Update of Pictures on Westmill (near Buntingford)

Following a query about this small village I have now added two new post card images showing the village of Westmill n the early part of the 20th century. In addition all post card images expand to 1024 pixels wide (or high) if you click on the small image on the village page.

If your ancestor couldn't write, records may be wrong

Help Desk

Braughing

When Margaret's ancestor Thomas Bradshaw (born c 1811) went to Australia in 1855 his parents were described as James and Sarah. Unfortunately online records failed to produce a suitable couple in the Braughing area of Hertfordshire. However Thomas Bradshaw couldn't read and write, so when he was asked for his parent's name he naturally gave the name of the woman he called mother - although she was actually his step mother! The matter in complicated because when one investigates the marriage between James Bradshaw and his first wife, Susanna, there is a ten year gap in child baptisms - including Thomas - probably because they were non-conformists and the relevant registers have not survived.

FULL DETAILS

Month End Report for January 2014

On the technical side everything went smoothly in January. The web site had 23,262 visitors in the month, about average compared with the previous four years. The Newsletter had 27 new posts and 6,420 page views - which works out at just over 210  page views a day. Computer changes at this end will mean, in the short term, that the site will continue to be updated on Frontpage under Windows XP, while non-genealogy work is being moved onto a new system running Windows 8. It has been decided to resume posting a one line summary of future posts on twitter @HertsGenealogy to alert more people to future updates.

Help Desk

The new wording of the "Ask Chris" page I introduced in 2013 is working. I still get people who like sending queries without stopping to look to see if their question is relevant to the web site. However I now have a simple and effective reply which only takes me a minute or two - as all I need to do is to send them a copy of the letter they have already seen with the relevant sentences highlighted. One I had this month gave me a laugh as (if I took it literally) I was being asked about someone with a Norman French name whose only connection with Hertfordshire was that they were living in the United States in the 12th century!

Book Reviews

Football

       More typical is one I got who wanted a copy of a picture which was part of a photo-montage on the cover of the book "100 Years - A History of Schools Football in St Albans." What appears to have happened is that they had a copy of the book and wanted to contact the authors. Of course a trivial Google search would have shown them one was still a school teacher in St Albans. However as soon as they found a review of the book they decided to ask the reviewer, rather than continuing the search for the author!
       But of course I also get many very useful messages. For example :

Watford

An anonymous comment about the Watford photographer called Lemenager, who went to the United States in 1887, has alerted me to the fate of some of his family, who died in a fire in a theatre in Chicago in 1903.
      My post about Joseph Hunt who was involved in the Weare Murder has resulted in Lesley writing to say the Hunt family came from Calcutta (and by implication had no connection with Hertfordshire beyond the murder) and I have passed the information on to Francis.

Post Cards

Dates of posting are not always a good guide to the date of publication for a postcard. During the month a card of Westmill, posted in 1980 was sold on ebay. The card had been published  by R H Clark of Royston circa 1920, and the shop (now R.H.Clarke & Son)  was obviously using up old stock to send messages to customers.
     I have corrected a couple of transcription errors on the cards kindly provided by Peter of the London Scottish at North Mimms.

St Michaels, by Sydbie

     Another post card has turned up by the artist "Sydbie", this one showing the ford over the River Ver at St Michaels, but unfortunately we still do not know who he was.

St Michaels & All Saints, Watford

      I have posted a 1931 Valentine post card of St Michael's, Watford, showing it after the tower was built - the only problem is that the angle of the shot means that only the top few feet of the tower can be seen!
     Edward is researching the artist Charles Essenhigh Corke (1852-1922) and is interested in the cards of Caldecote Towers, Aldenham. If anyone has copies of these cards and can provide a posting date that would be very helpful.
      In the background I have re-organised my Hertfordshire postcard collection so that virtually all the cards are filed under the relevant place names but I still need to go through the nine shoe boxes full, looking at each place - catching up on the backlog of cards which I want to post online, weeding out the duplicates, etc. In the case of some of the rarest cards I am looking into the possibility of donating them to an official archive. The real problem is that I have not been able to resist scanning ebay for cards and other items which could make a contribution to this site. This takes over half and hour a day and my New Year resolution to cut back on purchases has totally collapsed - so the queue of items waiting to appear on the web site is now longer than ever. My plans to sell unwanted items on ebay to pay for the purchases has not worked because I haven't had time to put items up for sale - and I regret to say that The London Gunners come to Town is finally "out of print" so there will be no more income from that source.
     I have also spent some time on other, behind the scenes correspondence, relating to subjects such as arbele trees (no new information yet), online archives of a local village newsletter, exhibits for an exhibition relating to Sandridge900, and items which have come up for sale on ebay which should really be in a publicly accessible archive - but which I cannot afford to "rescue". I have also sent off a cheque to rejoin the SAHAAS (St Albans and Hertfordshire Architecture and Archaeology Society) as so much of what I do relates to the area around St Albans.

Trapped by the Box

     One area where one of my New Years Resolution appears to be working is that I have been much more active on my other blog, Trapped by the Box, and some research I am doing related to the evolution of human intelligence.
      This all means that some of the things I had hoped to do, such as more work on William Brown's account book and revamping the military pages in time for the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, has not been done. I have also not been getting as much Rural Relaxation as I need in order to keep fit - although the exceptionally wet weather we have been having is my excuse,
       To end on a lighter note - you will have noticed that my interest in Limericks has been rekindled - and I have actually entered a limerick competition - so let me end on a light note, the first line being the given line in the competition.

A man was, alas, in the red
Having poured some paint over his head.
"So what can I do,
I intended shampoo,
And I wanted my hair clean instead."

Charles Lamb and Hertfordshire

Charles Lamb in 1825

Books on
Hertfordshire

Charles Lamb, who with his sister Mary, wrote Lamb's Tales from Shakespere had many connections with Hertfordshire. The Hitchin historian, Reginald Hine, wrote an very readable book Charles Lamb and His Hertfordshire which includes plates and many line drawings - a significant number being views of Hertfordshire. I have added a sample text and a brief review of the book, and also details of Button Snap, Cherry Green, Westmill, near Buntingford, where he lived for a time.

The book was first published in 1949, and republished in 1973 - so there a plenty of secondhand copies available online at reasonable prices.

[I have used the opportunity of this review to update the pages on Westmill (including details of the farm at Wakeley) and Reginald Hine.

A Buntingford Butcher sells cheap meat ...

On 22nd December, 1907 Arthur Jackson, a family butcher of Church Street, Buntingford, supplied Mr. Smith with the following items.

1 lb 11 oz      Pork      1s 1d

 1lb 8 oz    Sausages    1s

6 lb 11 oz   leg mutton   5s 7d

Total    7s 8d

The mutton works out (in modern measurements and currency) at about 10p a kilo

In fact Arthur was just one of three brothers who were butchers in Buntingford - the sons of Henry Jackson, who was the landlord of the Sword in Hand, Westmill. For more information see JACKSON, Butchers, Buntingford