Mistley and the Witchfinder
I knew I would come across the burial of Matthew Hopkins, “witchfinder general”, when I came to transcribe Mistley‘s earliest parish register....
Category: Essex
Georgian “Cluedo” in Manningtree’s parish register
Well this is a very odd thing… a plan for the ground floor of a house, from Manningtree‘s register covering 1695-1775. It looks bizarrely like a boa...
Double women in Weeley
Along with the notes in Weeley’s register showing that people having civil marriages during the Commonwealth were sometimes backing it up with a church we...
Black History Month – Harwich and Boreham
It’s time for some parish register finds which show black people living in Essex hundreds of years ago. Last year, it was coincidentally in October that I...
Free Findmypast weekend Friday 18th to Monday 21st September
Hurrah for free stuff! If you’ve ever been curious as to what you might discover about your ancestors on Findmypast, then now’s your chance, with th...
Was your ancestor married by a witchfinder?
Well… sort of…. During the Commonwealth, from the time of the 1653 Marriage Act to the Restoration in 1660, marriages weren’t performed by cle...
Talk: Wivenhoe’s epidemics
Just a quick note – I’m giving a talk for the Wivenhoe History Group at the William Loveless Hall in Wivenhoe on Wednesday 8th July at 7.30pm. All a...
Caught by surprise in Little Bromley
As you might have noticed, notes in parish registers fascinate me. One I came across the other day seemed to pack quite a story into just one sentence. In the e...
Essex Record Office project to make marriage licence allegations more accessible
Marriage licence bonds and allegations have proved to be very useful in my research. Sometimes I might see that a marriage was performed by licence, and I ask t...
Elizabeth Salter, Lady Cowdray or… some monkeys?
Whilst researching the Cardinall family, I got slightly sidetracked with Thomas Bowes’ family. In 1603, Charles Cardinall, widowed, married Bridget Bowes,...