Mappy Monday - Bath

Most of the maps I have found are black and white engravings in books, but I also have some coloured maps. This map of Bath, dated 1890, is one of my favourites. This is probably because Bath is one of my favourite cities, too. I also found a much earlier map of Bath in one of my books.

Follow Friday - Rootschat

There are lots of discussion boards, newsgroups and forums to choose from, and everyone has their favourites. One of mine is Rootschat 'an easy to use messaging forum for everyone researching their family history roots or local history'. 

Its focus is the UK and Ireland, and there are separate boards for each county, as well as special interest topics such as the armed forces , census, one-name studies, and technology issues. One particularly nice feature is the Photo Restoration board, where you can upload your old family photographs and ask for them to be restored, improved or even colourised.

There is lots of help and advice on this forum, and an army of hard-working volunteer moderators to guide you. There are lots of very knowledgeable people on this forum who are happy to share their expertise, or simply to help each other out. For example, a very kind person who lives close to where I lived as a child took pictures of my old home and my first school and sent them to me - and I hadn't even asked him to!

Forum posts can run the risk of wandering off topic, but there is a safety-valve here in the form of "The Totally Off Topic Bit" for posts that have nothing to do with genealogy.

Rootschat is a nice place to hang out, and is definitely worth a look if you have British or Irish ancestry

Parish registers online

FamilySearch is the biggest and best-known site for parish register indexes, but it isn't the only one.

A number of English counties have Online Parish Clerks, volunteer transcribers who 'adopt' parishes and  put the results online, free of charge.

They are all works in progress, but worth a look if your county of interest is listed here.

Cornwall
Dorset
Essex
Hampshire
Kent
Lancashire
Somerset
Sussex
Warwickshire
Wiltshire

The Online Parish Clerks have are separate sites for each county, but another site worth searching is FREEREG, which includes transcriptions from many counties in England, Wales and Scotland.

Many printed parish register transcripts can be downloaded from The Internet Archive including publications by Phillimore and Co, and some parish register societies.

Better yet are free digitised images of parish registers, and you will find these for some parishes in Kent and Essex. They are not indexed, although you may find indexes elsewhere, such as on FamilySearch or Online Parish Clerks. History House - dip into the history of Essex links to digitised images of some parish registers in the Essex Record Office. Registers from the area round the Medway Towns in Kent are on the Medway Archives CityArk site. This is not the most user-friendly site I have ever used, to say the least, but given the choice, I'll take inconvenient but content-rich over pretty but empty every time! For anyone not familiar with the term 'Medway Towns', it is the area round Rochester and Chatham; Chatham includes not only Chatham Royal Naval Dockyard, but is also a garrison town, so it is interesting for anyone with ancestors in the Army, Navy and Royal Marines, who may have been stationed there at some time. The Mid-Kent Marriage Index 1754-1911 is a useful resource for another part of the county.

A few pieces of paper tell a story

I bought a bundle of assorted documents on Ebay a while ago, mainly because it included some decorative billheads I was interested in. Of course I looked at everything else in the bundle, and noticed the same name 'Bradbury' appeared on three of them, and a story began to unfold...

 

The first is a bill for Poor Rates from Huddersfield Poor Law Union, dated 11 September and addressed to Mr J R Bradbury, 15 Fitzwilliam Street West. But 'J R' has been crossed out and replaced with 'Marian', and the receipt, also dated 11 September, is made out to 'Mrs Marian Bradbury'. 

I guessed that Mr Bradbury had recently died, and the third piece of paper, a builder's bill, confirms this; there are items dated May, June, July and August 1876 for window repairs and the replacement of a water closet, then on 25 August "to 1 strong oak coffin, lined, padded and mattress &c £5 15s 6d".

A quick check of the National Probate Calendar on Ancestry shows an entry in 1876 for the Will of Jonathan Rhodes Bradbury, late of 15 Fitzwilliam Street West, woolstapler, who died 22 August. Probate was granted 14 October to Mary Ann Bradbury of the same address, widow and relict. His death entry on FreeBMD shows that he was 45 years old. It also showed his marriage to Mary Ann Ring in 1858, and FamilySearch gave me the exact date, 14 June 1858, in Strood, near Rochester in Kent. This is a very long way from Huddersfield, but a search in the 1871 census found the family as visitors in a household in Ilkley, Yorkshire (RG 10/4302 folio 99 page 28) shows that Mrs Bradbury was born in Canterbury. The couple also had 3 children, Mary A, 11, Benjamin, 5, and Herbert, 8 months. So poor Mrs Bradbury was not only a widow, she was quite a young widow with young children.

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three pieces of paper, the kind that would usually be thrown away, but they have a story to tell

Tombstone Tuesday - Where did Charles Dickens find his inspiration?

Charles Dickens drew much of the inspiration for his books from people, places and events in his childhood He spent part of his early years in and around Rochester, when his father worked at nearby Chatham Dockyard. He certainly would have seen this stone in the graveyard of Rochester Catherdral - in fact it is clearly visible from the road that Pip would taken to Satis House in Great Expectations. Perhaps this is where he found the name for Little Dorritt and her family; who knows?

The stone reads:

 

Sacred to the memory of

Mr JOHN DUNBAR DORRETT

of this city,

who departed this life

 on the 21st day of  October 1837

aged 52 years.

Also his wife

REBECCA DORRETT 

who departed this life

on the [5th] day of  September 1839

aged 59 years.

 Also

FANNY DORRETT

 who departed this life on the [7th] day of  August 1854

 aged 79 years

The wills of John Dunbar Dorrett and his widow Rebecca were proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC); John, described as a corn dealer, left his entire estate to Rebecca, who was also his sole executrix. When she died three years later, she too was described as a corn dealer. The couple appear to have had no children, since Rebecca's bequests were all to her brothers, sisters and a niece. One of her sisters, Ann Beverstock, lived in Ordnance Place, where Dickens lived as a child, so it may be that he even met Mr and Mrs Dorrett.

No relationship is given for the third person named on the stone, Fanny Dorrett, but an earlier will shows that she was John Dunbar Dorrett's sister: the will of Elizabeth Dorrett, widow, names these two as her children in 1814.

PCC Will of Rebecca Dorrett 16 September 1839 PROB 11/1916
PCC Will of John Dunbar Dorrett 2 December 1839 PROB 11/1887
PCC Will of Elizabeth Dorrett 20 January 1814 PROB 11/1551

Downloadable from DocumentsOnline