Hertfordshire Genealogy News

St George's School, Harpenden

2012-03-10T07:00:00.000Z

St George's School, Harpenden.

I have just added some new information about St George's School, including a list of the staff and boarding pupils in 1891, and details of two books about the school. I was interested to discover that when the school was built Mr Wix, the first headmaster, had purchased the land from a Mrs Mardall. This is the Martha Mardall, nee Long who appears in the series of pages on cousin marriages Who is related to who?

Redbourn, Hertfordshire, in 1904

2012-03-09T17:23:00.002Z

St Mary's Church, Redbourn
Sketch by F, G. Kitton, 1904

As the first stage in a full upgrade of the Redbourn pages I have created a new page Redbourn in 1904 which includes the above sketch, an account of Redbourn written in 1904, and two postcards of Redbourn High Street from the same period. I have also reorganised the page on St. Mary's Church and made appropriate changes to the main Redbourn page. Further improvement to the coverage of the village will be carried out when I have time.

Berkhamsted Castle

2012-03-09T14:10:00.000Z

A ruined Tower on the Curtain Wall round the Bailey , with the Motte that had the Keep on its summit beyond

Berkhamsted Castle, or Berkhampstead Castle as it is identified in many records, was built in the 12th century and is one of the most impressive examples of Norman earthworks. It early history, involving medieval kings and barons, falls entirely with the medieval period (which is not covered in any detail on this site). In fact its chief use in later years was first as a quarry - as much of the more useful building stone had been removed, in the 20th century as a place where public events could take place.

I have now updated the Berkhamsted Castle Page to included a large plan and a long description from 1911. and also added three new photographs and also a link to more modern photographs on Geograph.

Photographing Hertfordshire and keeping fit

2012-03-08T09:41:00.000Z

Seagulls at Little Tring
6th March 2012
For a larger image visit Geograph 2836660 and try using the Zoom.it feature

Several years ago I decided to make a photographic record of the countryside around Tring while walking my daughter's dog Franki and I started to post the pictures on a web site called Geograph, several of which included Franki!

Nr Hastoe

Ashridge

Marsworth

Aylesbury Canal

The idea was to record the historic tracks (some of which are so old that they were used to define the County boundary a thousand years ago), the canal (which came to the Tring area in 1797), and the railway (which opened in 1837). I also decided to record any historic buildings on the way. I started to post a connected record of pictures of the Grand Union Canal between Berkhamstead and Leighton Buzzard, with the branches to Wendover and Aylesbury, and the associated reservoirs and this may be followed by starting by looking at the picture of Canal and Reservoir Information - Tring Area. In total I posted over 1500 pictures, mainly of the area around Tring, including parts of the Chiltern Hill and the Vale of Aylesbury that lie in Buckinghamshire.

In late 2009 Geograph introduced a new feature which made it easier to link groups of pictures - but left me with the problem of whether I should alter what I had already done - especially as I already had a backlog of several thousand pictures to be considered for posting. The result of this dilemma was I stopped posting the pictures - but I have continued taking photographs ever since - so I have a vast backlog

Franki died in March 2010 so I took less walks. One of the results was that my doctor became concerned about my increasing weight - so walks are back on the menu, and I have been taking more photographs (and loosing weight!). Some of these pictures have already appeared in this newsletter and the Medieval Field System exposed at Wilstone Reservoir has been one of the most popular posts.

As a result I had another look at Geograph as a place to display pictures of the area around Tring and discovered it now allows high resolution images to be stored, as you can see if you look at the Seagull image and select the Zoom.it facility. This makes it a suitable location to store historical record photographs and I will be using it more in future, and adding details of my updates to this blog.

You may view all the photographs I have posted on Geograph here and all pictures I post on Geograph are reusable under the terms of this Creative Commons Licence. (Note that pictures posted before 2012 currently do not have larger images, but I have larger originals and the Geograph images can be updated - so let me know if there are any you want.)

The Latest Issue of Hertfordshire People

2012-03-05T11:08:00.000Z

The latest issue has arrived and contains the usual selection of news and articles that one can expect from the Hertfordshire Family History Society.

I enjoyed Jackie Robinson's account Brick Wall after Brick Wall for my Rowley Research and was interested that Daniel Butler was listed twice in the 1871. When people were away from home on census night it seems that sometimes they were recorded twice - and perhaps sometimes they were not recorded at all! John Sly's tale of A Light Brigade Charger's Grave in Hertfordshire shows that even a simple grave in a churchyard can have links to historical events. Of course, if you want to read these articles, or any of the others I don't have time to mention you can get a copy for yourself by joining the society.

I am noting the date of the March meeting What happened to Lucy? on March 31st, in my diary but because of medical procedures timetabled earlier in the week I may not be able to get there. With any luck the cataract operation will mean that I will be able to drive again in time to hear Alan Ruston talk on Was Your Ancestor a Dissenter or Nonconformist? (April 28 & AGM) and Daphne Knott talking on Treasures from the Hertfordshire Archives (26 May). (Details of Forthcoming Meetings).

Whenever I next attend I will be making for the bookstall as I note from the current issue that the Memorial Inscriptions booklet for Northchurch is now available, and that for St Albans Abbey Churchyard is coming soon. I will also be planning to spin the Herts Marriage Links CD. (Publication List).

Early motor cars in Hertfordshire

2012-03-04T10:11:00.001Z

For those interested in family history, as opposed to simply pinning names on their family tree, the question of when your ancestors first owned a car - and what model it was - adds to the story. Often a car may be seen in the background to a family photograph, or you may have a snapshot of that new car, perhaps with its owner also in the picture.

In addition cars and their registration plates can provide useful clues as to the date of the street scenes, etc.

For this reason I have set up a subject page for cars, to include some examples and links to pages that can help you identify them. Any pictures of old Hertfordshire family cars - or links to sites you have found particularly useful - will be welcome as they will allow me to make the page even more valuable to other visitors to this site.

I'm travelling on a different bus at present ...

2012-03-03T07:00:00.000Z

Well not exactly - but my other blog Trapped by the Box has beeen rather neglected over the last few months and for the next few days or so I will be giving it priority over this blog, especially if one of the posts - The Evolution of Intelligence creates a lot of interest.

Another post - I had a Dream Last Night - how bizarre mentions a nightmare I had as a child and includes a picture of a double decker bus which (according to the destination board) traveled through Hertfordshire, including Tring, where I currently live.

Later in March I have four hospital appointments - including two quick operations. One of the operations is for the cataract in my "good" eye - which should make things easier as since Christmas it has slowed up my work at the keyboard.

All this means that I may not be able to provide a daily post to this blog during March ...However I am planning to answer all direct requests for information.

Can anyone read shorthand?

2012-03-02T22:00:00.002Z

I have just got a postcard of Baldock church, posted in Cornwall to someone in Dorset and before I properly document it I would like to know what the message says. I assume this is standard shorthand.

I have posted the complete card, which shows a picture of Baldock Parish Church, on the Hidden Messages page.

February Statistics

2012-03-01T22:16:00.000Z

Februaryhas shown further increases in demand. There were 24,389visits, (19745 previous February) from16468 (14941) different users, viewing 259,618 (59,377)pages. The biggest increase was in the number of repeat visits withthe month which was 7921 compared with 4804. If these increasescontinue we should easily top a quarter of a million visits in 2012.The Newsletter page views also increased to 3145 – over 100 a day.The big disappointment is with donations for Mental Health – afteran excellent start in January there was not a single donation inFebruary.

Tombs with Trees in Hertfordshire

2012-02-28T08:00:00.000Z

I have posted a page of tombs with mature trees growing out of them in Aldenham, Tewin and Watford.

Do you know of other examples - preferably with a picture?

Mardlebury Pond Datchworth

2012-02-27T20:48:00.001Z

Mardlebury Pond, Datchworth
Post card by E. Ashby, Welwyn, circa 1905

Can you help me identify this Post Card?

2012-02-26T07:00:00.000Z

This post card was taken by a photographer who lived next door to my grandparents' house in Hemel Hempstead about 90 years ago. It shows people at an exhibition - but can you help me to identify the venue, the date, and what connection there is (apart from the photographer) with Hemel Hempstead.

There are clues - the striking architecture of the doorway on the right should be sufficient to identify the venue, and text readable on the stall at maximum resolution suggest a Christian Missionary connection. The mock hospital entrance which appears to be the subject of the photograph is labelled "Ping Yin Hospital" so was a group (perhaps associated with Hemel Hempstead) raising funds for a new hospital in China?

Click here for full details.

The Cream of Curiosity by Reginald Hine

2012-02-25T09:14:00.000Z

Reginald Leslie Hine (1883-1949) wrote many important books on the history of Hitchin and for this reason I was interested to discover one of his earliest books The Cream of Curiosity, which was published in 1920. It includes two illustrations by the famous William Heath Robinson. It is an account of various historical and literary manuscripts in Hine's personal collection, none of which appear to relate to Hertfordshire.

However the book includes a chapter on memorial epitaphs and includes a goodly number of Hertfordshire epitaphs, such as this one from Cottered:

What to vain mortals can a pleasure be

When no one part is from consumption free;

The head, the hand, the knee a palsy shakes,

The blood runs chill and every member quakes.

Death will the end of all my sorrows be,

And then I launch into eternity

WW1 - The 2nd London Territorial Division in Hertfordshire

2012-02-25T07:00:00.000Z

When I wrote the book The London Gunners come to Town, about Hemel Hempstead during the First World War, one important source on the 2nd London Division, later the 47th Division was the book by Alan Maude The 47th (London) Division, 1914-19. It provided useful information on the early days of the war, spent in the St Albans area, and helped me to work out the movement of Major Gordon up to the time of his death - which was noted in the book. It was such an important reference work that I photocopied it, despite its size. Should you want to research this Territorial Division I am delighted to report the complete book is now available in digitised form online.

Thanks to Jeffery for drawing this to my attention.

Copies of The London Gunner are usually available on ebay, helping to raise money for wounded soldiers.

Herts Parish Church Registers to be digitised

2012-02-24T15:04:00.000Z

In January I mentioned that FindMyPast were to digitise some Hertfordshire records - but it was not clear at the time what was covered. Via the BritishGenes blog I have details of the following press announcement that was released at the Who Do You Think You Are Show at Olympia - which clarifies the situation:

Hertfordshire Archive records to be digitised
From FindmyPast

FINDMYPAST.CO.UK TO PUBLISH HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVE RECORDS ON THE WEB.
Project announced to increase access to up to 4 million baptism, marriage and burial records dating back to 1538 .

First time that images of the original parish records from Hertfordshire will appear online
Leading UK family history website findmypast.co.uk has today announced at the Who Do You Think You Are Live Show at London's Olympia that it has been awarded a digitisation contract by Hertfordshire Archives & Local Studies. This significant new project will lead to the publication online for the very first time of between 3.5 and 4 million historic records from the Archives. The records are expected to launch later this year and will become fully searchable, only at FindmyPast .
Spanning the years 1538 to 1990 (1910 for baptisms and 1928 for marriages), the records cover parish churches and bishops' transcripts from the whole of Hertfordshire, including:
historic Hatfield, childhood home of Elizabeth I and the birthplace of the jet airliner
the garden cities of Letchworth and Welwyn
Ayot St Lawrence, home of writer Sir George Bernard Shaw
Hemel Hempstead, Watford, Cheshunt and Barnet
Guy Strachan, Digitisation Manager at findmypast.co.uk, said: "The addition of these historic records from Hertfordshire Archives & Local Studies to findmypast.co.uk will be keenly anticipated by family and local historians alike, and will undoubtedly reinforce the website's position as the place to go for UK parish records."
Susan Flood, County Archivist at Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, added: "This is a fantastic step forward for us to have our parish registers available on the web for all to access easily."
The joint announcement by findmypast.co.uk and Hertfordshire Archives & Local Studies was one of a number made by the rapidly expanding family history website at the 3 day Who Do You Think You Are Live Show, where it has a major presence. There they will be showcasing the many record collections on the site, including parish records from Manchester Archives, Cheshire Archives and over 40 million parish records from family history societies throughout the UK, in partnership with the Federation of Family History Societies.
Anyone wishing to be notified when the Hertfordshire Collection becomes available can register online at FindmyPast to receive a newsletter.

This will be great - and I will note progress with interest. At present most of the earlier baptisms and marriages are indexed free on familysearch - but most of the burials are not. I suspect that when they come out many people who have been relying on the online indexes and not checking on the registers could find that they have claimed as ancestors the names of children who died in infancy.

Football - Apsley Charity Cup Badges

2012-02-24T08:00:00.000Z

Earlier this month I posted information about Frank Foskett on the Berkhamsted Football Club Team page, and now Clive has provided photographs of the Apsley Charity Cup Winners Medal of 1900, and the Finalists medal (pictured here) of 1902.

It is perhaps worth reminding readers that the original club records appear to have been lost, and any football related information you can provide on any of the players shown in the pictures would be helpful.

A Post Card with surprising Football and Princely Connections

2012-02-23T14:19:00.000Z

Les is the webmaster of the Hadley Common web site and he sent me this post card of a house called Ludgrove in the Parish of Monken Hadley. He asked me if I could date it and I could have easily dismissed the request on the grounds that it was only in Hertfordshire for a period of 60 years during the early 20th century. However the immediate task was simple - The card was a KROMO card by the famous post card pioneers Blum & Degan. They published many views of Hertfordshire and the KROMO card series was started in 1905. Unfortunately for them, but helpfully for answering the question, they went bankrupt in 1908 - so the card can easily be dated to about 1906.

My first reaction was that the house looked like many others that were springing into existence in Middlesex and South Hertfordshire a century or more ago and I really needed to say something more about it before posting details in this Newsletter, or writing a special page on the main web site. So I decided to dig for some background and the more I dug the more interesting the house became.

To begin with it was hard to find. Prior to 1904 it was in Middlesex, and I found two Middlesex references to an Arthur Dunn, who had a private boys school at Ludgrove, at the end of the 19th century. A search after 1904 in Hertfordshire directories drew a blank (perhaps the school was very private ...) so I looked for Arthur Dunn in the 1901 census and found his and a large number of boarding pupils from all over the country. So clearly it needed to be cross-referenced to the Education pages - and perhaps some of the pupils later went on to become famous.

I failed to find Arthur in the 1911 census and while looking for what happened to him I found a page on Wikipedia - describing his role as a footballer. He was in the England team winning matches against Ireland, Scotland and Wales, twice as captain. Following his sudden death in 1902 the Arthur Dunn Cup for Old boy teams from English Public Schools was created - and is still going strong. In addition, after his death the school continued, now in Hertfordshire (due to boundary changes) under two more English football captains, Gilbert Oswald Smith and William John Oakley.

This was getting even more interesting - so I wanted to know what happened to school - and found that in 1937 it moved to Berkshire, and became, if possible, even more special - in that its post Hertfordshire alumni included Prince William, Prince Harry and the Duke of Kent. It made me wonder, even more, who were the pupils listed in the 1901 census (and also in 1911) and whether these are any famous people who where taught there when it was at its Hertfordshire address. I spotted a few names but unfortunately I do not have the time to follow this trail further. If, on looking at the detail report on the main web site, you recognise anyone else who made it to Wikipedia. why not let me know.

Update to a Royal connection at St Paul's Walden

2012-02-22T07:30:00.000Z

In 2001 Gordon asked about the marriage of Mary Gilbert, daughter of Edward Gilbert of St.Pauls Waldenbury, Herts, and George Bowes c.1740- See GILBERT, St Pauls Walden, 1700-1750. At the time I was unable to provide details.

St Paul's Waldenbury
Childhood home of the Queen Mother

Over ten years later Sue has emailed to say the couple were married in 1743 at St Botolph, Aldersgate, London. - from Ancestry.

This raises a general problem. Since I started giving online advice well over ten years ago there has been a revolution in the amount of family history information available online. For instance there was very little census information available online, and the 1881 census was only available on CD (without any images). This means that many of the early answers could be significantly extended - but in practice I don't have time to do it. However I am happy to update the pages if someone else want to continue the particular line of research.

Do the Dead outnumber the Living?

2012-02-21T07:00:00.000Z

It is often said that there are more people living now that all the people who have died in the past. But is it true? Such statistical predictions are always difficult and the results are often counter-intuitive. I know because many years ago I wrote a piece for the Genealogists' Magazine about how many English ancestors you had in 1066. The answer was surprising. It turned out that if you go back that far, and allow for population minimums such as the Black Death, the number of distant cousin marriages (say 10th cousins and more) are so numerous that you (and me) turn out to be descended from EVERYONE who was alive in 1066 who has living descendants!

So back to the the title question. If you want to know the answer have a look at the BBC Magazine article Do the Dead outnumber the Living? and be prepared to be surprised.

The village of Hunsdon gets a makeover

2012-02-19T20:56:00.002Z

The village of Hunsdon have had a virtually complete makeover as part of the continuing programme of improving the web site. The single Hunsdon web page has been replaced by:

Hunsdon - a new "master" page with menu and pictorial links to other pages relating to the village. It included a list of the gentry and tradesmen from a 1902 directory.
St Dunstan's Church - Three new post card inmages, one showing damage to the spire from lightning strike. There is an account of memorials from 1807, and a number of links to other related web sites.
Hunsdon House - A post card image from c1905, an early 19th century engraving for Lord Hudson, and several accounts. the domestic staff list from the 1891 census, and several external links.
The pages for Hunsdon in 1746, and the book Hunsdon & Widford have had been reformated.
In carrying out these changes I discovered that Hunsdon House employed a resident "engine driver" as a domestic servant in 1891. What was he doing? Had the house installed electricity and required an engineer to run it? Any ideas?

Early Hitchin Photographers. Avery & Latchmore

2012-02-19T06:09:00.000Z

Earlier this month I posted information on Thomas Latchmore, and while no-one has yet identified the school photographs I have now discovered a lot more about the earlier photographer, George Avery - and also some more about Thomas.

George Avery (1838-1911) was taking photographs in Kent before 1864, but had a studio in Brand Street, Hitchin, in 1866, and took a portrait of a this girl - apparently in her late teens. In 1870 he married a Hitchin girl, Lucy Jane Bentley, sold his business to Thomas, and returned to Kent, where he continued as a photographer.

I also obtained two extra carte de visite by Thomas Latchmore from the same source and one appears to be of the same person, now possibly in her 20s. There was also a later picture with a different back. While I still do not have a precisely dated picture it is now possible to arrange three different Latchmore backs into date order, the latest being shown here.

Spamming Online Genealogy at the Review Centre

2012-02-18T20:38:00.000Z

Online polls and suchlike are very open to abuse - and I recently got a request from a well known family history web site to write a review on the service they provide. They provided a direct link so I wouldn't be tempted to write a favourable review on the wrong product. All I had to do was to type in the review and a star rating and the results would appear against their product. I don't need to tell you which company it was - simply visit the Review Centre and you will see that it features "Honest and Impartial Reviews". Type in "Online Genealogy" and (when I looked this evening) there were 7 reviewed products with 331, 15, 5, 3, 3, 2 and 1 reviews respectively. Guess which one organised the "Write a favourable review campaign."

While www.familysearch.org got three 5 star reviews most of the others included some very negative reviews. This suggests the real reason for the campaign. I suspect that there were three or four devastatingly bad reviews and the aim was to swamp them out by inviting regular users (who presumably are not too dissatisfied) to support the product. As far as I can seen there is no way I can see the oldest reviews apart from scrolling back 10 reviews at a time ....

I suspect that if I urged all readers of this blog to write a favourable "Online Genealogy" review on Genealogy in Hertfordshire for the Review Centre it would quickly become second or third in the list - but don't worry - I won't urge you to do it. All such action would do would make people think whether the Review Centre was really Honest and Impartial.

#############################

I do the organisation an injustice - I decided to track back all 331 reviews and before the circular was sent out there were only two - both giving 5 stars - so the site was joint best in terms of review stars!. However the site persuaded 329 (plus more to come) of its customers to waste untold hours have written perhaps hundreds of thousands of words most of which will never get read.

Hertfordshire Countryside - Old and New

2012-02-18T07:00:00.000Z

Hertfordshire Countryside was first published in 1946 and early copies of were packed with local history articles. While I have a complete set of the early years I don't have an index. However posting the contents list on this site makes it easier for everyone to find relevant articles, and I have just posted details of the four issues published in 1949. There are often copies of early editions on sale on ebay, and many Hertfordshire Public Libraries have bound copies.

The magazine is still being published monthly and the picture is of the latest (February 2012) issue. The current magazine contains less historical material than the early issues but you may find the following articles of interest:

Bet Your Life - Ivan Broadhead looks at old wagers.
The Bricket Wood Tragedy - Nicholas Connell looks at the murder of the girl from Cawdells, Watford.
The Ghosts of Hertfordshire - Fanhams Hall - by Damien O'Dell
Forging Ahead - Wendy Turner explores Much Hadham
Essendon - Peter Etteridge visits 'The Hill with the ash trees'

Extended Search Facilities

2012-02-17T08:48:00.000Z

This blog is the Newsletter for the "Genealogy in Hertfordshire" web site and the normal search only searches the Newsletter - while there is significant information on the main web site.

I have therefore added the main web site search facility in the right hand column. It searches nearly 4000 pages of information on Hertfordshire, its people and its history. (Please note that the index is updated weekly so may not show the most recent updates.)

Key Family History Web Sites

2012-02-16T08:36:00.000Z

I have updated the key links page, following the discovery of a broken link - because the target page had been moved. Minor changes have been made to a few of the descriptive pages. In addition I have added references to some blogs which (like this Newsletter) which you can follow.

Cyndi's List has a blog you can follow.
Family Records - This site has now closed and links to it have been removed
Familysearch - I have modified the support pages to reflect the recent changes. I have kept the link to the old IGI batch numbers but believe these can also be dropped. There is an associated blog. [For the time being the old site can be accessed via oldfamilysearch.com]
FindMyPast - Blog noted
GRO - General Register Office - Now links directly to page for ordering certificates online
HALS - Link on my HALS page was out of date
Hertfordshire Museums - New key link
Historical Directories - Note added that there have been no recent updates.
Listed Buildings - New key link
National Archives - Now has an associated blog.

Frank Foskett & the Berkhamsted Football Club

2012-02-15T07:00:00.000Z

Frank Foskett

Clive's grandfather played for the Berkhamsted Football Club at the time they won the Apsley Charity Cup in 1900, and I have been able to supply an enlarged picture of his Frank Foskett - and some background on the Foskett families of Berkhamsted.

There are already details of a number of football clubs on the site, with players waiting to be identified. I am also interested in any other early football photographs which can be linked with Hertfordshire teams.

Advertisting Standards Agency stamps down on bogus "official" web sites

2012-02-14T16:27:00.000Z

The Society of Genealogists have just posted the following message:

GRO Certificates News – clampdown on unofficial certificates sites and new telephone order number

And about time too. Of course if you are a regular here you will know that you can order certificates online at the GRO web site at the minimum price - See Would you pay £74.99 for a Birth Certificate?

A 1851 account of Gilston Park

2012-02-14T07:00:00.000Z

Gilston is one of those small villages about which I have little information online - and a shortage of pictures. I am therefore delighted to report that I have now been able to post an old print and a detailed history of Gilston Park. In fact the account records the plans to sell of the furniture, and later the same year the house was demolished and a new one built in its place.

At the same time I have taken the opportunity to upgrade the Gilston page - so it will be easier to add further information in future.

Eye Eye

2012-02-13T18:27:00.000Z

In recent months I have found I need to make more use of my reading lamp and hand lens for the smaller writing on old documents. Today I attended my local hospital for a regular check up (my left eye has been damaged by glaucoma) and I was put on a waiting list for cataract removal in my "good" right eye. I was not really surprised when I was told that in the meantime I should not drive.

As I already had two other day operations planned, my day to day activities between now and Easter will need rescheduling. In particular I will need to make more use of public transport, or arrange lifts with friends. The important thing is that I keep smiling and if things sometimes mean I can't manage a daily post, or to answer every query, I am not going to worry. That just being realistic in old age.

Household Furniture for Sale at Ware, 1841

2012-02-13T07:00:00.000Z

Old adverts of household furnishings can give some ideas about the possessions of the well-to-do. One of these is selling furniture on the instructions of a Mr. Kimpton, to be sold at the Saracen's Head Inn Ware, the auctioneer being Mr Henry Ree. Meanwhile Mr Jackson is selling the contents of New Hall, Ware at the house, the goods including oil paintings, 200 books including 44 volumes of Young's Agriculture, and a large number of goldfish - presumably from an ornamental pond.

New Information on High Wych, Sawbridgeworth

2012-02-12T06:55:00.000Z

Theo sent me a query about the date at which the parish of High Wych was created - and I corrected the unfortunate error on my site. To make up for my sins I have added a 1929 description of the village, together with information on the building of the church and church school in 1861, and a sampler made by a pupil shortly after the school was opened.

Much of the added information comes from The Story of Sawbridgeworth - which was produced by a Workers' Educational Association tutorial class under the excellent guidance of Lionel M. Munby in the 1960s.

[I have also corrected the same error on Wikipedia, which may well have been copied from my web site. Unfortunately there are bound to be a few errors an a site as large as mine - so I am always grateful when such matters are drawn to my attention.]

Another pupil for Blaxland's Quaker School at Hitchin?

2012-02-11T07:00:00.000Z

Sarah has drawn to my attention that John Middleton died of scarlet fever while he was at a Quaker school in Hitchin - and this was most likely the school run by George Blaxland between 1788 and 1801. I am wondering is many other children died of scarlet fever in Hitchin in 1793.

The information comes from the Memoirs of Maria Fox (available online) which I note contains a few references to Maria's visits to Hertfordshire. It is worth noting thatthe texts many old books are now becoming available online and references to boarding schools from this period can be very useful, as often they are not well recorded in the more usual genealogy sources.

The first 10,000 views

2012-02-10T21:56:00.000Z

I have just noticed that this blog has passed 10,000 page views in just over 5 months - and February is set to have more views than January.

Louis Wain's visit to Tring in 1895

2012-02-10T07:00:00.000Z

The Gallery at Walter Rothschild's Museum

Louis Wain, the artist renown for his drawing of cats, visited Tring in 1895 and wrote a long article in The Windsor Magazine entitled The Hon. Walter Rothschild's Pets: A Visit to Tring Museum, It starts with a short description to the town, ending up at the museum, a detailed description of the exhibits, and information on the "zoo" of wild animals kept by Walter Rothschild at Tring Park.

The article includes over 20 illustrations, most of which are drawings by Louis Wain,

Sumatran Rhinocerous

The Museum is now part of the Natural History Museum and the two galleries described in the article are still there - together with many of the exhibits.

Why I groan when I get a query from the USA

2012-02-09T07:00:00.000Z

Well - not always - but those relating to 17th century emigrants to America can be difficult. I recently had a query about someone from Hertfordshire who was born around 1600. The following is an edited verion (with no names) to my email reply.

[I started with a brief mention of name mentioned in the question.]

If you have another look at the guidelines you will see they say:

Information on your sources of information can be very relevant. There is much erroneous speculation on the internet, particularly relating to early settlers in America, and it helps to know whether the foundations of your question are solid. (See The Myth of Stanstead Abbey if you want evidence.)

The reason for saying this is that UK genealogists regularly get queries from the U.S.A. which say - without quoting sources - that they know their UK ancestor came from a particular place at a particular date. In many cases it turns out they have never even looked at an original handwritten document of the period (or a suitable digital image). The information they have has merely been copied from a family tree produced (without quoting sources) by someone else. In many cases it would seem that the tree had been copied again and again. The original printed tree was probably produced 100 years or more ago, when modern computer indexes were not available, and research was very much harder (and expensive) to do properly. What was originally a best guess or a downright error is now considered to be TRUE because the original guess/error has been repeated on hundreds of web site by people who knew so little about proper genealogy that they didn't know the importance of checking and quoting sources.

I don't know if this applies to you but in your case there are regular queries about William and I know that they have been looked at in detail by an experienced family historian who has drawn a blank. You might well be advised to accept that you are unlikely to be able to trace the paternal line any further back. with any degree of confidence.

Be realistic. All genealogy investigations are bound to end with a complete block at some stage - some people who are adopted may not even know the identity of their own parents, while a vary large number of people can link into the nobility (where there are many published trees - not all accurate), and hence into the well documented royalty of Europe - so that there must be many millions that have a family tree in which at least one line could be traced back to Charlemagne.

I've found Thomas Pearson, Brickmaker

2012-02-08T07:40:00.000Z

Well I think I have. A few day ago I discovered that St Stephen's brickworks (Newsletter reference) had an absentee owner called T. Pearson - but there where literally hundreds of T Pearsons listed in the old census returns. On a hunch I decided to follow up a census entry to a "Brick Manager and Agent" called Buxton Wilberforce Pearson and this lead me to Thomas Pearson (1821-1876) who in 1861 was a "Builder and Contractor employing 100 men", and in 1871 described himself as a "Brick Manufacturer." While I still have no information explicitly linking this T. Pearson to the brickworks it seems very likely that he is the person I have been looking for.

Looking for Thomas proved difficult - particularly due to an appallingly bad census transcription (8 people in household, 28 incorrect words in transcription) - and I have decided to record the steps I took to find him, and winkle out the details.

The Danger of Cherry Picking Information from the Web

2012-02-08T07:00:00.000Z

One of the dangers of internet genealogy is that there is so much information available, and if you don't know the dangers you can build a family tree which is full of errors. Things get difficult with non-conformists before 1837, while parish registers often have large gaps at the time of the Civil War. The problem may be that there are no relevant birth records for your ancestor - and a common mistake is to select the record of someone with the "right name" who is actually the "wrong body".

In answering questions on this site I don't want to waste time answering questions where it appears that the basis of the question is unreliable. In ADAM or MADAM, Harpenden, 17th century I explain why I feel that a baptism that took place in 1652 is very likely the wrong one - and also supply pages which everyone should read if they are to avoid similar difficulties in future.

Bricks & Beer at St Albans

2012-02-07T22:11:00.000Z

Jon (who is researching 19th century St Albans pubs, has sent some information which links the brickmaker James Vass to a number of St Albans pubs.

Animal Pounds at Preston and elsewhere

2012-02-06T19:29:00.002Z

The Pound at Flamstead End

Philip has added an excellent page on the former pound at Preston - and as a result I have updated the relevant page on this site.

2012-02-06T07:00:00.000Z

Further to CULLING, Hertingfordbury, 17/18 century Shirley has been transcribing the will of Elizabeth Culling of Hertingfordbury and mistress to Earl William Cowper, who was Lord Chancellor.

St Stephens Brickworks, Bricket Wood

2012-02-05T07:00:00.000Z

T. Pearson
St Stephens Brickworks
nr St Albans

Some years ago I spent a lot of time researching the Brickmakers of St Albans so I was very surprised when Peter drew my attention to a picture of a railway wagon he had found on the web. The picture accompanied an advert by the St Albans Signal Box Preservation Trust which was selling '00' gauge models of wagons related to St Albans.

I contacted the Trust and Keith supplied me with a better picture, which had come from a book, which said nothing about the location of the brickworks or the identity of T. Pearson. I checked the trade directories for the Victorian period for the whole of Hertfordshire and there was no sign of the brickworks in the listings. There was also no sign of a brickworks owner called Pearson in the Hertfordshire census returns. The hunt was on ... I had to find it ...

When I was researching Bernards Heath and the Brickworks in the St Albans area some years ago I spent a lot of time in the St Albans library making many hundred copies of news items from their microfilm of the Herts Advertiser. Only some of these were indexed - but there was a clue. In 1869 a small advert appeared:

Poles, stakes, etc, to be sold - apply to Mr Oldring, Foreman, St Stephens Brickworks, Bricket Wood.

This told me me that the brickworks were at Bricket Wood, which I had not covered in my original research, although formerly it had been part of St Stephens parish. A quick check of the 1883 Ordnance Survey on the Old Maps web site revealed a brickworks with a railway sidings onto the Watford to St Albans branch line, south of Bricket Wood Station.

An online search for Pearson and Brick turned up a single reference to Pearson's Brick Siding on the London and North Western line between Watford and Bricket Wood railway stations - from a Victorian Handbook and Appendix of Stations, Junctions, Sidings, Collieries, etc - so I knew I had found the right brickworks.
Now that I knew where it was I could look for evidence in the census returns. The earliest mention was in 1861 when a number of people were living on the Brick Field - but no brickmakers. In 1871 a single brickmaker was listed. Ten years later Charles Alexander was listed as foreman brickmaker supported by five brickmakers. By 1891 William Maskell had been promoted to the post of foreman with seven brickmakers or brickmakers labourers. The yard had closed by the time of the 1901 census.
It was possible to extract additional information from the census by using it to follow up the careers of the brickmakers - and noting where their children were born - which makes it possible to find out when they moved to the Bricket Wood area - and when they moved away. This process established a link with a brickworks near Rickmansworth, which in turn provided evidence that Charles Alexander probably move to Bricket Wood with his son in about 1872. I also discovered that one of the brickmakers, Charles Butcher, was already mentioned elsewhere - for stealing money while working at another brickworks. Further details of all the brickmakers are given on the main site.
In any research like this you can often end up with even more questions that need answering. For instance T. Pearson and Mr Oldring have not yet been identified. If you can provide any more information about the brickworks and brickmakers please tell me,

Bridge 166 on the Grand Union Canal

2012-02-04T07:00:00.000Z

Steve asked me if I knew the age of Bridge 166 over the Grand Union Canal. (It is the bridge south of Grove Mill, Watford. I need to do more work on the Canal pages and as yet don't have a picture (old or modern) of this bridge.

However a look at a map from the 1880s, and a comparison with a modern satellite view, shows the the bridge was built to switch the tow path from one side to the other. A cross over bridge has probably been at the spot since the canal was built over 200 years ago.

T. B. Latchmore, photographer of Hitchin

2012-02-03T07:30:00.000Z

Thomas Benwell Latchmore was a prominent Victorian photographer of Hitchin. I have added four carte de visite portraits by him. In addition there are many of his pictures of the town in the book Old Hitchin.

He also took a number of photographs of girls dressed up for a school play. They were fist posted on this site some 5 years ago - and I am still hopeful someone can identify the school.

An Update of the Digswell pages

2012-02-02T20:18:00.002Z

I have carried out a major update of the information on the small parish of Digswell, near Welwyn Garden City. The main page now has a menu and there is a transcript of the 1851 Post Office Directory of the village. There is also an 1807 account of the history which includes a chance to brush up your Latin:

There are also pages on St John's Church, Digswell House (including a couple of 19th century advertisements) and the Great Railway Viaduct.

January was a record month

2012-02-01T00:13:00.000Z

January has been a record month in almost every department. There were 25,565 visits, (19,669 previous January) from 17485 (15,264) different users, viewing 81,918 (57, 909) pages, with 435,956 (381,174) hits. The biggest increase was in the number of repeat visits with the month which was 8085 compared with 4405. January 9th had 1007 visitors and was the first day since the current statistics measure was first used in September 2009 to exceed 900 visits in one day.

The blog Hertfordshire Genealogy News had 2907 page views in January - with visitor numbers increasing significantly each month as the graph shows. There were 43 new posts, bringing the total to 190.

In addition I processed 120 emails (in and out) excluding circulars, automatic notifications, and monitoring ebay and purchasing some new material for use on the site.

I must also thank the users of the site for their generosity in already raising £250 for mental health in Hertfordshire so far this year. It will be wonderful if donations continue to come in at this rate.

It is perhaps worth commenting on why the month as been so successful. Part is undoubtedly due to the success of having a separate blog for the newsletter. Part is due to the fact that "404" errors are now caught, meaning that people who are using out of date URLs from other web sites, published books, etc, now get a friendly welcoming message. However these changes are insufficient to explain all the increase, and I suspect that the recent changes to Google search is the main cause. The "more intelligent" interface could help guide people more effectively to relevant sites meaning that more relevant visitors come, and there are fewer people who visit by mistake. It may also be that having the main site and the blog as separate URLs increases the chance that one or the other appears on the top search page. If the position continues there will be no difficulty in topping 250.000 visitors in 2012.

As webmaster I have dealt with the following problems:

I discovered an error in the main menu linking the main site back to this blog - corrected.
A scammer using the name "sbo" has been trying to post comments to this blog which include references to a malicious web site according to my Security Centre. These have all been intercepted - which is one of the reasons why I moderate comments before they appear in public. I have also discovered that many of the accesses to this site are from a different Russian scam site - which means that perhaps 10% of the visitors to this web site are not genuine visitors.
I have made a change to improve the way email message titles are generated
Next month I need to do some work on linking between Genealogy in Hertfordshire and other web sites.

As genealogist the recent outstanding items, to be covered in February, include

An update on the Pictures of Stagenhoe
An Update on the page for St George's School, Harpenden
Some information on the Kingham family at Great Gaddesden
St Stephen's Brick Works, Bricket Wood
Bridge 166 on the Grand Union Canal
I am well behind target publishing details of war memorials
I need to check some older items (before October 2011) to see if they still merit action
I have a large pile of new material waiting to to be processed

Little Jack of Cromer

2012-01-31T07:32:00.000Z

I have just had a query from Jane asking if I knew of a midget called "Little Jack" who she says lived at Cromer (a tiny hamlet in Ardeley, near Stevenage) about 100 years ago. I think it is far more likely that her family tradition (see Chinese Whispers) relates to Cromer, Norfolk, which was a significant seaside resort. A hundred years ago such places regularly had "freak shows" where you could pay a penny and were then allowed to enter a tent where your would see the freak - which might be the incredible bearded woman, the shortest (or tallest, or fattest) man or woman, the Siamese twins, or perhaps a (stuffed) two headed dog.
If you can say whether this query relates to Hertfordshire or Norfolk please comment below and I will tell Jane about it.

Ouch!!!

2012-01-29T22:15:00.003Z

The last couple of days have been uncomfortable and I have had very little sleep. Hopefully posts will resume after a scheduled visit to the dentist on Tuesday.

There might be some other similar short "breaks" in service over the next few months. I am clearly getting to a stage in life when things start to wear out. I have two appointments for examinations each of which could lead to minor surgery (in one case for a cataract in my one good eye), plus appointments for a pre-op and op for a different issue. None are serious - but if postings become a bit erratic during February and March I will be back.

*** 5th February *** The visit to the dentist involved some planned repair work - which was carried out satisfactorily -and an examination and X-ray showed nothing amiss in the area I was having pain ... but unfortunately the only effect of the treatment is that I am not taking so many paracetamol for toothache ...

Congratulations to Wikipedia for spotting this spam

2012-01-28T22:27:00.002Z

When I logged on this morning I was delighted to find that Wikipedia had already taken action ....

Once misleading or downright wrong information gets posted onto the internet there are many others people who simply echo the errors - see The Dangers of Internet Genealogy and The Myth of Stanstead Abbey. One of the problems in genealogy is that it is possible to search the internet for names and the more ignorant you are of English history, the history of surnames, and the nature of the surviving contemporary documents, the more you are to assume that people with similar names might be related.

So read on to find why I was so delighted.

Yesterday I got a message which was, in effect, complaining that I hadn't included a reference to the DeXXXX who had come over with William the Conqueror in my description of a Hertfordshire place, XXYY. (The questioner name was a variant of XXXX and I hae disguised it to avoid embarrassment)

The place name was probably derived from a land owner called XXXX first mentioned some six generations after the conquest, the place name XXYY only being first recorded (as far as I can judge) more than 500 years after the Conquest, and some 200 years after the XXXX family severed their connection with the parish.

For those of you who know my web site you will be aware that there is virtually nothing about William the Conquerer here (not even in the description of Berkhamsted, and I normally do not handle queries (see FAQ) before 1660. However I didn't bin the email but decided to look to see if the was a reason why the connection was of any great significance.

I started with a Google search and immediately came up with a Wikipedia page on XXYY which had been posted by my enquirer less that 24 hours before. I immediately noted the following.

The text was a cut and paste job from the Victoria County History dealing with the parish of ZZZZ, in which XXYY is situated. This is a violation of Wikipedia's clearly stated instructions. It also wastes everyone's time by duplicating information which can already easily be found on Google.
The text was presented without any acknowledgement of the source - presenting someone else's work as your own is plagiarism.
As far as I can see he only made one addition to the original text - by expanding a reference to the XXXX family to the DeXXXX family. While it might be true that there was a connection with the someone who came over with William the Conqueror no reference is give to justify what appears to be a wild guess. This kind of manipulation of the facts is along the lines of the Chinese Whispers I mentions a few days ago.
The second part of the material he cuts and pasted relates to the XXXX family but is in a different manor and hence is totally irrelevant to a short entry on XXYY.
The reference footnotes from the Victoria County History tend to be extremely obscure and really need expanding if they are to be used on Wikipedia. They have been copied verbatim, suggesting that the poster did not understand them. To give a simple example he failed to update the reference to the Public Records Office to the National Archive.
The current 19th century house XXYY is not particularly important as a building as it is not even a listed building, and there must be hundreds of similar or larger house in the county which do not have Wilipedia pages for a copied extract. The house and estate's early ownership record is unremarkable and anyone really interested would go to the online Victoria County History (or the histories by Chauncy, Clutterbuck or Cussons) rather that look in Wikipedia. If XXYY has any claim to justify a dedicated Wikipedia page this would be because of links with two very famous 20th century people. (While both these people have extensive biographies on Wikipedia neither biographies considered the link sufficiently important to mention the house by name.)

My first reaction was to notify Wikipedia of the defects in the article, but was not sure of the procedure and left it until this morning. When I logged into the Wikipedia article I found that the following message had been added.

This article or section may have been copied and pasted from [full URL], possibly in violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy. Please remedy this by editing this article to remove any non-free copyrighted content and attributing free content correctly, or flagging the content for deletion.(January 2012)

So I am now waiting to see how long it will take for the page to be deleted.

The Lesson - I have published the above (disguising all means of identifying the questioner) because it serves as a warning that information you find on the web may look professional - but may have been posted by someone who had less understanding of how to carry out and publish research than you have ...

At least Wikipedia has some checks in place. If you find an extensive family tree on the web no-one may every have checked large parts of it for accuracy. Before you copy it into your family tree remember large parts of it may have been "cut and pasted" from another family tree without checking - and this copying may already have happened. many times, errors and all, as illustrated by The Myth of Stanstead Abbey

What are these?

2012-01-27T22:58:00.000Z

Today I visited the Tring Local History Museum and they has a new display which had these two items.

Do you know what they are?

Part advert from Fotolibra

The items are Victorian Fire Grenades - an early form of fire extinguishers. A good description occurs on the Hull Museum web site which starts:

Before the invention of modern fire extinguishers, glass globe extinguishers known as 'Fire Grenades' were popular in workplaces and the home in the 19th and early 20th century. These grenades were small and often sold in multiples, and stored in wire frame holders which could be easily suspended near the entrances to rooms. The grenade was designed to be thrown into the centre base of the fire. The glass would shatter on impact, dispersing the liquid salt water or Sodium Bicarbonate solution, putting out the fire and saving the Victorian home or business from fire devastation.

While great claims were made for these grenades their effectiveness must be doubted in the vast majority of fires and some of the later grenades contained carbon tetrachloride - whose fumes would could have adverse effects of the thrower of the grenade!

New Post Cards of Aldbury

2012-01-26T10:09:00.000Z

Aldbury from the Church

I have added four new post card views of Aldbury, each of which can be enlarged to 1024 pixels wide. There are two published by Charles Dickens of Aldbury, showing views of the Village from the Church Tower, and the Stocks Estate from Moneybury Hill. There is a view of the Church by Michael Chadwick of Tring. I also show a view of the area round the pond taken by the major publisher, Valentine, in 1903 but republished by DeFraine of Tring and posted in 1919.

The Reservoirs and Canals around Tring

2012-01-25T21:47:00.002Z

Guide to Grand Union Canal near Tring

Over two years ago I posted a linked series of pictures of the Grand Union Canal in the Tring Area, taken while walking my dog, Franki (who appears in many of the older photos). The idea was to allow people to photographically explore the main canal, the Wendover Arm, the Aylesbury Arm, and the reservoirs near Tring (Startops, Marsworth, Tringford and Wilstone). This was done by posting pictures on the Geograph web site and linking them together. The idea was also to link them with the Canal pages of this site (still incomplete). However Geograph introduced a better way to link photographs and now allow bigger images to be archived, and rather than edit several hundred pictures already posted I abandoned the process. (In fact pictures of many other subjects - mainly around Tring - were also posted on Geograph by me as "Chris Reynolds")

Low Water at Startops Reservoir, January 2012

Recently I have been taking more pictures during my relaxation walks - including the impact of the lack of rain on the local reservoirs and the ones I have posted showing the Medieval field systems (Medieval Field System exposed in Wilstone Reservoir and More Evidence of Medieval Fields at Tring Reservoirs) have attracted a lot of attention. In addition I have offered to prepare a talk on the Industrial Archaeology of the Canal to the archaeology group of our local U3A.

As I am already committed to doing more work I have decided that I will go through my large collection of photographs and post suitable ones on Geograph, and report my activities here, even if they are not directly linked to Hertfordshire. I also plan to update the Canal pages on this site, with cross links to the Geograph pictures. However this will all take some time

Chinese Whispers and Family Traditions

2012-01-24T17:11:00.000Z

Chinese Whispers is a game where a verbal message is passed along a line, one person whispering to the next, and often the message that come out of the far end of the line is significantly different to the original message. This can happen over the generations with family traditions so be careful you do not drop a brick - by repeating the "old" story without checking.

I have just come up with a good modern example from my own family of how a story can change.

When I first became interested in family history I was told by elderly relatives that two of my great grandfathers on opposite sides of the family, Jacob Reynolds and John Locke, had made the bricks which were used to build separate churches - St Saviour's Church in St Albans, and Hale Leys Chapel in Aylesbury.

St Saviour's Church, St Albans

I was well aware that the Locke family made bricks in Aylesbury for about 100 years and there seems to be little doubt about that part of the story. I was also aware that Jacob Reynolds was a farmer and businessman who had brick earth on his farm - and while bricks were made carrying his initials he may never has personally molded a single brick. However he was very much involved in the financial side of the building of St Saviour's and I have often looked at the large brick edifice with pride.Those bricks had come from a brick pit on his farm - and if I could take one out it would carry the initials J R on it.

However the other day Roger contacted me after talking to a local bricklayer, and also found a reference to the building that suggested I might be wrong. I now know that the bricks you can see in the photograph are definitely not Jacob's bricks. When the story was passed on to me it would seem that two words had dropped from the sentence:

"Jacob Reynolds made some of the bricks used in the building of St Saviour's Church."

While Jacob's brick works almost certainly made some of the bricks they would be in the chancel - at the east of the church - and invisible in the photograph. What is true, and is well documented, is that he raised the money for building the church. More information and some of the questions raised about the brickmaking in the area are discussed in Bricks use to build St Saviour's Church, St Albans, 1896-1902

How sure are you that some of your own family traditions have not been modified by the effects of Chinese Whispers???
If you have any good Hertfordshire examples why not tell us about them.

School Memories of the 1940 -Priory School, Kings Langley

2012-01-24T09:05:00.000Z

Coombe Hill School (or Priory School as it was later known) was a pretty unconventional school in its attitudes to children. I am therefore delighted to being able to add Paul's memories of the school as it was over 50 years ago.

William George Bennett, St Albans Brickmaker

2012-01-23T07:00:00.000Z

William George Bennett was one of the St Albans Brickmakers I have studied in detail, Louise has sent in some information about houses built in Cumberland Road in 1926 and I have added further biographical information.

Tales of the Old Frog at Weston

2012-01-22T09:26:00.002Z

Tales of the Old Frog at Weston

Tales of the Old Frog at Weston sounds like an interesting read It has recently been published by Richard Clements, a visitor to this web site, and he has sent me details.

If you have read it please consider adding a review as a comment below.

It is impossible for me to keep in touch with all the many local history publications being published by individuals and local history societies across Hertfordshire - so please send me details (or even better a review copy) if you want one to be mentioned on this site.

Hertingfordbury Park and the CULLING connection

2012-01-22T07:00:00.000Z

John Cullen senior purchased the Hertingfordbury Park estate in 1681 and the property, shown here, was passed to his son on his death, and after that to his daughter. Shirley has written to ask some questions about his possible relationship to a Norfolk family (CULLING, Hertingfordbury, 17/18th century)

I have used the opportunity to significantly upgrade the Hertingfordbury page, although some of the new pages will need new information at a later date.

Variable quality of old document images

2012-01-21T20:44:00.001Z

Philip writes I ordered PRs from the 16C for Hitchin at my local LDS Family History Centre. They were so blurred as to be virtually unreadable. The images of same PRS at HALS were crisp.

I have photographed Kings Walden PRs and found several pages to be so faint as to be almost blank. On Thursday, I viewed a new film of K Walden PRs at the LDS Centre and ALL the images were easily read.

My point is that if the quality of films of PRs is patchy, it may be worth trying another source.

I rarely use microfilm now but I have come across variable quality in census images both from CD and online. For this reason it is often worth trying a different source if you get a very faded image. Of course there are some pages which, in the original, are so faded that they are difficult to read. I suspect that images made in the last few years using digital techniques are likely to be far better than some of the early microfilm copies,

Comment below if you know of other cases of this problem.

Across the County boundaries around Barnet

2012-01-21T09:59:00.002Z

Loz contacted me because of difficulties in locating birth details of Joseph Rolph and I was able to find him - see ROLFE, Monken Hadley, 1800-1851. The problem is that in the 1871 census Joseph gave his place of birth at Barnet - which was then in Hertfordshire - but he had actually been born just over the county boundary in Monken Hadley, which was then in Middlesex but became part of Hertfordshire in 1903. Both Barnet and Monken Hadley became part of Greater London when the County of Middlesex was abolished as an administrative unit! The lesson is that if your ancestors came from the Barnet area you need to check both the Hertfordshire and Middlesex records.

Make the most of FREE genealogy sites

2012-01-20T07:00:00.000Z

I sometime get queries from people who have been tempted into genealogy by commercial websites such as Ancestry or FindMyPast and who appear never to have read a modern introductory guide to family history and haven't realised that commercial sites seem to go out of their way not to tell you of free web sites which contain answers to the question you are asking, such as familysearch.

As a result I have now updated my page on FreeBMD and included details of the related sites FreeCEN and FreeREG.

FreeBMG contains complete indexes of birth, marriage and death registrations from July 1837 to 1939 for births, 1951 for marriages, and 1950 for deaths. Some later years are fully indexed and the coverage is steadily being increased.

FreeCEN contains census returns and as yet coverage for Hertfordshire is limited to 1851 (25% coverage), 1871 (9.5% coverage) and 1891 (8.3% coverage).

FreeREG contains indexed parish and non-conformist records and the coverage for Hertfordshire is currently limited - but may include the parish you are interested in.

If you have some free time why not volunteer to be an indexer of Hertfordshire registers or censuses for FreeREG or FreeCEN. Not only will you find this interesting but you will also be helping your fellow genealogists.

So your ancestor went to America in the 17th Century

2012-01-19T07:46:00.000Z

I have just had a query (through the Tring Local History Society) about John Lake, born Tring around 1616, who went to America in about 1640. Usually when I get such a query I inwardly groan but in this case my answer was eased by the fact that the person asking the question was aware that there was much misinformation surrounding her ancestor's origins.

The problem I face with such queries is that there are many published family histories and family trees which lead back to the first settlers in America - and most of these effectively start with the arrival of the first settlers. In most cases there seems to have been few, if any, records linking them to their origins in England - and there has been an enormous amount of guesswork which has become "proven facts" by being repeatedly retold - nowadays over the internet - see The Dangers of Internet Genealogy and The Myth of Stanstead Abbey

Americans who have no experience of researching original 17th century American documents first hand, and even less about English documents and history of the period discover a published family tree going back to the very early days of settlement. They accept what is on the tree as being true and write to me thinking it is easy to match the possibly very unreliable information on the family tree with contemporary Hertfordshire records. They assume that because there was only one person with that name in 17th century America there was only one person with the name born in England - and assume that person must be their ancestor. In the case of the current query it turns out that there are there were four John Lake christenings in Tring in a two year period so Right Name, Wrong Body becomes very relevant.

In most cases I can do little more than direct them to My Ancestors emigrated from Hertfordshire and ask them to let me know what the possibly relevant information is available from American sources. The result is often that I don't hear from them again ...

This site is Non-commercial ....

2012-01-18T12:00:00.000Z

(Apologies to those of you who have read this post before but emails I have been getting suggest I should move this message to a more visible position. In view of the previous post it is also appropriate to emphasize this site's non-commercial nature.)

After running for ten years without any spam this site appears to be attractive to the advertising agencies - as I had yet another message trying to get me to take advertising. My reply this time is as follows:

I am puzzled as to why you should think of contacting a 100% non-commercial web site which deals with family and local history in Hertfordshire, although I can understand why you may not have spotted the blog of 13 May which discusses the matter. You may also have been unaware that when the URL was registered over 10 years ago the only generally available URLs in the UK were .co.uk domains.

At first sight your client's business has absolutely nothing to do with genealogy but after a little thought I realised that there is a connection - but one that you would be unlikely to mention in your adverts.

The people who visit my site are very much concerned with the birth, marriage and death of their ancestors and other relatives. Look at any family tree and you can find far too many examples of people who have died of lung cancer, emphysema, liver cirrhosis, etc. In addition there will be families that have run into problems from alcohol addiction or from spending too much on legal addictive drugs. However your client has a business plan that means it is not too worried about killing its customers off as it can then make more money selling flowers for the funeral ....

Why not spend a little time thinking out the consequences of your actions. Some years ago I did a calculation as to the cost of my education at an expensive private school - the fees being paid out of the profits my father made selling cigarettes. I came to the conclusion that my father's customers shortened their lives by a total of over 200 years by smoking, and many died an unpleasant death, in order to pay the fees.

While you may feel the site might be a suitable place for your clients to advertise, your client's business is not one which could in any way be considered acceptable .

A Possible Threat to this Genealogy Web Site???

2012-01-18T11:09:00.001Z

Wikipedia has blacked itself out today and carries the following message:

Wikipedia is protesting against SOPA and PIPA by blacking out the English Wikipedia for 24 hours, beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time. Readers who come to English Wikipedia during the blackout will not be able to read the encyclopedia: instead, they will see messages intended to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA, and encouraging them to share their views with their elected representatives, and via social media.

Basically what is happening is that Online Piracy Laws are being considered in the United States which could have the effect of banning access to web sites world wide which breach U.S. copyright laws. This could mean that in theory at least if I posted something on the Genealogy web site which was technically in breach of copyright people in the United States could not access the site - and search engines such as Google would not be allowed to index the site. (About 80% of the first times visitors to the site find it using Google.)

Of course there are technical copyright violations on my web site. For example, I often reproduce the cover, the dust jacket text, and one or two short extracts from a copyright book to let visitors to this site know of the book's existence. This would presumably be OK if the author or publisher had provided me with a copy for review - but if I have purchased a copy and not sought permission ... I also find that, due to oversight I have failed to acknowledge the sources of some of the free clip art I have used, and have lost the original details. There may be a few other accidental violations.

I am quite clear about my approach to copyright material - and in over 10 year's operation I have only had two messages from copyright holders and both were resolved easily and amicably. In one case I had used a picture as a slide in a public lecture and then reproduced the slide on the site without acknowledging the source. The other case involved the pages about the death of my daughter Belinda where I had quoted a "A reason, a season, or a lifetime" which she had prepared to be sent to her friends when she died, and where I had not know the origin.

Hopefully the US will not enact such a potentially draconian law - and this is all a storm in a teacup. The problem is that many people do blatantly violate the rights of others by posting extensive copyright material on the internet and this makes it very difficult for educationalists like myself who want to encourage people to use the original sources whene this is at all possible.

More from the Home Counties Magazine 1901

2012-01-17T07:30:00.000Z

I have updated the page on the Home Counties Magazine to include a short piece about an inquisition relating to a Chipping Barnet charity. In addition I have added a 1901 advert from the magazine to the page on St George's School, Harpenden. The advert not only gives details of the school but also gives details of the school fees.

I plan to post more extracts from this magazine during 2012.

(If any of you have any information about 19th century school fees in Hertfordshire please let me know by commenting below.)

A Rothschild funded trip to Canada

2012-01-16T09:12:00.000Z

Elizabeth's query about PANGBORN, Tring, 1868-1906 raised a lot of interesting points - some of which could be relevant to many who emigrated to Canada from Hertfordshire in the early 20th century. There can be little doubt that a book published by a Tring farmer will have encouraged many to emigrate, in some cases help by Rothschild money,

In the case of the Pangborn family there is the question of why Frederick returned to England leaving all but the youngest children in Canada - and who was the "Mrs Pangborn" who is listed on the ship manifest.

A Dispute over Charity Land at Sandridge in 1653

2012-01-16T07:49:00.000Z

Water End House, Sandridge

This inquisition is interesting because the Church Wardens took the Lord of the Manor to court because the charity had not been getting its due income, and many personal names are mentioned. The Lord of the Manor was Richard Jennings, of Water End, Sandridge. He had a daughter, Sarah, who married John Churchill, and ended up living in Blenheim Palace! Richard's descendants include Princess Diana, and Winston Churchill (who was born at Blenheim Palace). The current Earl Spencer is Lord of the Manor of Sandridge.

It is of additional interest to me because my ancestor, Dolphin Smith, took the tenancy of Water End in about 1845.

Update - The Green Man and The Harrow, Tring

2012-01-15T18:38:00.000Z

Following my recent answer to a query about Mrs Jane Philbey, Tring, 1840-1864 Colin has written to say that Jane Philbey of The Green Man public house was the sister of Thomas Meager, landlord of The Harrow public house in Akeman Street, Tring.

Behind the scenes - January 1 to 14

2012-01-15T14:00:00.000Z

In reply to one query I added the following comment - which actually applies to many of the queries I receive which don't get an answer.

I find that a very common failing with beginners is to hunt for names without spending enough time getting to grips with the available tools - or to understanding the many pitfalls.

I also got a very short email request that included no specific birth, marriage of death dates for any of the people concerned, no sources, a large typo and part of the very little "real" information that was provided looked as if it could have been wrong! In addition the surname was common enough for Right Name, Wrong Body to be relevant. If someone gives so little thought to drafting their question they do not deserve an answer.

Ray kindly pointed out an error on the Harry Cull, Photographer, Watford page - relating to which pictures would enlarge and which would not.

There has been some further emails relating to last year's query about The Long Family of Sacombe, and hopefully there will be something new to post later this year once an email address problem can be resolved.

Tonmoy11 has posted an interesting comment about the US costs on my post on the cost of UK Birth., etc, certificates. It would be interesting to know what the prices are in other countries.

Via blog comments Anthony has been able to provide more information in reply to the blog post Were your Ancestors mad in 1911? and I have used his contribution to update the The Patients of Harpenden Hall on the main web site.

They say that Things come in Threes ... In the first six weeks of 2012 I have three dates in my diary to visit the local hospital. The first has already promised me another visit to have a kidney stone removed. The second is confirm that my hernia needs repairing. The third will undoubtedly arrange a later date for the cataract in my one "good" eye to be removed. Otherwise I am feeling fine - and happily did 30 lengths in our local swimming pool last week - my target being 50 lengths in the "Old People's Hour" by Easter - including walking across town to the pool and back home afterwards! All the procedures should be pretty straight forward so I am not expecting breaks of more than a day or two in the management of this site.

Finally I am delighted to say that the Herts Mind Network has already received £50 in 2012 as a result of activities connected with this site. But there is still £1150 to go to get the year end target so why not make a DONATION now and help the mentally ill of Hertfordshire.

Old Handwriting - A Conditional Surrender from 1819

2012-01-15T07:39:00.000Z

A number of people found the earlier "Old Handwriting" example useful so today I have a much longer document.

In 1819 Richard Oakley lent John Thrussell £600 pounds on the surety of property at Bendish, St Pauls Walden. This document records the transaction. Because it was copyhold property the property was part of the Manor of St Pauls Walden the document was called a conditional surrender because the ownership of the property was dependent on the repayment of the mortgage and due interest.

Read below to see the complete document or go to Conditional Surrender, 1819, St Pauls Walden for the document and a full transcription

How can I prove Joseph was John's Father ...

2012-01-14T07:00:00.000Z

In reply to a query from Kerryn I wrote: Proof is an ideal which it is often very difficult to establish the further you go back, particularly with the poorer members of society. What you need to do is to establish what the options are, and eliminate those which do not fit. This may well mean checking up on many people who turn out not to be close relatives. In some cases there will only be one "looks likely" alternative which falls well short of being positively proved. In such cases you have to treat it as a good working assumption - but always be on the lookout for further information to strengthen, or weaken, the support for your assumption.

To see my response in Kerryn's case see DAWSON, Cheshunt, early 19th century

For a more general discussion see How can you be certain about ...

The Herts Jew's Society in 1841

2012-01-13T07:00:00.000Z

In October1841 George Ludlow, Steward of Christ's Hospital, Hertford, advertised the Annual Meeting of the Herts Auxilary Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. It was a branch of the London Society, founded in 1809 and the Watton Jews Association had been in existence since 1830.

An Account of The Hormeads in 1901

2012-01-12T07:00:00.000Z

I have published an article "The Great and Little Hormeads" written by the Hertfordshire historian, W. B. Gerrish, in the Home Counties Magazine of 1901..

It describes the Church of Little Hormead as it was at the time, with the ancient door still in the Norman doorway, and has a long account of the Brick House at Great Hormead.

Poem: Lines on Visiting Throcking Wood

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000Z

Come to the wood, where the shadows lie deep,
Where insects hum, and wild flowers love to creep,
There the red strawberries run along the ground,
And the brown ivy clings to all around ...

Read more from The Reformer 2 October 1841

BBC "Country Tracks" Hertfordshire

2012-01-10T14:04:00.001Z

I have just spotted the following program about Hertfordshire on the BBC iplayer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b019g3j7/Country_Tracks_Hertfordshire/

I,m not sure how long it will remain there so am posting this immediately - but I know it contains items on Heartswood Forestr, Campfield Place, Knebworth House and Henry Moore's studio

Major Fire at Barnet in 1908

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000Z

The Great Fire at Barnet, August 15th, 1908
Published by The Watford Engraving Co - (See Downer)

At the beginning of the 20th century few local paper contained many, if any, pictures and there was a ready market for photographers to rapidly produce postcards recording local events. One of the leading practitioners was Frederic Downer, who founded the Watford Engraving Company which also printed cards for other photographers.

Mr Gates kept The Gate Public House at Chorleywood

2012-01-09T07:00:00.000Z

Chorley Wood near the Gate Inn

In preparing this card for display I noticed the very unusual franking mark on the stamp. In addition the name of the landlord in The Gate public house turns out to be Mr Gates?

At the same time I reorganised the Chorleywood pages and there are now separate pages for the Parish Church, King John's Farm, and Maud Huntsman's painted post cards.

Was "Sydbie" a Hertfordshire painter

2012-01-08T09:12:00.000Z

Sopwell Nunnery, St Albans, by "Sydbie"

In about 1905 a series of six distinctive post cards, painted by "Sydbie" appeared showing historic views of the Barnet area appeared - and that seemed to only mention I could find of him. (A Google image search only shows the post cards I show on my web site.)

Now I have discovered two further post cards, one of Sopwell Nunnery, and the other of the ruined house at Gorhambury which have his signature. They were published in the Pelham series by Boots, the chemists, possibly about 1910.

I am wondering if he (or she) was a Hertfordshire artist, and whether other works by "Sydbie" exists.

Were your ancestors mad in 1911?

2012-01-08T07:00:00.000Z

The 1911 census is now available in its complete form - with the final column, headed infirmity, being visible on the images (available on FindMyPast.co.uk). This means that you can now learn whether any of your ancestors were totally blind, totally deaf, lunatic or imbecile. I decided to see if it would add anything we didn't know to The Patients at Harpenden Hall, Harpenden, 1851-1901 who were still alive in 1911. There were no surprises but in the process I found that Gertrude Anna Otton Halse was probably the G. H. aged 54, born Stoke Newington at London County Council The Manor Asylum at Epsom Surrey in 1911.

Ford of Redbourn - update of an old query

2012-01-07T09:16:00.001Z

In 2001 I answered a question by Geoff asked about Henry James Ford of Redbourn, and Geoff later added some further information. Ten years later Mike has produced an update/correction including information not available in 2001.

James IZZARD of Great Amwell - Press Notices, 1841

2012-01-07T07:00:00.002Z

Joseph Izzard was buried at Great Amwell in 1841, and later in the year the live and dead stock were sold and a notice was published in The Reformer relating to his estate.

Can anyone identify this car?

2012-01-06T07:00:00.000Z

What make of car?

I am currently digitizing the Stagenhoe photographs (see Stagenhoe Park Photographs saved for Posterity). This photograph is the only one in the part of the collection that has been saved which shows a motor car. It was taken in August 1910. Can anyone identify it?

The River Chess at Croxley Green

2012-01-05T07:00:00.000Z

The River Chess, at Croxley Green
A Frith Post Card

Don't overlook the siblings - SORRELL at Cheshunt, early 19th century

2012-01-04T18:51:00.000Z

When Janet tired to follow her ancestral line the problem was that Ann was missing from the probable family household at the time of the 1841 census. In fact the information she wanted was on the familysearch web site (FREE!!!). In my analysis of SORRELL, Cheshunt, early 19th century, I show how, when tracing you main ancestral line, it can be very useful to identify the siblings and what happened to them.

FindMyPast's Hertfordshire proposals for 2012

2012-01-04T07:00:00.000Z

FindMyPast recently announced the following new records are scheduled to be added to their web site in 2012. I don't have details of the Hertfordshire records but will post details on this blog as soon as I know

		Three million crime, courts and convicts records, in partnership with The National Archives
		More local record collections, including ... Hertfordshire
		Electoral rolls 1832-1928, in partnership with the British Library

Would you pay £74.99 for a Birth Certificate?

2012-01-03T11:16:00.000Z

Well some people do - at least for the "express" delivery if they want a replacement birth certificate - and as the "we look official but we really are a scam" web sites often appear at the top online searches perhaps some genealogists have been caught out as well. I have just discovered a Home Office press release which points out that you can get the official express service for £23.40 and the standard cost of a certificate is £9.25.

(Of course some genealogists are happy to pay over £12 extra to subsidize web sites such as Ancestry ...)

Why was Barrack Row, Aldbury given its name?

2012-01-03T10:04:00.000Z

This row of cottages was built early in the 19th century after Ebelthite Farm was demolished as part of the improvements in Aldbury carried out by the Earl of Bridgewater (at Ashridge). The cottages were first called "Slated Row" because they were among the first building erected in the village, using non-local building materials brought along the Grand Junction Canal.

Rita has written to ask why the cottages are now called "Barrack Row" and I look at the Row's history and while I come up with a suggestion please feel free to comment is you have a better idea.

The Birthplace of Pope Adrian IV, at Bedmond

2012-01-02T08:37:00.000Z

Breakspear's Farm, Bedmond, Abbots Langley
Birthplace of Pope Adrian IV

The Reformer - a message from 1841

2012-01-01T09:34:00.000Z

My New Years Resolution is to reform - as a result of buying this old newspaper. ...

In fact what I will be reforming is the appalling state of the newspaper pages on this web site. When I came to post details of this newspaper on the web site I became aware that the web pages for the newspapers, and old news, needed urgent reforming and have put it on a list of things to do in 2012. I have already upgraded the main Newspaper page but more work is needed on the menu and significant changes are needed to the way the Old News archives are handled.

So back to The Reformer. I have already posted a list of the agents who sold the newspaper throughout Hertfordshire, together with the Births, Marriages and Deaths column of this 2 October 1841 issue. Over the next few weeks I will be publishing a number of news stories and a selection of advertisements. from this paper - and intend to ensure there is at least one Old News story a week.

Even the initial short extracts are sufficient to suggest a link between Stephen Austin, who published The Reformer in Hertford, the Herts Advertiser paper (first published in St Albans in 1855), and my ancestor, John Gibbs, who published the Aylesbury News starting in 1836. John Gibbs and Stephen Austin appear to have had similar political views and I am sure must have corresponded.. Hopefully I will have time to follow up this lead in more detail at a later date.

Site activity for the year 2011

2012-01-01T00:17:00.000Z

The most important development during the year has been the moving of the in site blog to a separate blog site . I did it because it allowed me to restructure the old integral "newsletter" in a more modern format and has clearly proved popular as the usage statistics has shown steady growth over the period (868, 1358, 1684 and 2357 page views a month). It allows me to run the newsletter in a more imaginative way, with temporary and fun items, leaving the main site for more serious treatment of the material. The default statistics may be a little limited but has the advantage of providing rapid feedback, helping me to find out what is working best. While one can't track individual users it is clear that quite a lot of the visitors look at the current posts (this counts as one page view) and then explores further, either old blog posts or visiting the main web site.

One fun aspect of the statistics is that it provides details of the visitor's country - and the following have been spotted over the last four months::

Argentina, Australia (316), Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada (239), China, Columbia, Côte d’Ivoire, Czech Republic, Denmark (270), Ecuador, Ethiopia, France, Germany (116), Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Latvia, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, New Zealand (67), Nigeria, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia (295), Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain (102), Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom (3692), United States (687), Vietnam

The main site has been as busy as ever and during 2011 there were 235,720 visits to the web site, a small increase on 2010 when there 230,063 visits. More significantly 64,751 of these visits (2010: 50,859) were repeat visits during the same month. Part of this may be due to the way the new blog works and part to the changes in Google, which may mean that it is better at directing relevant traffic to the site. In addition at the end of the year my 2011 "emails dealt with" mail box contained over 1000 mail items - and this excludes all circular letters and newsletters and the very much larger volume of messages related to monitoring ebay and purchasing postcards, etc, for inclusion on the web site.

Overall I have really spent more time on the site than I can afford and maintenance (and checking everything works smoothly) has tended to be neglected. I also have a significant backlog of new material waiting to be added. One recent improvement to the site will help. If you use a link to a page deep in the site the link will be broken if I move the page as part of a site reorganisation - and parts of the site urgently need restructuring to make it easier to maintain. In the past any broken link resulted in an unfriendly "404" error message - but now such broken links are redirected to a friendly page designed to redirect you to the part of the site you require. During 2012 this will make it possible to restructure many of the place pages so that each place has its dedicated menu.

Finally the collection for the mentally ill in Hertfordshire has been the most successful ever, The final sum donated via the collection web site was £875 towards a target of £1000 - but anther £45 was actually paid into another account by mistake so does not show in the online total, making £920. To this must be added the Gift Aid refund for donations by U.K. taxpayers - and several people asked if they could make a donation (in various currencies) to their local mental health charity. So in effect the target was reached.

Thank You

to all who have donated - and for the rest of you the 2012 collection box is

http://www.everyclick.com/hertsgenealogy2012

Target £1200

A Sampler made by my Great Great Grandmother

2011-12-31T07:30:00.000Z

The Sampler made in 1806 by Frances Finch, of Swaffham, Norfolk

205 Years ago my Great Great Grandmother was nine years old - and hard at work with needle and. thread to produce a lovely sampler. The colours have faded a bit but it shows a high degree of skill. I recently found it in a cupboard, where it was stored to keep the light off it, and it reminded me that I had somewhat overlooked my own ancestors recently. So I have posted a short biography of Frances Reynolds, nee Finch, and will be making a New Years resolution to try and produce a page on an additional ancestor at leat once a month during 2012.

Some Xmas Holiday quickies

2011-12-30T11:00:00.000Z

Over the Christmas period I have been involved in various social activities - including cooking the Christmas Dinner - and this is really a summary of some of the recent activities relating to my web site which did not justify a blog page in their own right. It also includes older less urgent queries which needed tidying up before the end of the year.

Alan wrote asking if I had succeeded in identifying the location of Britons Camp, St Albans, and says he has some military pictures that might be relevant to this web site.
Ann has added a further note about William Walby - and links his aunt to the Cyclist's Rest at Essendon.
Anthony came up with another patient at Harpenden Hall, Elizabeth Wilhelmina Galliers Swinton, and I have also made some minor edits.
Barney sends me his new email address - he is quoted on one of the earliest pages on the web site - The Dangers of Internet Genealogy and also kindly provided a 1855 photograph of Gaddesden Place.
Cindy's William Burchmore ancestor lived in Hertfordshire at about the same time as my William Burchmore acnestor, but they are two different people. I gave her some general advice about her problem and suggested some general topics on my site which might help
Gary (from HALS) wrote to say he was researching Private Hertfordshire Mental Asylums for the chapter of a book - and added the surnames of some patients mentioned as being at Harpenden Hall. I forwarded the email to Antony - who used the information to provide details of two more patients.- Mary Debary and Gayford Manning Bare.
Gerard asked about the software I used to edit photographs such as the Fire Engines at St Edmunds College - The main tool was the "histogram Equalize" tool in Paint Shop Pro.
I contacted Janet about a possible article for the Walkern History Society web site.
Jean wrote to say how she had been distressed by visiting a relative at one of the long stay hospitals in the St Albans area, a few years ago. [Not for publication as it involved patients still living.]
John has some comparatively modern memories of Ardeley Bury and rather than add them to the existing page on this site I suggested he might consider posting them on Hertfordshire Memories.
I contacted Lottie about the possible purchase of more Stagenhoe photographs.
I contacted Peter about historic material being published in the Potten End & Nettleden Church Newsletter
Phil has recently acquired a draft text by Edward Lawrence, entitled "A Hertfordshire Man Remembers." Edward was born in 1902, possibly at Little Amwell and the draft was written in the early 1960s. Phil is considering transcribing it to make the text more widely available, but wanted to know if it had already been published. I know of nothing and suggested that he contacts HALS.
Stephen contacted me via Genes Reunited about a Phipson couple who married in Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire, in 1668 who happens to be a very distant cousin of my wife. In 1988 I published a computer produced book - A Phipson One Name Study - which is now out of print - and I have suggested that the tries to see a copy through his nearest LDS Family History Centre. An exchange of emails shows he is in touch with someone who is more up to date on the family than I am.
Tom's relative may have died in Hill End Hospital in 1908 and if he is lucky the records may be at HALS.
A message was sent to the Essendon Parish Council web site to ask them to update their link to this site.

Why didn't Jane Philbey pay William for work done?

2011-12-29T14:45:00.000Z

Folio 81, W. Brown's Accounts

William Brown's account book (folio 81) shows that while he staked out land for sale, Jean Philbey of the Green Man public house in Tring appears not to have paid him. This is one of the interesting facts that emerged when Colin asked about Philbey, Tring, 1840-1864. It also emerges that the Mrs Jean Tompkins and Mrs Jane Philbey mentioned in TOMPKINS, Tring, late 18th/early 19th Century are one and the same person and owned land in Gravelly - where many houses were built in the mid 19th century.

[It is propose to input more of William Brown's accounts in 2012, with analysis of selected pages.]

Farming at Libury Hall, Little Munden

2011-12-29T07:00:00.000Z

A very nice discovery - a postcard of bringing in the harvest at Libury Hall

Biographies of Preston WW1 Soldiers

2011-12-28T12:51:00.001Z

Philip has alerted me to the fact that on the Preston site there are biographies, often with photographs, of the soldiers from Preston who died or survived the First World War.He added that his uncle, Ernest Wray was the first man from Preston to die on the battlefield. I have added a link on my Preston page..

The Essendon Pages have been updated

2011-12-28T10:44:00.001Z

The Essendon pages have been upgraded as part of the plan to improve the layout of small town and village pages, with the inclusion of a dedicated menu, and extra external links. This will make it easier to slot in new material as it becomes available.

Wigginton War Memorial & Revised Village pages

2011-12-28T07:00:00.000Z

When posting pictures of Wigginton's War Memorial I decided to upgrade the Village pages by adding a proper menu, adding some modern photographs of St Bartholomew's Church and linking in the pages on Champneys and the Cow Roast. Some additional external links have also been added.

St Bartholomew's Church

Wigginton War Memorial

Other War Memorial Pictures

H V Leménager - An early Hertfordshire Photographer

2011-12-27T12:00:00.000Z

Henri Victor Lemenager (1822-1912) was born in Paris, but came to Bushey to teach French in a small private school, married and started a family. The date of his earliest family is not known but by 1866 he was described as a photographer In 1870 he provided photographic illustrations for a book on Rickmansworth, and by 1872 had moved to 16 High Street, Watford. However in 1887 he emigrated to the United States.

I illustrate the biography with four carte de visite, each mounted on a different printed card and I am looking for more information to put the backs into date order.

A Flaming Boxing Day Surprise.

2011-12-26T07:30:00.000Z

WARE Hertfordshire postmark 1907 on a faded interesting RP but untitled

The above advert appeared on ebay just before Christmas. Just because the card was posted in Ware doesn't mean that the picture was local to the Ware area or even from Hertfordshire. While the RP (real photograph) was very faded the architecture was clear and there appeared to be some people milling around. I thought it might make a possible mystery photograph for this web site - as some of you might recognise the building. So I put in a bid and won it for less than £2 (including postage).

The card arrived with the last batch of Christmas cards before the holiday. During a break in activities I slipped back to the computer to give it a quick scan - and put the digital image through the Paint Shop treatment.

And I became really excited when I discovered what the people were looking at ...

To find out what I found look below the fold.

The Ware and Hertford Steamer Fire Engines at St Edmunds College, Standon, near Ware
In fact the card was titled but the title was so faded it wasn't visible before enhancement.

For larger images see Fire at St Edumnds College, Standon , near Ware

It was a real Aylesbury Duck ...

2011-12-25T23:07:00.001Z

9.30 on Christmas Day

13.00 on Christmas Day

14.00 on Christmas Day

Menu: Roast Aylesbury Duck with Carrots, Brussels Sprouts with Sweet Chestnuts, Red Cabbage with Apple, Asparagus Tips, Onion, Roast Parsnip, Roast Potatoes, Pigs in a Blanket, Chestnut Stuffing, my own special Orange Sauce, and Gravy made from the Duck Giblets. The slices of Orange were a last minute addition using fruit already in the kitchen.

100 years ago Aylesbury was renown for its ducks - and I am sure that my Aylesbury ancestors would have often eaten them. Now there is only one farm which still produces this lovely bird. On Friday we picked up our bird from a nearby village shop and this morning my wife and her sister set off to church leaving me to do all the cooking - in a small kitchen where I had never cooked before. Much to my surprise I got everything timed to perfection and the only problems were that the stuffing stuck to the tray and we forgot the onion - which had been cooked inside the duck.

Christmas Day and History

2011-12-25T01:00:00.000Z

Whatever you believe, contemporary Roman accounts tell us that if the story in the Bible is true in its reference to Herod, we can be certain that Jesus was not born exactly 2011 years ago today. What billions of people celebrate as the birth of Christ is a nominal date chosen to represent a historically important event where there is insufficient evidence for precision.

So, whether you agree with Linus or not, enjoy the day in the way that you personally feel is the most relevant to your beliefs. Remember, when the celebrations are over, and you return to family history, that you cannot expect to find reliable records taking your ancestry all the way back to Adam. Family History researchis a wonderful way to relax - as long as you don't get distressed when your research is blocked because no precise records exist. Remember that part of the fun is that history is full of uncertainty, and there are often different ways of interpreting the material that has survived.

So Happy Christmas to you all