Penton Mewsey Transcription submitted to OPC Hampshire

I have now submitted the transcription for Penton Mewsey to the OPC Hampshire site. I will also put a link on my website to the excel file. I decided to deal with the secondary transcription by the priest in 1710 (of the record from 1673 to 1710) by adding in a second fiche reference with a short note detailing any changes from the original record. In some cases this information was quite helpful but will leave it with those using the information to determine whether rerecording the information 40 years later was helpful or not. In total the Penton Mewsey records include now 896 baptisms, 197 marriages, 618 burials, and 26 banns. The Penton Mewsey records are not on the IGI so may prove useful to researchers in this area. I also included a list of the people on the 1655 Hearth Tax Assessment at Penton Mewsey but do not know if that can be included on the site. One of the reasons for stepping down from Hampshire Genuki was not knowing UK copyright law with regard to "fair usage" and just how much is fair usage. I would not have liked to compromise the Genuki site by placing information on line that was not permitted there.

I will now continue with transcription of the Upper Clatford register. This one is my family's parish from 1757 on but I am curious about the earlier records and whether they might indicate any connection between John Blake malster at Abbotts Ann who leaves money to the church at Upper Clatford in his will. Why did he do that? The Upper Clatford parish registers begin in 1571 and the copy is fairly clear up to 1600 when a new priest begins and his handwriting is  not quite so clear but the process is moving along. I now have 267 baptisms by the end of 1606. The years 1607 and 1608 appear to be missing. This certainly gives evidence to the historical fact that most people lived in rural areas in England until the Industrial Revolution. Upper Clatford continues to be a small village south of Andover in Hampshire. The population in 1911 was 655. There were in 1665 63 heads of household on the Hearth Tax Summary (assuming five per household would yield a population of 315).

I also completed the powerpoint slides of our trip to Europe (523 slides in total) and it is ready to now show to our family. They have started to ask about it and we have been negligent in  not getting it together to show to them although the time has been extremely busy this past couple of months. The -30 degree celsius weather here is certainly conducive to working on such items. It looks beautiful out there but the temperature is quite deadly for any long length of time. The two dogs stayed with us for the weekend and the sheltie and I spent about twenty minutes at a time outside with my wrapping him up in a warm fleece when we came in and warming up his paws. He had a great time though charging all over the yard. You would have thought there was a herd of sheep out there the way that the snow is pounded down!