Who was "Sydbie" - Another St Albans card has turned up

Sydbie is a water colour artist, identity unknown, whose "Sydbie Series" post cards are easily recognised because of their very distinctive backs.

There appears to have been a set of six: views of historic features in the Barnet area issued in about 1905.

• Hadley High Stone
• The Old Oak, Hadley
• Latimer's Elm, Hadley Woods
• Ye Old Psychic Well, Barnet
• The Old Red Lion from Barnet Hill
• Windmill (Barnet Gate)

I have been looking for any other cards for years and found that he painted two cards of St Albans published by Boots the Chemists in the Pelham Series. These showed Gorhambury Ruins and Sopwell Nunnery. 

Much to my surprise a few days ago I found another "Sydbie Series" card - showing St Albans Abbey - with a more conventional back. So are there more water colour views by him in existence - perhaps of St Albans. Let me know if you know of any.

Click here to see all his post cards.

St Rohan's School, Hadley Wood - Buchanan PC

I have added details of St Ronan's School, Hadley Wood - The view of the School is yet another post card by P. A. Buchanan.

I have also added details of another Buchanan post card, of Christ's Hospital, Hertford. Thank to Anthony for the information.

Some Middlesex Parish Registers - and why you should check old family trees

Earlier this year I reported that FindMyPast were planning to computerize some Hertfordshire Parish Registers. There is not sign of them yet but they have just announced that a number of Middlesex registers are now available online, and the following could be of interest to any of you who are researching across the county boundary.

Edmonton, Frien Barnet, Harefield, Little Stanmore, Monken Hadley

I don't have any relatives in these parishes but over 30 years ago I researched the Phipson family in depth. To test the facility I decided to see if any of them were recorded in any of the Middlesex registers that are now online. I found four children of a Joseph and Mary Phipson who were baptised at St James, Picadilly, between 1706 and 1718 that I had not known about. In addition a Sarah, daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Phipson was baptised at St Martin in the Fields in 1735, and I had picked this one up in my original researches in the Society of Genealogists' Library using a microfiche of the International Genealogical Index (IGI). If Sarah's father is the Thomas baptised  in 1718 at St James my original family tree is wrong!  A peek at the Burials also suggests errors.

There is a lesson here. Old family trees were researched at a time when to get any information at all you had to tramp around records offices (and before that individual churches) and very little of the material was indexed.  It was therefore very easy to miss records, especially when your ancestors moved about so you didn't know which were the relevant parishes - and so errors could easily creep in. Modern research tools make it far easier to track people down - and to identify the errors in earlier research. So if you cone across an old family tree the first thing you should do is to look at the modern online indexes and documents to see if it is correct. 

A Post Card with surprising Football and Princely Connections

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.

Across the County boundaries around Barnet

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.