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...
Category: Essex
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,...
Video: You say Austin, I say Alston – Essex and Suffolk accents
An interesting note from 1745 in West Bergholt‘s parish register shows us that the vicar got muddled up with some of his parishioners’ surnames. Und...
August 1666 – a bad time to be a sailor?
I’m currently transcribing the earliest register for Ramsey St. Michael in Essex. Although the very early register is lost, entries survive from 1645 onwa...
Poison Panic: arsenic deaths in 1840s Essex
Published on 30th June 2016. UK: Pre-order now directly from the publisher (Pen & Sword), or Waterstones and Amazon. USA: Pre-order from Barnes & Noble ...
Interesting finds in West Bergholt’s parish registers
One of the pleasures of transcribing parish registers are the intriguing marginalia that turn up in them sometimes. I’m yet to find a pre-1813 parchment r...
The Wivenhoe Poltergeist
What I’m about to write has nothing to do with genealogy, although it’s something that happened to me and a friend of mine in Wivenhoe, so it’...
Black History Month – some finds in Wivenhoe’s register
Growing up in Wivenhoe, I probably saw a greater mix of people from around the world than had I lived in a town of the same size that wasn’t anywhere near...
Unfortunate ways to die in Beaumont-cum-Moze, 1576-1865
Dying is rather unfortunate anyway, but in Beaumont-cum-Moze, the causes of death are given far more often than they are in other burial registers that I’...
The Sunderland men who came to Essex
Photo by Cindy Lilley. I’ve nearly finished transcribing the baptisms and burials register for Wivenhoe St. Mary the Virgin, 1695-1751. It’s not unu...