Essex

The Hubbards of Bovills Hall

Posted on by Helen Barrell
Bovill’s Hall Farm, Little Clacton

I’m currently transcribing Little Clacton’s parish register. When I spotted Hubbards in the register, my interest was piqued as my 12 x great-grandfather, Ralph Starling, had been married to Margaret Tendring, and Margaret’s first husband was called Richard Hubbard. Her second husband, John Thurston, had lived in Frinton, so I wondered if there was a connection between Margaret’s first husband, and the Hubbards in Little Clacton.

I can’t find any obvious links between Margaret’s husband and the Little Clacton Hubbards, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a link somewhere. So here’s what I’ve found out about them.

Continue reading →
Essex/Transcriptions

Prudence, the unhappy bride

Posted on by Helen Barrell

TW: suicide

I’m currently transcribing Little Clacton’s earliest register, which survives from 1538.

On 15 August 1592, Clement Fenn, a single man, married Prudence, the widow of Nicholas Lambert of Little Clacton Lodge. Nicholas had been buried on 22 June that same year, so Prudence hadn’t been a widow for long by the time that she married Clement. That said, such a short distance between a spouse’s death and another marriage wasn’t all that unusual at the time – in 1560, at the same church, Reginald Wignall had married Elizabeth Hurrey on 25 May, then was at the altar again on 2 September when he married Joane Bashe, his second wife.

Continue reading →
Memorial inscriptions/Suffolk

Suffolk memorial inscriptions

Posted on by Helen Barrell

Would you like some memorial inscriptions from Suffolk, including all the churches in Ipswich? As well as East Bergholt, Bramford, etc etc?

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, The East Anglian ran an 81-part series covering inscriptions inside churches, and a separate series listed surnames from headstones in churchyards. In a couple of cases, there’s inscriptions from the churchyards too.

I’ve added links to the pages of The East Anglian where I have register transcriptions for those parishes – so links to all three parts recording East Bergholt’s memorial inscriptions inside the church are on the East Bergholt page. And where I don’t have parish register transcriptions, I’ve put the links together all on one handy page.

Great Ashfield church and churchyard
Great Ashfield church, Suffolk
Suffolk

New Suffolk burials CD!

Posted on by Helen Barrell

Photo by Cindy Lilley

This looks good! The Suffolk Family History Society have released a new version of their Suffolk burials CD, with nearly 1,500,000 burials. It’s also available as a download. Ask Father Christmas to put this in your stocking! Get yours now (or direct Father Christmas) to the Suffolk FHS shop.
If you have the previous release (this is number three), I’ve spotted that it now takes parishes such as Clare and Stoke-by-Nayland back to the mid-1500s, while the previous release only went back as far as the mid-1600s. Full coverage of this release is available at the Suffolk FHS shop.
Documents/Essex/Sources

The Essex Wills Beneficiaries Index – what it is and how to use it

Posted on by Helen Barrell

I first heard about the Essex Wills Beneficiaries Index (EWBI) in a newsletter from the Essex Society for Family History. It’s a remarkable index compiled over 15 years by Thora Broughton, who went to the Essex Record Office and combed through all the wills held there from 1675-1858, noting the beneficiaries – people named in the wills. Thanks to Thora’s efforts, you can look someone up by name and if they’re mentioned in a will held at the Essex Record Office, they will pop up in the index. They could be a daughter, a grandchild, an executor, someone who happens to live in a house owned by the testator – there’s all sorts of people who’ll come up. It’s been a really useful tool for knocking down brick walls in my family tree, so here’s some tips and information based on my own use of it.

Continue reading →