The documents that ERO look after are like windows on the past, offering snapshots and vistas of lost worlds. For so many of our predecessors, a brief mention in an official document might be the only occasion that their names were recorded. For many, probably the majority before the introduction of parish registers in 1538, they remain nameless. For anyone considering that the early-modern or medieval eras offered some bucolic ‘golden age’, then it can be a salutary experience to realise that living in our own imperfect age is much preferable.
A recent example of this was when Dr Herbert Eiden, one of the researchers for the People of 1381 Project (http://www.1381.online/) was in the Searchroom chasing up the post revolt lives of some of the rebels, when he happened upon some interesting entries in manorial documents relating to Harlow, the first within a view of frankpledge recorded on 22nd June 1400:
[In the margin:] ‘M[emorandum] viii d‘
Item quod Johannes Wryght iiiid and Alicia Torples iiiid sunt leprosi et manent’ in villa apud le Cherchegate inter comunitat’ ville ad detrimentum vicinorum et contra legem. Ideo ipsi in misericordia. Et preceptum est ballivo et constabular’ amover’ eos extra vill’
This translates as:
Remember 8d
Also [the chief pledges present] that John Wryght, 4d, and Alice Torples, 4d, are lepers and live in the town next to Le Cherchegate inside the community of the town and to the harm of the neighbours. Therefore, they are in mercy. And the bailiff and the constables are ordered to remove them from the town
Alice reappears at the end of a court
leet for 4th May 1406 when
‘It is ordered to move outside the town Alice Torples, a certain leper woman, under pain of 20s, until the next court.’
By this time John has disappeared,
perhaps he had died. We can only try and imagine the social stigma that Alice
must have suffered, let alone the symptoms of leprosy.
Such is the nature of these documents,
that directly under this entry appears one that demonstrates one of the
features law and order in the medieval world:
‘The bailiff is ordered to make a new ‘cokyngstoll’ [cucking stool] until the next court under pain of 20s.’
Our venerable 1930s OED records
‘cucking stool’ (‘an instrument of punishment formerly in use for scolds,
disorderly women, fraudulent tradespeople, etc, consisting of a chair, in which
the offender was fastened and exposed to the jeers of the bystanders, or
conveyed to a pond or river and ducked’) as being first recorded in thirteenth
century. We can only guess how often that was used.
So, there you go, we’re so much better
off in our own times and, if you have a moment, do remember poor John Wryght
and Alice Torples who didn’t have all the advantages in life that we have.
ERO is very grateful to Dr Herbert
Eiden for sharing this fascinating snapshot.
I’ve
recently been at the Essex Record Office looking for evidence that will help me
tell the story of the “St Osyth” witches of 1582 in a new book. I say “St
Osyth” in inverted commas because although the witchcraft accusations that
engulfed north-east Essex in 1582 started in St Osyth, in fact there is far
more evidence of their impact on surrounding communities than there is on the
village itself.
In
February 1582, a servant of Lord Darcy at St Osyth Priory complained that her small
son was being attacked by witchcraft. Once she had accused a neighbour, Ursley
Kemp, and Ursley had confessed to witchcraft then more people came forward to
make accusations. More villages in the manors and parishes controlled by the
Darcy family – Little Oakley, Beaumont, Moze, Thorpe and Walton le Soken, Little
Clacton and others – were drawn in. At least two people were executed and four
others died in prison, with multiple other imprisonments too. One woman was
released as late as 1588.
This
story has fascinated me since I read it as a student over 20 years ago. But
there are few surviving records from St Osyth. The Priory was attacked during
the Civil War and its estate and parish records were likely lost then – an epic
frustration for historians. But the records of the other witch-accusing communities
and authorities were more fortunate. Among these is today’s focus: a record of Elizabethan
visitations made by the Colchester ecclesiastical authorities to the parishes
around St Osyth.
St
Osyth itself answered to the Commissary Court of the Bishop of London and, guess
what, the Commissary’s early records are lost (you might almost think St
Osyth’s documents were cursed…!) but the ecclesiastical team from Colchester visited
most of the other witch-rich villages. In each place, they recorded the names
of the minister and Churchwardens. And today I found the names of some of the
accusers of the 1582 witches and learned that they were Churchwardens too.
Here’s
a nice clear link between parish authorities and witch accusations. It’s easy
to suppose that religious-reforming folk went after suspected witches but it’s
important not to stereotype accusers: they can’t be dismissed as just
“fanatical puritans” or “Anglican worthies”. But in this case there’s some documentary
evidence that they were the community’s religious leaders. It’s going to need
more thinking about as I carry on researching the book.
Essex
Record Office is one of the most impressive and friendliest archives in the UK,
and it’s come up with the goods once again. Has your village got a hidden
history of witchcraft? Were your ancestors accused? Or were they accusers? Are
there still stories of witches in your community? So much more to discover.
Julie Miller, a masters student from University of Essex, has taken up a research placement at the Essex Record Office, conducting an exploration into the story of John Farmer and his adventures, particularly in pre-revolutionary America, and has been jointly funded by the Friends of Historic Essex and University of Essex. Julie will be publishing a series of updates from the 12-week project
This time we are looking at the most exotic leg of John
Farmer’s first American journey when he toured the islands of the Caribbean.
In the course of nearly two years Farmer had travelled
through Pennsylvania, the Jerseys, to New York, Nantucket Island, Long Island,
Boston, Rhode Island, and Virginia, holding meetings wherever and whenever he
could, bringing his Quaker Testimony and gathering Certificates of Unity from
the various Friends’ Meetings he visited along the way.
Certificates were important documents as Quakers travelled
only with the agreement of their fellow Friends, and their home meeting would
issue a Certificate confirming their unity with the testimony that individual
gave, and in return meetings who received that testimony would give a
certificate confirming their satisfaction.
An example here is from Thaxted, held here at the Essex
Record Office, confirming their approval for John Farmer to travel in 1707, and
their unity with him and his testimony. Note it is signed by his wife Mary
Farmer as well as a number of other Quakers.[i]
Essex Record Office A13685 Box 47 Certificate for J Farmer to travel 29.3rd mo. 1707 (29th May 1707)
Arriving in Philadelphia at the end of October 1713 John Farmer
reviewed his progress so far:
“I
cast up my account of the miles I had traveled in North America & found it
to bee 5607 miles. Friends of Phyladelpha & Samuel Harrison merchant a
friend of London beeing there & having there a ship bound to Barbados were
very kinde to mee & John Oxly (a minister of Phyladelpha) who went with
mee: som in laying in Provishon for us & Samuel Harrison in giving us our
passage to Barbados. Wee went on board the latter end of the 9th month 1713 [November
1713] [ii].
Wee
had a pritty good voyage & had som meetings on board in our passage to
Barbados where wee arrived the 5th of the 11th month 1713’ [5th January
1713/14].” [iii]
Quakers had been appearing in the Caribbean since
the early 1650s, some coming as transported slaves from Britain, punished for
being Quakers but others seeking the religious and career freedoms denied in
their home countries. In Britain
religious dissenters were denied the option of going to university or taking up
the professions, so many became businessmen, and the Caribbean colonies offered
opportunities for trade, running large plantations and owning ships, as well as
a greater freedom of religious expression than in Britain in the second half of
the 17th Century.[iv]
The trade in
cotton, sugar, coffee and tobacco required huge numbers of slave workers, many
owned by Quaker families. There was a divided spirit within Quakers about the trade
in human beings, and the owning of slaves.
As early as 1671 the founder of Quakerism George Fox had suggested
slaves should be considered indentured servants and liberated after a given
period of time, perhaps 30 years, and that they should be educated in Quaker
religious beliefs[v]. The difficulty this caused was that Quakers
believed all men to be born equal, and therefore by bringing their slaves into
the Quaker brotherhood it meant they should be considered of one blood with
their white masters. This dilemma meant that there was disquiet for the next
100 years in Quaker communities as they wrestled with the issue of whether or
not they should keep and trade in slaves.
Despite travelling through the slave owning states
in America and the Caribbean Islands John Farmer passed no comment on the
slavery situation in his 1711-14 Journal.
For now he was silent on the matter.
Almost inevitably, John Farmer eventually waded into this highly
controversial dispute, with catastrophic results, but that is a story for
another day.
John Farmer made a four-month tour of the Caribbean islands of Nevis, St Kitts (which he called Christopher’s Island as Quakers did not recognise saints), Anguilla and Antigua holding several meetings.
In Barbados he held a large meeting in ‘Brigtoun’ (Bridgetown) where he remarked that the public were very
civil. In Anguilla he wrote
disapprovingly that the Quaker congregation had “fell away into drunkenness and other sins which so discouraged the rest
that of late they kept no meeting.” [vii]
Antigua was more successful, and he held 26 meetings and
stayed five weeks bearing “Testimony for
God against the Divell and his rending, dividing works on this island.’ But on one occasion in Parham, Antigua, Farmer
again fell afoul of the local priest who “Preached
against Friends [and] some of his
hearers threatened to do me a mischief if I came there away and had another
meeting.” [viii]
Map of St Kitts 1729
In Charlestown on
Nevis, Farmer again endured the tradition of protest by charivari (protest by rough
music) something which had also happened in Ireland on a previous journey[ix],
but this time with fiddles rather than Irish bagpipes and with somewhat darker
consequences. John Farmer encountered a troublesome Bristol sea captain who decided
to have fun at the intrepid Quaker’s expense, and paired up with an innkeeper
to disrupt Farmer’s meetings by arranging for loud and continuous fiddle
playing to drown out his preaching.
Farmer mused in his journal on the fact that the sea captain died a few
days later of a “fevor & disorder”
reflecting that God’s judgement may have come down upon the disturber of his meeting,
reporting with some satisfaction that “at
his buriell the Church of England preacher spake against people making a mock &
game of religion”.[x]
Farmer wrote in his journal that while in Barbados he received
instruction from God to go home to England for a short time before going back
to America. Perhaps this was a clue to
the next phase of his life. He took ship
for England on the Boneta of London, sailing from Antigua 24th May 1714 and he
landed safely back in London where his wife and daughters were waiting for him. They then travelled on to Holland and also visited
friends and family in Somerset and the south west before arriving home in
Saffron Walden on 28th November 1714.
This is where the John Farmer journal finishes, but his
story went on for another 10 years. A
story of passionate anti-slavery campaigning that cost John Farmer very
dear.
And that will be the story to be told in my next post about
John Farmer’s extraordinary life.
[i] Essex
Record Office A13685 Box 47 Certificate for J Farmer to travel 29.3rd mo. 1707
(29th May 1707)
[ii] A
note on the dating processes used prior to 1751: Years were counted from New
Year’s Day being on March 25th, so for example 24th of
March was in 1710 and March 25th was in 1711. In addition Quakers provided an extra
difficulty as they refused to recognise the common names for days of the week,
or months as they were associated with pagan deities or Roman emperors. So a Quaker would write a date as 1:2mo
1710 which was actually the 1st April 1710 as March was counted as
the first month. In 1751 this all
changed when the British government decreed the Gregorian form of calendar was
to be adopted and the new year would be counted from 1st January
1752. See my previous post An Essex Quaker Goes Out into the World.
Julie Miller, a masters student from University of Essex, has taken up a research placement at the Essex Record Office, conducting an exploration into the story of John Farmer and his adventures, particularly in pre-revolutionary America, and has been jointly funded by the Friends of Historic Essex and University of Essex. Julie will be publishing a series of updates from the 12-week project.
In this installment we will look at some of the encounters John Farmer had in pre-revolutionary America.
Having returned to Essex in England
from his Irish adventures in May 1711, and not being one to stay in a place for
long, by Autumn 1711 John Farmer was off on his travels again. Before travelling John Farmer’s wife Mary,
step daughter Mary Fulbigg and 10-year-old daughter Ann moved from Colchester
where they had settled in 1708, back to Saffron Walden. John explained further
in his journal:
“I staid at home a little with my wife & helped hur to remove to Saffron Walden. For shee thought it best for hur in my absence to bee there amongst hur relations with hur lame daughter whom she hoped there to help in to busness whereby shee might git hur a living: which shee could not doo at Colchester. But Colchester is ye best place of ye 2 for my wifes nursing & my woolcoming. Whereby wee earned good wages there untill my wife was taken from it by hur daughters sickness & I was taken from it by ye Lords sending mee to Ireland as aforesaid”.[i]
John Farmer Journal, Essex Record Office A13685, Box 51, p.46
After putting his affairs in
order John Farmer set off from Gravesend on 1st November 1711 on a
ship called the Thomas of London, captained by Master Benjamin Jerrum. The voyage was uneventful, and John Farmer
was allowed to hold meetings on board and landed in Maryland at the beginning
of March 1711/12 having spent 4 months at sea.
Having been met of the ship by well-known Quaker Richard Johns Senior,
John Farmer stayed with Mr Johns at his house ‘Clifts’, in Calvert County while
he travelled within Maryland, and held several meetings along the Western Shore
before travelling on to Virginia where he held a further eighteen
meetings.
In Virginia Farmer
was troubled by reports that local Quakers had been imprisoned for refusing to
help build garrisons or fortifications. This
reluctance was due to a key principle of the Quaker movement, the Peace
Testimony declared by founder George Fox in 1660, which was a vow of pacifism
that endures to this day.[ii] Quakers refused to have any part in building
fortifications and rejected all weapons of war. Farmer recounted stories of the
harm done by the local Native American people to settlers who had been
persuaded to take up arms, and the Quakers saved by tribespeople when they held
no weapons:
“For I have been cridditably Informed yt som friends hereaway for severall years (in obedience to Christ) have refused to make use of Garrisons & carnall weapons for their defence against Indians: & have Insteed thereof made use of faith in God & prayer to God: & hee hath saved them from beeing destroyed by Indians …who did destroy their neighbours who did use weapons, particularly one man whom his neighbours perswaded to carry a gun, but the Indians seeing him with a gun shot him deadly and they afterwards said that it was his carrying a gun that caused them to kill him which otherwise they would not have done.”
Moving on to North Carolina John Farmer was
troubled to hear of a recent massacre 20 miles away and reported in his journal
that he heard a Quaker had forcibly taken land from the local native Americans,
“whereas hee might have bought his land for
an iron pottage pot.”
Herman Moll: New England, New York, New Jersey and Pensilvania, (sic)1729
Native American communities
had suffered considerably at the hands of the new settlers who raided the
villages and kidnapped the people to be sold into slavery and stole land. The
tribes had also suffered substantial population decline after exposure to the infectious
diseases endemic to Europeans. As a result, under the leadership of
Chief Hancock, the southern Tuscarora allied with the Pamlico, the Cothechney,
Coree, Woccon, Mattamuskeet and other tribes to attack the settlers in a series
of coordinated strikes that took place in Bath County, North Carolina on 22nd
September 1711 and which heralded the start of the Tuscarora War that lasted
until 1715. [iii]
John Farmer described the suffering of that Quaker
family in the Bath County Massacre though it is clear where he felt the fault
lay.
“These Indians haveing been much wronged by English French & pallitins did at last come sudenly upon ym & kiled & took prisoners, as i was told 170 of them & plundered & burnt their houses. Amongst the rest ye said Friend was kiled as he lay sick in his bedd & his wife & 2 young children wer caried away captive & Induered much hardship. But upon a peace made with ye Indians they were delivered & returned to Pensilvania.” [iv]
Travelling back to Virginia and
then Maryland John Farmer attended the 1711 Yearly Meeting at West River on the
Western Shore of Maryland but there he contracted ‘ague & feavor’ which made him too ill to travel for four weeks
and began what he called a “sickly time
for mee and others”. This was almost
certainly Malaria which was endemic at the time. Eventually he recovered, and
travelled on to New York, Rhode Island and Nantucket Island before arriving in
Dover, New England. He was not specific about the date, but it was sometime in
1712. Farmer recorded that he held many
meetings amongst Friends and others “notwithstanding
the danger from the Indian Wars which had long been destructive in this part of
New England.”[v]
In the winter of 1712 Farmer was
in Rhode Island where he nearly died after being injured in a fall from his
horse. But by May 1713 he was recovered
enough to attend meetings at Long Island, East and West Jersey and back to
Maryland where he spent some time working at wool combing again, presumably to
increase his depleted funds.
It was here that “I received fresh orders from Christ to have
meetings amongst Indians in order to their conversation to Christ and to go to
Virginia and Pensilvania and the West Indies in his service”.[vi]And thus the next year’s travel was
planned.
And that is where we can leave
John Farmer, planning his first expedition to take the Quaker message to the Native
American people. And those encounters
will make up the content of the next article.
[i] John Farmer Journal, Essex Record Office A13685, Box 51, p.44
[ii]
To George Fox, this principle served a two-fold purpose, as a protest against
the horrors of the English Civil Wars, and to try to mitigate the opportunity
for violence to be done to Quakers, if they were perceived as peaceful, if
rather disruptive, themselves. For more
information see M Rediker, The Fearless
Benjamin Lay, 2017, Verso, London Ch 1, p.19
[iii]
The Tuscarora War was fought in North Carolina from September 1711 until February 1715 between the British, Dutch, and German settlers and the Tuscarora Native Americans. The Europeans enlisted the Yamasee and Cherokee as
Indian allies against the Tuscarora, who had amassed several allies themselves.
Principal targets were the planters along the Roanoke, Neuse, and Trent
rivers and the city of Bath. They mounted their first attacks on 22nd
September 1711 and killed hundreds of settlers. One witness, a prisoner of the
Tuscarora, recounted stories of women impaled on stakes, more than 80 infants
slaughtered, and more than 130 settlers killed. The militia and approximately
500 Yamasee marched into Tuscarora territory and killed nearly 800, and after a
second assault on the main village, King Hancock, the Tuscarora chief, signed a
treaty. After a treaty violation by the English, war erupted again. The militia and about 1,000 Indian allies
travelled into Tuscarora territory. Approximately 400 Tuscarora were sold into
slavery. The remaining Tuscarora fled
northward and joined the Iroquois League as the Sixth Nation.
Julie Miller, a masters student from University of Essex, has taken up a research placement at the Essex Record Office, conducting an exploration into the story of John Farmer and his adventures, particularly in pre-revolutionary America, and has been jointly funded by the Friends of Historic Essex and University of Essex. Julie will be publishing a series of updates from the 12-week project.
Before looking at the next phase of John Farmer’s life I wanted to look first at the complexities associated with the diaries or journals of people living before the 1750s.
The Wool Comber. Image from The Book of English Trades 1827.
In 1751 England and her empire, including the American colonies, still adhered to the old Julian calendar, which was now eleven days ahead of the Gregorian calendar, introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII and in use in most of Catholic Europe. Years were counted from New Year’s Day being on March 25th, so for example 24th of March was in 1710 and March 25th was in 1711. In addition Quaker’s provided an extra difficulty as they refused to recognise the common names for days of the weeks, or months as they were associated with pagan deities or Roman emperors. So a Quaker would write a date as 1:2mo 1710 which was actually the 1st April 1710 as March was counted as the first month.
In 1751 this all changed when the British government decreed the Gregorian form of calendar was to be adopted and the year would be counted from 1st January 1752. At the 1751 London Meeting for Sufferings the Quakers issued a document advising Friends how to adjust to the new way of counting years but refused to acknowledge the naming of days and months as being based on ‘Popish Superstition’.i
London Meeting of the Sufferings Advice on Regulation Commencement of the Year, 1751, Essex Record Office – A13685 Box 53.
John Farmer’s Journal, stored at the Essex Record Office, is a handwritten account of one man’s travels in the eighteenth century taking the Quaker message to communities in Ireland, Scotland, America and even the Caribbean Islands. Because he was writing in the first quarter of the 18th Century he used old style dating , and the Quaker method for numbering days and months as described above. A first day is a Sunday, a first month is March, so I have calculated all dates into Common Era notation, and dual dated years for dates shown between January and March.
Farmer wrote the journal after he returned in 1714 from his first American journey. He was born in Somerset in 1667, brought up a Baptist, and almost immediately following his Baptism in 1684 he sought fellowship with the Quakers of Stogumber in Somerset and Cullompton in Devon and began work as an itinerant wool comber. He travelled throughout England with his trade before settling in Saffron Walden where he married a fellow Quaker, widow and nurse Mary Fulbigg in 1698 and started family life with his wife, her daughter Mary from her earlier marriage, and they were joined in 1701 by another daughter, Ann. However both John and his wife were also drawn to preaching the Quaker testimony and were prepared to travel many miles in the ministry.
John Farmer quotes numerous biblical tracts within his journal, but one resonates in particular as being his inspiration: “And he said unto ym go ye into all ye world & preach ye gospel to every creature.”ii Gospel of St. Mark, chapter 16, verse 15. And John Farmer certainly travelled far and wide to preach the gospel wherever he could.
The first section of his journal details his intention to have the book published, “for ye good of soules now and in future ages”. The second part details his religious testimony, his early life in Somerset before his conversion to Quakerism, and his struggles with keeping true to his faith. He goes on to describe his travels, alone or occasionally with his wife. He travelled throughout Britain and Ireland holding public meetings to preach his testimony, sometimes with disastrous and occasionally unwittingly humorous results. The third section of the journal is an account of his journey through the eastern states of America, visiting Native American communities and travelling to the islands of the Caribbean, in an extraordinary expedition that lasted nearly 3 years. We will be looking at the various places he visited and the adventures he had in later posts.
In 1705 Farmer obtained a certificate giving the Thaxted Quaker Monthly Meeting’s blessing on his idea of travelling to ‘severall parts of England.”iii
Certificate for John Farmer to travel in the ministry, dated 24th of 2nd mo 1705 (24th April 1705) Essex Record Office – A13685 Box 47 Bundle F5.
However when he asked the Saffron Walden Friends to approve his revised plan which was to now include Scotland and Ireland in 1706 he reported there was some opposition to the scheme. A letter in the Essex Record Office archive gives us a clue to the possible attitude of the Thaxted Friends. Written by John Mascall of Finchingfield and dated 25th 2nd month 1707 (25th April 1707) Mascall tells the monthly meeting that “Reciting the case of the Talents Given; to some more, some lesse, which everyone is fitfull to and not go beyond it” he had advised John Farmer to “weight a while… to exercise his talents nearer to home…”iv which must have been very disappointing to a man so desperate to take his testimony out into the world.
This delay led to John Farmer suffering what he saw as God’s chastisement for the delay with a 4-month long bout of piles, an affliction he described as ‘Himrodicall paine’. Clearly this was not a condition beneficial to long expeditions on horseback.
Eventually a certificate was issued by the Thaxted meeting in May 1707 , interestingly signed by both Mary Farmer and the previously doubtful John Mascall, and so John Farmer began his travels in earnest. He and Mary went to Nottingham, and then John went on alone to Scotland.
Certificate for John Farmer to travel in the ministry, dated 29th of 3rd mo 1707 (29th May 1707) Essex Record Office – A13685 Box 47 Bundle F5.
Whilst in Durham on his way to Scotland John Farmer sent a loving letter to his wife Mary, dated 16th June 1707 where he asks her to send mail care of “Bartie Gibson the Blacksmith of Edinburgh”. He reminds Mary to keep the children reading the bible and “tell ym I would have them remember their creator & love him more than their Idolls”.vi
John made his first visit of six months to Ireland which he briefly covers in saying that he “attended all the meetings there and held several meeting at inns and on the street where people were attentive and civil.” He then headed back to Scotland again where he mentions preaching in Port Patrick, Stranraer, Govern, Ayr, Douglas and elsewhere. He complained some Scottish people were rude and in Penrith, Cumberland (Cumbria) he was assaulted at a Sunday meeting when: “the Divil raged & stired up a man to abuse mee by throwing dirt in my face & striking mee”vii
In Ormskirk John Farmer was imprisoned for a night by the Constable for holding a meeting in the street. From Lancashire where Mary met up again with her husband, the Farmers travelled homeward, stopping in London for the 1708 yearly meeting before going home to Colchester where they had now settled, and where they remained until January 1711 when the urge to travel struck John Farmer yet again.
In the next post we will look at Farmer’s 1711 visit to the West of Ireland, where he was not widely welcomed.
i London Meeting of Sufferings Advice on Regulating Commencement of the Year, 1751, Essex Record Office A13685, Box 52
ii John Farmer Journal, Essex Record Office A13685, Box 51, p1
iii Thaxted Monthly Meeting Minutes 1705, Essex Record Office A13685, Box 47 Bundle F5
iv Letter from John Mascall 1707, Essex Record Office A13685, Box 47 Bundle F5
v Certificate for John Farmer to travel in the ministry 1705, Essex Record Office A13685, Box 47 Bundle F5
vi Letter from John Farmer to Mary Farmer Durham 1707 Essex Record Office Cat D/NF 3 addl. A13685 Box 51
vii John Farmer Journal, Essex Record Office A13685, Box 51, p28 [1] John Farmer Journal, Essex Record Office A13685, Box 51, p28
After a lot of work we are finally able to announce that the Essex Record Office, working alongside Ancestry.com have launched a new searchable index of the Essex parish registers. Searching for your Essex ancestors is now easier than ever!
In celebration of our new partnership with Ancestry.com, Edward Harris, Customer Service Team Lead, takes a look at some of the stories found in the pages of our parish registers. Read on for more information about what we have been working on with Ancestry.com.
D/P 94/1/1 – Parish register for St Mary the Virgin, Chelmsford.
The Parish Registers of England, containing as they do the records of baptisms, marriages and burials made by the Church of England are frequently the start and the backbone of a genealogist’s journey into family history. Prior to 1837 and the start of civil registration, they are essential for family history. Unfortunately they are all too often the end of that journey. When the next link cannot be made or one elusive great, great, great, great grandparent fails to materialise, it is usually normally the pages of a parish register that we are gazing at.
Despite the frustrations so many of us hardy researchers are well aware of, it cannot have escaped our notice that within this great national collection there are a countless stories. These stories provide snippets of the joys and sorrows of everyone, whether normal or extraordinary. They can be better than any soap opera but always tantalising because of what they often don’t tell us and the questions they can’t answer for us. We decided to take a retrospective look at some of the stories we have unearthed over the years at the Essex Record Office where a helpful curate or vicar has decided to provide us with a few extra snippits of information.
The parish burial register for St Mary the Virgin in Hatfield Broad Oak includes in its pages the sad and untimely death of 5 year old Betsy Rogers burnt to death, and two extraordinary marginal notes on that page give a clue as to how:
D/P 4/1/26 – The burial register for St Mary the Virgin, Hatfield Broad Oak showing the burial of Betsey Rogers.
Feb.y 7. A frost of 7 weeks broke up today. Temperature 12° below freezing point! Many persons frozen to death. One at Gt Canfield, one at Sawbridgeworth.
The seat of Lord Rendlesham (Rendlesham Hall, Suffolk) burnt to the ground, damage = 100,000£; The seat of Lord Sandwich (Hinchinbroke, Huntingdonshire) also destroyed by fire with title deeds, fine pictures, etc.; The Argyle Rooms, Regent St, London also destroyed by fire. Lyceam also…All in Jan.y in Feb.y arising from the unusual heating of flues etc. in consequence of the uncommon severity of the season.
The register for Little Clacton contains a very sad and somewhat mysterious story dating from 1592, when a bride, Prudence Lambert, hanged herself the morning after her wedding to Clement Fenn.
D/P 80/1/1 – Marriage register for Little Clacton showing the marriage of Clement Fenn and Prudence Lambert.
Clement Fenn singleman, and Prudence the late wife of Nycholas Lambert, wch dwelt in Little Clacton Lodge; were maryed uppon Teusdaye [six], the xvth day of August; but the (most accursed creature), did the verye next morning, desperatelie hang her selfe, to the intolerable grieffe of her new maryed husband, and the dreadfull horror and astonishment of all the countrye.
Prudence’s burial is recorded two days later in the same register.
D/P 80/1/1 – Burial register for Little Clacton showing the burial of Prudence Fenn.
Prudence Fen, now the wife of Clem[e]nt Fen, and late the wife of the above named Nicholas Lambert; was buried out of the compas of Christian burial; in ye furthest syde of the churchyard northward; uppon the xviith daye of August; for that shee most accursedlie hanged her selfe.
A slightly happier story is found in the parish register from Ugley (one of Essex’s more esoteric place names) in 1759 which records the baptism of:
Anne daughter of John Grimshaw, a Sailor in the Dreadnought Man of War, & Jane his wife found in Labour in the Road, & taken care of by the Parish, was born June 27th & baptized July 7th
D/P 373/1/2 – baptism register for Ugley including Anne’s birth.
From these stories of life and death, to the sort of story that leaves family historians pulling out their hair in frustration.
In 1862 the baptism register for St Mary Magdalene in Harlow recorded the reason for its early closure. The registers had been removed from the church by the curate Revd William Raymond Scott who took them to Hawaii (then known as the Sandwich Islands). The curate had travelled to accompany the new Bishop of Honolulu to the island, but also to chaperone 70 young women destined for a life in Australia.
The registers would survive a mutiny, make a brief stop at the Falkland islands and Australia before reaching Hawaii. Fortunately the registers did return to the church 2 years after leaving these shores and so are still available to researchers.
D/P 533/1/1 – parish register for Harlow with note explaining closure of registers.
Fortunately, provided the register in question isn’t on a voyage around the world, searching the Essex parish registers is now easier than ever!
Since 2011, the Record Office’s service Essex Archives Online (www.essexarchivesonline.co.uk) has been making Church of England parish registers – and some other documents – available as digital images. Off-site, this works as a subscription scheme, offering various lengths of subscription between 1 day and 1 year. Some documents on the system, such as wills, come with their own name indexes, but the parish registers do not. Subscribers looking for a particular baptism, marriage or burial have often had to work through a whole parish year by year.
The ERO has now teamed up with Ancestry, the world’s largest online commercial family history website, to offer a new way to access the data. Ancestry have created a name index to the parish register images, and Ancestry users can click straight through from the index to Essex Archives Online in order to buy a copy of the indexed image. Images are emailed out automatically on payment; each one costs £2.99 including VAT.
Essex Archives Online expands as new registers are deposited, but currently it holds about 600,000 images of Anglican parish registers deposited either in the ERO itself or in Waltham Forest Archives. The registers cover the whole of the present county of Essex, including Southend and Thurrock – and also including parts of north-east London that used to be in Essex. Depending on the parish and the event in question, they cover the whole period from 1538 almost up to the present day. Ancestry’s new index covers all the baptisms up to 100 years ago; all the marriages up to 84 years ago; and all deposited burial registers, whatever their date.
For those with large family trees to discover the subscription option is still available, but for anyone who needs an image now and again the new system is easier, quicker and cheaper!
Archives Assistant Edd Harris blogs for us about just a few of the things family historians can learn from property deeds…
Do you remember our friend Sargant Wilson? At the beginning of October we discovered his marriage licence which told us that in 1834 at the age of 60 he married Karenhappuch Morgan, ten years his junior. We have come across the couple again although unfortunately in less happy times.
This document is an admission onto copy hold land (D/DCf M73). This is a type of land holding used when land is part of a Manor. The people who hold land from the Manor are recorded in the Manor Court Roll along with any payments or rents that they are due to pay as well as a description of the land and its previous owners. The new landholders are then provided with a copy of that entry in the Court Roll, hence the name ‘copy hold’.
In the recitals of this particular example from Southminster in 1844 (ten years after his marriage) we are told that Sargant Wilson has died. The land that he held has been passed back (surrendered) to the Manor. The admission then goes on to say that Sargant Wilson left the land to his wife by his will which is quoted at length, describing the property and revealing that it was bequeathed to him by his former wife Dorothy and that he had a son who predeceased him. It goes on to admit his second wife Karenhappuch onto the land in his place and collects a fine or payment for doing this.
This just goes to show that family history can move far beyond the usual records of births, marriages and deaths. We now know that Sargant Wilson had a previous marriage to a Dorothy with whom he had a son, he had written a will, held land in the Manor of Southminster and we have a rough date for his death, all from one document.
You can search for deeds on Seax by the name of a person or property. Not all deeds are catalogued to this level of detail however, in which case manorial court rolls may be helpful. These records can be challenging, but as we have seen in the case of Sargant Wilson they can also be extremely rewarding, not only for family history but for house history and local history too. If you would like any further advice, then talk to ERO staff in the Searchroom, e-mail us on ero.enquiry@essex.gov.uk, or telephone 01234 244644.
One of the fun things about archives is some of the names you come across.
This afternoon brought us the marriage licence of Sargant Wilson. Unfortunately, he wasn’t marrying anyone called Pike, but he more than made up for it by marrying a lady named Karenhappuch Morgan.
