from the beginning of the registers to 1612 (baptisms, marriages and burials). I will have a look at them to see the names that are found in these early registers - I did note that there are several Gray families and I need to locate my Gray family prior to 1708 at Cherry Burton. My husband photographed the early Hutton Cranswick registers complete from 1657 (when they begin) up to 1747. I had not checked for my Gray family there and must do so now given the information that I learned on the East Yorkshire Listserv.

In all I took 174 images and my husband took 403. I will have a busy time going through all of those images. We are both waiting for one more film from Salt Lake City - Warrin for my husband (in Germany) and St Mary Bourne (Hampshire UK) for me. We do not expect them to arrive for another couple of weeks. I will see how much I go through tomorrow on my images and then decide whether I will go to the FHS Friday or next Monday. I found all the baptisms, marriages and burials I was looking for including Timothy and Ann Harland, Richard and Ann Sproxton burials. I also photographed a few Harland burials and a few Wilkinson burials that looked interesting.

A cursory glance such as I was using today did not reveal if my Harland and Wilkinson families were of the parish. Indeed the marriage between Timothy Harland and Ann Wilkinson was almost illegible. I am going to try to lighten that image to see if I am able to read the text. Unfortunately it is still quite illegible. I am thinking that the IGI entry must be from the Bishops Transcripts.

Tomorrow I will continue reviewing the images of Great Driffield as I want to go back and takes images of 1612 to 1720 of the baptisms, marriages and burials.