At sea & in the air: Wivenhoe’s Green boys
I’ve mentioned Grandma’s photo album before, when it turned out that the unnamed WW1 soldier posing in a Brighton studio was in fact her Uncle Bill....
Tag: Essex
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....
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...
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...
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...