Follow Friday - The Dark Archivist

This is a bit of fun for Friday. The Dark Archivist is a cartoon super-hero, who hangs out at the Oxfordshire History Centre. This is the new name for the combined Oxfordshire Record Office, Oxfordshire Studies and Oxfordshire Health Archives. It is housed in St Luke's Church in Cowley, which was converted for use as the Record Office several years ago.

I once attended a fascinating talk and tour by the County Archivist, Carl Boardman, who told the story of how the redundant church premises were acquired to house the county archives. The church is a large one, but never had a large congregation to match. It was built by Lord Nuffield, founder of the Morris Motor Company and a great benefactor of Oxford and its university. He had the church built for the large number of new workers coming to Oxford to work in his factory, but didn't allow for the fact that they came from South Wales and most of them were nonconformists, and not members of the Church of England.

The conversion from church to record office was very nicely done, with the reading room in the former nave, and the archivist's office in the former organ loft. This gives the office a great view of the researchers below - any transgressors with pens of other forbidden items are swiftly detected. It's amazing how few people think of looking up.

The Dark Archivist was Carl Boardman's idea, and it went live in 2007. It's a different, and fun, way of looking at Oxford's history, even if you have no particular interest in the area. Although it is connected to the Oxfordshire History Centre site, it is not part of it, and the link isn't very prominent. So it's easier to find the standalone site. Have fun.

Mappy Monday - Registered for marriages

Here are a couple of maps that form part of my favourite document. Yes, I really do have a favourite item in The National Archives' collection, which came in handy when I was asked that very question in a job interview; well, I got the job anyway, so it can't have done any harm. The document in question is a book, mostly handwritten but with some pasted-in printed material. According to its Catalogue description it is a 'Record Book' in the extensive collection of General Register Office papers. It is not dated, but from the contents it seems to have been compiled during the 1880s. It is a compendium of useful reference information relating to the work of the office since its beginnings in 1837.

There are several hand-drawn maps, and I find this pair particularly interesting because they illustrate something that I don't think I've seen in map form anywhere else. Using information in the printed Official List of 1881,each  maps illustrates 100 registration districts. The first shows 100 districts where there were more churches (of the Church of England) licensed for marriages than there were Dissenting Chapels registered for marriages. The second map illustrates the opposite; 100 districts where there were more Dissenting Chapels registered for marriages than Church of England churches licensed for marriages. In both cases each church is represented by a black dot and each chapel by a red dot. The red ink was probably much brighter in the 1880s, but now it has faded to a shade of brown, so it does not stand out so well against the black dots. Despite this, the maps still provide a good visual rendition of the relative popularity of nonconformity throughout England and Wales.

The dots represent only churches or chapels, however, and give no indication of the size of their congregations, or of the actual number of marriages performed. The first map seems to show that East Anglia was a great stronghold of the Established Church, but the explanation of this cluster probably has more to do with the area's history than its 19th Century present. Norfolk and Suffolk were much more populous and prosperous in the Middle Ages than in the 1880s, relatively speaking. The population had actually decreased during the 19th century, as people moved to the industrial areas of the Midlands and the northern counties, and of course to London. But the churches didn't move with them. Today East Anglia is still full of small towns and villages with magnificent medieval churches, built for the much larger congregations of an earlier age.

Details like this might be interesting to explore further, and all the required statistics are in the Annual Reports of the Registrar General. Some other time, maybe.

100 districts with more churches of the Established Church licensed for marriages than Dissenting Chapels registered for marriages in 1881  

100 districts with more Dissenting Chapels registered for marriages than churches of the Established Church licensed for marriages  in 1881

Celebrating the Census - 1 October at The National Archives, Kew

This is where the day job and the spare-time blogging become totally intertwined. Since this is Census year in the UK and a number of other countries, we thought that an event to mark the occasion would be in order. After all, here at The National Archives we hold not only the census returns for England and Wales but a lot of other related records. So we will be Celebrating the Census on 1 October 2011 at Kew.

As a Scot with Irish ancestry, I am pleased to say that we have speakers from Scotland and Ireland as well as from England. Ironically, two speakers on the English census are Scots, and the speaker from Scotland in English. How's that for integration. We will also hear from FamilySearch about census returns in other countries, and from the creators of two wonderful non-genealogical websites, HISTPOP and A Vision of Britain Through Time. Two of the sessions concentrate on the 1911 census; one on the mammoth task of preparing the original records for scanning, and another on the Suffragette boycott of that census. At the other end of the time-scale are the many early census-type listings held here and elsewhere, and if you want help with finding people in the online censuses, Ancestry, Findmypast and Genesreunited will be providing hands-on tutorial sessions.

The cost is £30 for the day, including lunch, tea and coffee, with an Early-bird discount if you book by 31 July. Follow the link above for more details, including the full programme and online booking form.

Mappy Monday - British Isles industries

I didn't realise that I had this map; I came across it when I was looking for something else, often the best way of finding things. It's a fold-out from 'Cassell's Encyclopaedia: a Storehouse of General Information'. The encyclopaedia comprises six volumes, with some very high quality illustrations and maps. Unfortunately there is no publication date, but the contents suggest it is c1900.

It reminds me of some the maps from the geography books we had at school, and you don't see this kind of map very much outside of specialist historical atlases. That's a pity, because a visual representation is much more memorable than any amount of text, especially if you are not familiar with the British Isles.

Digital microfilm - the Army List, free online

Army List 1787

If you are researching an officer in the British Army one of the first sources you want to look at is the printed Army List. This is an annual, and sometimes more frequent, publication listing all the officers, arranged by regiment (I should now apologise to military specialists for a gross over-simplification of what the Army List is about, but you know what genealogists are like, we just love lists of names). It is available in major libraries, and some volumes have been published on CD, or are available on commercial websites.

A run of volumes from 1754 to 1879 has now been made available for free download on the Digital Microfilm section of DocumentsOnline, in record series WO 65. There is a separate pdf file for each volume, and they can take a long time to download so you need a good broadband connection. But they are definitely worth the wait; this is not just a scanned version of the printed lists that you may have seen in a library, but the set from the War Office library. Each volume was bound with alternate printed and blank sheets, to allow for hand annotations of commissions, promotions etc during the year.

Honble Arthur Wesley's first commission

The example here is a page from the 1787 volume, which shows the very first appearance of the Duke of Wellington in an Army List. He received his first commission as ensign in the 73rd Regiment of Foot on 7 March 1787, and his name is crossed out because in December of the same year he was transferred to the newly-formed 76th Regiment. Before he was created the 1st Duke of Wellington, his name was Arthur Wellesley, but he appears here as the Honble. Arthur Wesley, the original spelling of the name.

I have no family connections in the officer class in the period covered by these lists (my ancestor who fought in the Peninsular War was one of the 'poor bloody infantry'), but I wish I did, because this a great resource.