The Anchor Public House, Western Road, Tring, in 2015

This building was built before 1841 as part of the development of the West End of Tring and is recorded as being occupied by the Barber family until about 1895. It was definitely a beer house in 1851, but its position on the "new" Aylesbury Road (now Western Road) meant it was in a good position to attract passing travelers and it may well have been a beer house from when it was constructed.

Subsequent publicans prior to the 2nd World War were William Wells, Mrs Mary Wells, William Andrews and Samuel John Nightingale. The brewers have been John Holland of Wendover, Rodwell of Tring, Benskin of Watford, Ind Coope and Greene King.

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Press Reports of Award of Victoria Cross to Edward Barber of Tring

 > > > Detailed Press Reports

Edward Barber, V.C., is killed - and Tring News on 17/4/1915

Extracts from the Bucks Herald of 17th April, 1915

Edited from British Newspaper Archive
Previous week ~~~~ Tring News Index ~~~~ Next Week

News has reached Tring of the deaths of Edward Barber, V.C., and Frank Marcham. Lieut.-General Sir Edward Hutton's letter about is leaving the 21st Division is published, and fifteen soldiers are confirmed by the Bishop of St Albans. Arthur Macdonald writes to the paper on the army's need for more sand-bags and William Mead, of Tring Flour Mill, agrees to be a collecting point.  At Tring Park Cricket Club's AGM it was said they would be having a reduced fixture list and would not be employing any permanent ground staff - and would reduce the subscription accordingly. It was agreed that the rents paid by the Tring Tennis and Bowling clubs would be reduced if they also reduced their subscriptions. The Easter festival normally held by the Church Girls' Union had been cancelled due to the War.  At the Easter Vestry Meeting the Vicar, Rev. H. Francis mentioned with pride the towns role it the war, with 298 being on active service, of which 79 had been members of the Church Lads' Brigade, with 5 having been Boy Scouts. At the National level local farmers may well have been unhappy about the Government's arrangements for buying hay. The death of Lord Rothschild, reported two weeks earlier, featured in a number of reports. He had been the president of the Tring Agricultural Society and there were many tributes at the meeting of their committee. He had actively helped the Tring Park Cricket Club, although his son Walter was the club president. Hew was also briefly mentioned in the vicar's report given at the Vestry Meeting. However much of the long report at this meeting provides an interesting review of the town during the previous year. Other news included the wedding at Wigginton of Miss Petronella Trickey of Champneys (the home of Mr Alexander Marc) and Mr, Thomas J. N. Perkins, headmaster of Helensburgh School, the high prices at William Brown's fat stock sale, and William Rodwell having been prosecuted for riding a motor bkie and side car with inadequate lights. Perhaps because of the other news there was less church news than usual. Surnames mentioned this week:  Bagnall Bailey Baker Baldwin Barber Barton Bathurst Bedford Beech Bishop Brackley Bright Brown Bull Burnham Butcher Carr Carter Clarke Clissold Coker Cole Cox Crossland Dawe De Fraine Dickens Elliman Fells Finch Flowers Forestier-Walker Fountaine Francis Fulks Fulley, Gibbs Grange Gregory Hayes Heading Hedges Hardern Horwood Houchen Howe Huckvale Hull Hutton Jenney Kidstone Kingham Kirk Lepper Macdonald Marc Marcham Mash Mathews Mead Miller Newman Newton Pearce Perkins Pond Poulton Pratt Reeve Rodwell Rothschild Rowe Smeathman Smith Steadman Trickey Turner Tyler Vaisey Waterton Williams

Month End Report (May 2014)

A busier month than I had planned - in part because of a lot of extra email-driven activity especially early in the month - and while my current plan is to post about 15 times a month I somehow managed 26!

I am tweeting @HertsGenealogy to notify people when I post something new and  currently have 49 followers - and quite a few of my tweets have been retweeted - definitely bringing in some extra traffic to the Newsletter and main web site. However, as the visitor from the Ukraine has highlighted, quite a lot of traffic is generated by criminals and I have taken a close look and estimate that perhaps a third of the traffic shown in the graph does not involve a real human viewing the blog. I suspect that some of the most "popular posts" on the Newsletter have only been there for week after week because of this unwanted computer generated activity. There is no way of flagging that an active post should not be included in the "popular list" and I have temporally withdrawn several "top posts" so that other posts have a chance to work their way to the top of the list. As the withdrawn information is also on the main site users can still find it if they want it.

Background Activities Include

Sally's family tree included Shadrach, Meshack and Abendigo and she wondered how common these names were or if her Day relatives from Harpenden and Hitchin were related to the similarly named Barber brothers from Tring. I replied: The names Shadrach, Meshack and Abendigo were unusual in the general population - but Old Testament names were used by some groups of non-conformists. It is very likely that you Day ancestors from Harpenden and Hitchin belonged to the same religious sect as the Barber family of Tring, and there may be a common link via a minister or a particular chapel.  In such families non-conformists (before 1837) would have had to marry in a parish church, and might sometimes be buried in the parish churchyard (possibly in an area separate from Church of England burials). However their children are very unlikely to have been recorded in the parish registers and many non-conformist baptism records are lost. This can make tracing their families very difficult!

Robert has brought the information on the Pubs in London Colney up to date.

Jon has provided additional information of Henry Jeffries of St Albans.

A check showed that a number of links were missing and broken. These have been corrected and information relating to the following pages should now be easier to find:

 Thomas Meadow's Mausoleum, Watford

Starkey Railway Family of Watford

St Albans Union

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego at Tring 200 years ago

Help Desk

Family Events

Two hundred years ago Tring was a hot-bed of non-conformity, which has the unfortunate effect that there are no birth or baptism records for many children. However most people still got married at the parish church before 1837 and were buried in the churchyard - as most chapels did not have their own burial grounds. I was looking for a suitable test problem to try out the Hertfordshire registers that are now available on FindMyPast and a comment by Melvyn Barber gave me just what I was looking for.

Tring

There is no doubt that his great great great grandfather, Thomas Barber, was born in Tring around 1828, but  he was born before civil registration (1837) and there is no surviving evidence of his parents. Looking at the marriage records for Tring - and the early census returns revealed an interesting family. It is not clear who the couple were but they named their sons Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, after the three people that God is said to have saved from the fiery furnace. The matter is complicated by the fact that Thomas's father, Meshach died before the 1841 census and his wife remarried, but information from post-1837 marriages name the father, and a single "emergency" baptism of a new-born child who died within days, provided further evidence.  For the full story see BARBER, Tring, early 19th century.

Do you recognise this Edmund Barber?

Paul has recently acquired a beautiful child's leather bound clasped common prayer book. Inside the front cover the name Annie M Barber. On the inside fly sheet it is inscribed "Annie M Barber from your brother Edmund, June 10th 1869" and he wants to return it to the right Barber family - if he can identify them.

There was an Edmund Barber in Tring (see Barber, Tring, 19th century) but unfortunately not the right one, and they may not have come from Hertfordshire.. If you think you can help identify this Edmund and Annie M Barber let Paul know by commenting below.