Innholdsfortegnelse for Special 2017 i Who Do You Think You Are?

Well, my secret is out, I’m a bit of a Jane Austen nut (and not because of Colin Firth’s wet shirt, although that didn’t do any harm). Many of us will be familiar with her books or screen adaptations and I wanted to take the opportunity of the 200th anniversary of her death to turn the spotlight on our Regency era ancestors. I hope this issue will demonstrate that getting back to the 18th century is not only possible, it is rich with research opportunities. Even if you only manage to piece together the bare bones of your family in the 1700s, putting them into historical context and understanding the social mores of the time will help bring your research to life Talking of bringing research to life, we are…

‘Every woman could help and have a role to play in the defeat of Hitler’ Women volunteers’ wartime diaries go online The Royal Voluntary Service has made thousands of pages of Women’s Voluntary Service monthly reports available for free Over 30,000 pages of diaries by members of the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) are available to view for the first time. To coincide with the unveiling of an English Heritage Blue Plaque for the charity’s founder, Stella Reading, Royal Voluntary Service (RVS) has released 31,401 pages of monthly narrative reports from local WVS sections.The diaries date from 1938-1942 and cover more than 1,300 different cities, towns and villages across Great Britain. The diaries were inscribed on the UNESCO UK Memory of the World register in 2010 as one of the most…

42 ethnic regions are now covered in myheritage.com’s DNA test including Baltic, Balkan, Japanese and Kenyan 9,326 new records have been added to the Essex Burial Index 1530-1950 on findmypast.co.uk £3,000 grant is available from businessarchives council.org.uk to catalogue business archives relating to the arts, with applications due by 27 July 24,838 new records from County Kildare in Ireland, including baptisms, marriages, deaths and graveyard inscriptions, have been added to kildare.roots ireland.ie 20,000,000 newspaper pages have now been added to britishnewspaper archive.co.uk…

MAIDEN NAME It’s rare to find the mother’s maiden name in a baptism entry at this time. Her father’s occupation and location is there too. DATES Date of birth and date of baptism are both given. SIBLINGS Gives the number of children born to date, making it easier to trace siblings and estimate dates of birth for any missing from the registers. PAUPERS Paupers were exempt and others avoided tax by not having their child baptised. Look out for a surge of late baptisms after 1794. DUTIES Duty payable for baptisms, marriages or burials; in force 1784-1794. Similar fees were payable from 1695 to 1706. SOLDIERS These soldiers appear to have been given an exemption from payment of the fee. PARENTS’ ORIGINS Soldiers are always difficult to pin down. It…

CHARLES DANCE He may have played kings, but the actor wants to reconnect with his humble origins MOST FAMOUS FOR The 14th series of Who Do You Think You Are? kicks off on Thursday 6 July with an episode featuring actor Charles Dance. Originally trained as a graphic designer, the star’s big break came in the 1984 series The Jewel of the Crown, when he won widespread acclaim for his performance as the dashing Sergeant Guy Perron. Since then Charles has made a name for himself by playing ruthless villains and stuffy aristocrats, including the tyrannous Tywin Lannister in HBO fantasy epic Game of Thrones and Lord Stockbridge in Oscar-winning drama Gosford Park. Other notable credits to the star’s name include Alistair Denniston in The Imitation Game and even a…

LIVES OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR  livesofthefirstworld war.org This digital memorial set up by the Imperial War Museums aims to remember those who served Britain and the Commonwealth during the First World War. The database has been populated using names from medal index cards and other sources and IWM encourages visitors to add their own stories and images. It is free to visit the site and add details to an entry but you can also subscribe (£50 a year or £6 for a month) to gain access to millions of military records supplied by findmypast.co.uk as well as the option to set up or join a ‘community’. EVERY MAN REMEMBERED  everymanremembered.org This Royal British Legion memorial project was established to commemorate the 1.1 million British and Commonwealth service men and women…

HOSPITAL WAR DIARIES Held at The National Archives (TNA), these accounts give fascinating detail about daily routine, operations and special events. Unlike regimental, divisional and battalion/brigade diaries, they contain the names of individuals of all ranks relating to the RAMC, but also those who had died. Each day, the number of men admitted to the hospital was recorded and those who died were named, plus they give other information such as admission times and causes of death. Bob found Leonard in the diary for No 6 General Hospital in Rouen. HOSPITAL RECORDS ONLINE Forces War Records (forces-war-records.co.ukforces-war-records.co.uk) has transcribed over one million WW1 Field Ambulance records held at TNA. NEW YORK TIMES The New York Times reported extensively on daily events at the front. Its archives can be accessed via…

National Service at RAF Coltishall bit.ly/2rIjL2y I’m trying to identify two of the men in these photos who, together with me, Eric Restall (pictured right in the top photo) and Mike Christmas (pictured right in the bottom photo) were based at RAF Coltishall for our National Service from 1952-1954, working out of Neatishead. The photos were taken on a Norfolk beach. My service number was 2568074. ERPR Robert William Mason Burton bit.ly/2s0p0NZ My great great grandmother, Sarah Maria Burton, gave birth to an illegitimate son, Robert William Mason Burton, on 6 March 1876 at 3 South Street, Colchester. Four years later she married my great great grandfather Charles Perry on 15 February 1880 at St Giles Church. In the 1881 census, Sarah Maria, Charles, and their daughter Elizabeth Mary (aged…

“The Find a Will website at www.gov.uk/search-will-probate is free. It gives access not only to the complete index of wills proved in England and Wales from 1858 onwards, but also the accompanying probate registry entries. Each entry will supply you with important information about your ancestor: date of death, value of the estate and, up to 1968, details of occupations, addresses and names of executors (often relatives). Similarly included, are grants of administration to next-of-kin or other third parties. These may have been issued where the deceased left no will or if the executors named in a will had died by the time the will came to be proved. You can also search the Find a Will website for wills of soldiers who died while on active service in the…

Joining date The day and month of the seaman’s entry into the ship’s crew and then the year (1803). Where from This can mean various things, such as transferred from another ship or taken by the press gang. Here, Thomas Coachman came from the Fox cutter. First column ‘Bounty paid’ Although the heading is not clear, this column lists the money paid to the men who volunteered (or were pressed to volunteer). Place of birth Usually the nearest town and county are given, but outside Britain only a single name. John Pocking was from Grenada. Name In some muster books, as here, the date of any promotion is given, as well as the person’s name. Age The age given by the man when joining the crew. Not everyone knew their…

BOOKS • Tracing Your Naval Ancestors by Simon Fowler (Pen & Sword, 2011) Essential advice for genealogists. • Naval Records for Genealogists by NAM Rodger (HMSO, 1988) A guide to records in the public record office (TNA). • Jane Austen and the Navy by Brian Southam (National Maritime Museum, 2005) Useful background in relation to the Austens. • Ships of the Royal Navy by JJ Colledge, revised by B Warlow (Greenhill Books, 2003) Indispensable guide to navy ships. WEBSITES • Ships of the Old Navy bit.ly/ageofnelson Provides detail on many ships. • National Museum of the Royal Navy (Portsmouth) bit.ly/NMRNresearch This has links to useful websites. • The National Maritime Museum (and Caird Library) bit.ly/RNtracing Has guides to tracing naval kin. • Finding naval officers bit.ly/RNofficers • Tracing the career…

The main professions involved in the law in the 18th and 19th centuries were the ‘lower branch’ of attorneys and solicitors and the ‘upper branch’ of barristers (or ‘advocates’ in Scotland). Attorneys and solicitors had a broad workload while barristers specialised in particular areas of law. Both tended to be drawn from the educated classes, but barristers were the legal elite. Figures on the number of practising lawyers are unreliable but, in 1800, there were estimated to be 800 barristers to approximately 5,000 attorneys in England. ‘Elizabeth Bennet’s uncle is a mere country attorney, which does not improve her chances as a good marriage prospect!’ The lower branch In a broad sense, lawyers have existed for as long as there has been a need to guide people through the complexities…

WEBSITES • Law Society – Research Guide 15 lawsociety.org.uk A guide to how to trace past solicitors and law firms in England and Wales. • Libraries of the Inns of Court innertemple.org.uk/history/ the-archives Each Inn of Court has its own library. This link is to the Inner Temple’s archives. • National Archives Research Guides – ‘Lawyers’ and ‘Lawyers: further research’ nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/ research-guides Detailed guides to available sources, especially for the lower branch. • Society of Genealogists sog.org.uk/search-records Various indexes and materials for both branches. • Ancestry.co.uk search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=2380 Articles of Clerkship, 1756-1874 is a database of men apprenticed to attorneys. BOOKS • My Ancestor was a Lawyer by Brian Brooks and Mark Herber (2006 reprinted 2008) • Tracing Your Legal Ancestors by Stephen Wade (2010)…

The death of one of Britain’s greatest ever novelists went all but unnoticed by everyone except Jane Austen’s immediate family. The waspish maiden aunt, who died on 18 July 1817 at the age of 41, had been suffering for a year from nausea, diarrhoea, muscle weakness and fatigue. She had only in recent years been in a position to concentrate exclusively on writing and had gained modest success. Jane Austen was born 16 December 1775 in Steventon Rectory in Hampshire where her father, George, was vicar of the parish church. She was the younger of two girls, of eight children. Their father came from an old and respected family, but now he had the ‘living’ of the parish: a small sum on which to bring up a gentleman’s family. The…

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Children in the First World War by Mike Brown Amberley, 64 pages, £8.99 As a child of parents who were children of the First World War, this book was appealing. There is a wealth of detail in the descriptions of little-known facts. I was amazed to read about government inspectors visiting schools to encourage children to eat less to help the war effort! The appointment of the Food Controller, meat free and potato free days were news to me. I enjoyed learning about ‘hokey pokey’ ice creams, ‘penny licks’ and ‘GR bread’. Many of the examples of life described by Mike Brown reflected the stories that my parents had told me of their childhood. They too foraged for food in the hedgerows, shared shoes with siblings, wore cut-me-down clothes, knitted…

Back To Work: Confectioners July/summer (TBC) BBC TWO Today, we take it for granted that we can have a sweet treat whenever we wish, but it wasn’t always thus. Go back to the Tudor and Stuart eras, and sugar was a luxury, a preserve of the rich. How did this change come about? It’s a question explored in a new three-part living history series that finds four modern confectioners recreating recipes from the past. Overseeing their efforts and offering interesting context are historian Dr Annie Gray (Victorian Bakers) and social historian Emma Dabiri (Back In Time For Brixton). The first show sees the quartet working as servants at Haddon Hall in Derbyshire. In the 16th and 17th centuries, we learn, sugar was imported from the Islamic world, and from the…

Council to mark war graves in controversial cemetery development Southwark Council has promised to work with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to mark 48 of Camberwell Old Cemetery’s 131 unmarked graves of First World War personnel, which are in an area where new burial plots are planned. The council said it would not build directly on the graves and they would either receive a headstone or be added to the cemetery’s war memorials. A local group, Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries, is campaigning against the development. TheGenealogist adds over 4 million 1920s passenger lists Over four and a half million records of sea voyages in the 1920s are now available to search on thegenealogist.co.uk. The collection includes indexes and images of passenger lists for voyages from UK ports between 1920 and…

‘Good looks, an optional extra; large bank balance and steady income, absolutely essential’ Sense and social satire Austen’s keen observations can tell us much about our well-to-do kin, Alan Crosby writes Almost forgotten in the mid-Victorian period when her books were hardly read, Jane Austen is now a global phenomenon and a multi-billion pound business. People love her novels for all sorts of reasons – the romance, the wit, the sparkling observation, the interaction of the characters. But as family and local historians we can also read them as a historical source; a way of understanding the world at least some of our ancestors lived in two hundred or more years ago. That’s because Jane was such an acute observer of society: we think of her work as ‘period drama’,…

LONDON LIVES 1690-1800  www.londonlives.org Has over three million names from London and beyond including Old Bailey Proceedings, workhouse records, hospital, guild and coroners’ records. SCOTLAND’S PLACES  scotlandsplaces.gov.uk Free access to Land Tax or Valuation Rolls, and records of other taxes such as Window Tax, Male and Female Servants’ Tax and Carriage Tax. FREEREG  freereg.org.uk Allows searches for baptisms, marriages and burials from UK parish registers, nonconformist registers and some other sources (also try Online Parish Clerks). THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES  llgc.org.uk/en/discover/nlw-resources/wills The NLW provides free to read images of Welsh wills for all dioceses in the country. THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND  registers.nli.ie Free access to Catholic registers for all of Ireland. Not all date back to the 18th century but some, including Dublin, start in 1740. LOCATING LONDON’S…

THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES (TNA)  nationalarchives.gov.uk Although most First World War records for British combatants are held here at Kew, many of the main records have now been digitised and can be found online either on TNA’s website or via a commercial partner. Check the First World War research guides on TNA’s website to find out what can be found where. IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM SOUND ARCHIVE  iwm.org.uk/collections/sound The Imperial War Museum Sound Archive has been collecting the voices of veterans since 1972. The First World War interviews vary in length from a few minutes to 22 hours. These interviews have now been digitised and are available on the IWM website. ANCESTRY  ancestry.co.uk As well as service records and medal index cards, this subscription site has a large number of war diaries,…

It’s tempting to assume that Birch Hill is where she spent the end of her life I can’t find a death record for my great grandmother We help Heather Chapman track down what happened to her mother’s grandmother Q I can’t find a death record for my maternal great grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Phythian (née Alexander). She was born in 1877 in Wardleworth, Rochdale and was married to Thomas Phythian who died in 1920. I know that in March 1947 she was living in Birch Hill, Rochdale. The building was the union workhouse, known as the Dearnley Work House, Rochdale. I have a letter which my grandfather wrote to my mother after her wedding confirming that he had been up to Birch Hill to deliver her and ‘Jack’ a piece of…

‘It’s clear that Jane Austen had a mischievous side, having created these fictional men and marriages’ Parish registers are one of the main building blocks of family history research. If you are tracing your tree prior to 1837, they should be able to provide crucial information about your ancestors’ major life events. But every so often, these otherwise ordinary documents can throw up some interesting surprises. From evidence of plague outbreaks to crude remarks about the parentage of illegitimate children, a range of fascinating stories can be found hidden amongst the names and dates. Thanks to the youthful antics of one of Britain’s best-loved novelists, a quite literal example of storytelling can be found in a parish register held at Hampshire Record Office, as archivist Matthew Goodwin explains… Which document…

Tracking down an ancestor’s will may depend on how your diocesan archive is partnered up. The probate collections at Cheshire Archives, for example, can be searched using the archive website (archives. cheshire.gov.uk/search-and-shop/search-and-shop.aspx), or there’s an index via FamilySearch (bit.ly/CheshireProbate) plus you can search and download copies via bit.ly/CheshireCollection. Hampshire’s county archives, featured in this month’s Around Britain, looks after wills and inventories dating back to the 15th century. And around 110,000 wills and 35,000 inventories can all be searched on its online catalogue at calm.hants.gov.uk. One of the key resources available through PRONI’s NI Direct portal is indexes to Will Calendars (nidirect.gov.uk/proni). Search indexes from the probate districts of Armagh, Belfast and Londonderry (1858-1965), and view will copies (c1858-1909). Not all the entries lead to images, but those that do…

One reason why men volunteered for the Royal Navy was the lure of prize money. When an enemy ship was captured, the value of the vessel and contents was assessed and an equivalent sum distributed as prize money among the men of the ship that made the capture. Spanish treasure ships were particularly profitable. Admirals received the largest share, followed by captains, lieutenants and so on, down to the most inexperienced hand. Successful admirals and captains bought large country estates with prize money and a lucky seaman might have enough to buy a pub for his retirement. In early 1800, the frigate HMS Endymion captured several ships, and the following year the crew received their prize money. With his share, Lieutenant Charles Austen purchased presents of topaz crosses on gold…

The militia were popular and frequently feature in contemporary local newspapers. In peacetime there are references to their exercises which often seem to have been occasions enjoyed by all classes. In 1774 The Leeds Intelligencer reported an inspection of a local militia regiment “when the men went thro’ their evolutions to the entire satisfaction of their officers as well as a great concourse of people assembled there.” Afterwards the commander laid on a tea tent for the ladies and entertainment in a local hostelry and a ball at the Assembly Rooms. Throughout their existence the militia were closely associated with social events; The Grantham Journal reported in 1870 on a ball given by the Royal South Lincoln Militia in the Guildhall giving a description of the decorations, dancing and food…

In 1796, a 20-year-old Jane Austen met and fell for Tom Lefroy, a dashing young Irishman. Descended from a Huguenot family, Thomas Langlois Lefroy had attended Trinity College Dublin, winning awards for his oratory. Jane wrote to her sister, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that “I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved... everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together... He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man”. Later she wrote: “The day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy...My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea.” Their romance was not to develop and Tom moved to London to study law at Lincoln’s Inn. He was called to the Irish Bar…

 How long have you been doing your family history? ‘I looked at every Alston in the area and ruled them all out’ I started on family history just after the release of the 1901 census. My mum had inherited several family stories and wanted to find out if any of them were true. She still can’t believe how addictive this hobby can be. What had you managed to uncover before hitting your brick wall? My surname, Alston, is not a common one. It is the name of the highest market town in England, but I expected my ancestors to come from the rural hamlet with the same name on the outskirts of Longridge, Lancashire. Little did I know! I managed to track down the November 1891 marriage certificate for my…

Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion were all written during her stay at Chawton The fact that Jane Austen came from Hampshire is a truth universally acknowledged. She was born here on 16 December 1775 and lived at Steventon, where her father was rector, until 1801. On his retirement the family moved to Bath, but following his death they returned and moved into a cottage on her brother’s estate in Chawton. During her life, Jane had many friends in the area and is known to have visited country residences including Hackwood Park, Hurstbourne Park, The Vyne and Manydown Park, for balls and dances. It was at Manydown Park (near Basingstoke) that Jane received a marriage proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither – she initially accepted, but the next day turned him down. And…

Passchendaele 1917: The Tommies’ Experience of the Third Battle of Ypres by Robert J Parker Amberley, 304 pages, £20 Parker gives a detailed breakdown of the process of Passchendaele and the major battles from July to November 1917, seeking to understand how and why the battle developed and what, if anything, it accomplished. Passchendaele 1917: Landscape of War by Lee Ingelbrecht Lannoo, distributed by ACC Publishing, 256 pages, £29.95 Written by staff at the Passchendaele Research Centre, Belgium, this book looks at the battle from a new angle: how the local countryside affected the course of the battle, how it was devastated by conflict, and how the damage can still be seen in the landscape. Nurses of Passchendaele: Caring for the Wounded of the Ypres Campaigns 1914 –1918 by Christine…

The Old Bailey Danny Dyer’s episode featured stories of high-flying royalty but also working-class hardship: his 2x great grandmother, Mary Ann Buttivant, faced criminal charges at the Old Bailey. Her records were found online at oldbaileyonline.org. 1 Navigate to the website’s homepage to begin your search. On the left-hand side there will be links to various pages including a link to the search page. Click on the ‘Search’ option to be directed to the search page of the website. 2 Enter all known details of the ancestor you are looking for. In Danny’s example, it was Mary Ann Buttivant, so enter that name and press the ‘Search’ button to see what records are held. 3 In this example, only one option comes up, which is the record for Danny’s ancestor.…

‘You might even find the rumoured name of the father of an illegitimate child’ You’ve done all you can to find your family back to around 1800. Is it time to call it a day? Quit while you’re ahead? Or do you slip the reassuring hand of the 19th century and try to go further back in time? Researching the 18th century needn’t be difficult, it’s just different. You don’t leave familiar territory behind entirely; wills, parish registers, directories and newspapers are still available though it might take more work to find them. Civil registration certificates and census returns can still help you in your search. For example, Henry and Cassandra Austen, Jane Austen’s brother and sister were born in the 1770s and lived long enough to appear in a…

DISASTERS End of a story from the ‘Domestick Occurrences’ section about a fire at White’s Chocolate House in St James Street. BIRTHS Few exact dates are given but close enough to enable a search of registers. The apparent birth of triplets would be newsworthy in itself. FORTUNES A useful indication of a woman’s social status was the money she brought to the marriage. WOMEN’S NAMES Few first names were used. Women are described as daughter, widow (‘relict’) or wife. NATIONAL NEWS Not only London-based people were mentioned, the magazine was distributed around the UK and to English speaking areas overseas. DEATHS Mostly the upper classes and the wealthy appear, but one or two from the aspiring middle classes always make it worth a search.…

Ulick Burke was born on 24 April 1895. He attended HMS Conway, a naval training school, moored on the Mersey between 1908 and 1909. After failing to gain entrance to Osborne Naval College, he moved on to Plymouth College where he was a cadet in the Officers’ Training Corps. On the outbreak of war, he was commissioned. On 31 July 1917, Lieutenant Ulick Burke went over the top with the 2nd Devonshire Regiment facing the Westhoek Ridge: It was only when you got to within 20 yards of the trench that you said “Charge!” They then brought their rifles facing the enemy and charged into the trench, killing and bayoneting. It only lasted a few seconds. If there weren’t many troops about you knew there must be more so you…

‘He was 30 at the time, although on his enlistment papers he said he was 25’ WDYTYA? reader Bob Shaw has found 92 family members who died in the world wars and more recent conflicts during his research. It’s a shocking figure. But for some reason, it was the fate of Leonard Newitt – the grandfather Bob had never known – that really caught his attention. What started off as a “nice little project” gradually mushroomed and he didn’t stop until he had found out every last scrap of information about his grandfather’s untimely death in 1916 at the Somme. He uncovered the sort of detail most family historians only ever dream of… Bob was raised by his parents, Elsie and Robert Shaw senior, and maternal grandmother, Mahalla – Leonard’s…

PAUL BLAKE co-wrote Discover Your Roots and is a Fellow of the Society of Genealogists (SoG). PETER HIGGINBOTHAM is the author of Voices from the Workhouse (The History Press, 2012) EMMA JOLLY is a member of the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA). DEBBIE KENNETT is the author of DNA and Social Networking and The Surnames Handbook (History Press) ANTONY MARR is a member of the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA). ALAN STEWART is a family historian with 30 years of genealogy experience and author of Grow Your Own Family Tree. RUTH SYMES is a historian and author of Tracing Ancestors Through Letters and Personal Writings STEVE THOMAS is a genealogist with more than 20 years of experience and regularly appears on TV as an…

The presenter Liz Bonnin comes from a wonderfully diverse mixed heritage thanks to her Caribbean background. Her father is from Martinique and her mother from Trinidad and both parents have roots in all parts of the world including France, Africa, Portugal and India. Her Indian heritage comes from Trinidad as she found Indian indentured labourers in her family tree. They were brought over by the British to replace the labour force after the abolition of slavery in 1833. Her first Indian ancestor to arrive in Trinidad was her great great grandfather, Timothy Rawle, who came to the island aged eight. He began life working in a plantation, but he also received an education and so eventually became a successful businessman and died a wealthy man. We were able to learn…

‘There was a scarcity of men in general and a still greater scarcity of any that were good for much’ There’s an ever-growing interest in Jane Austen’s ancestry (including aristocratic connections) and in the descendants of her brothers, but many towns and villages are marking associations with Britain’s most famous novelist. Numerous events are being held with the involvement of the Jane Austen Society of the United Kingdom (janeaustensoci.freeuk.com), which has a year-long programme of activities. A lot is happening in Hampshire – the county where Jane was born, died and lived most of her all-too-short life. But plenty of other places have links with her – because she lived in them (such as Bath), holidayed there (Sidmouth), or had family links. Thus, Stoneleigh Abbey (stoneleighabbey.org) in Warwickshire was the…

Though Militia Ballot Rolls vary in format over time the basic details are usually the same, listing all men aged 18-45, their age, occupation and whether exempt from the ballot and why. Surviving examples can prove a way of tracing male ancestors back beyond the first surviving census of 1841. Some muster rolls are on Findmypast. Names List of militiamen in alphabetical order. Age in years Occasionally this is missing. Reason for exemption Disability was the main reason but men were exempt if already selected by previous ballot or serving as a replacement for another. Volunteer or yeoman Shows if a man was already serving in the yeomanry or another volunteer unit (and so exempt). Description This column usually describes the nature of their employment. Number of children Poor men…

MUSEUMS AND ARCHIVES • Jane Austen’s House Museum Jane Austen’s House Museum, Winchester Road, Chawton, Hampshire GU34 1SD jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk Jane Austen’s House Museum at Chawton in Hampshire is well worth a visit. Jane lived here from 1809 to her death in 1871 and it was where many of the novels were written. • Jane Austen Centre 40 Gay Street, Bath, BA1 2NT www.janeausten.co.uk Those who fancy seeing themselves in Regency garb and imagining what their ancestors might have looked like might wish to visit the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. WEBSITES • The British Library bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/themes/ the-novel-1780-to-1832 The British Library’s website on ‘The Novel 1780-1832’ has a number of excellent essays by experts putting Austen’s novels in their social context, discussing topics such as balls, female education and reading, courtship and…

CRIMINAL CONVERSATION Adultery or an action brought by a husband against another man for the debauching of his wife. IGNORAMUS Latin for ‘we do not know’. Used as a response by a jury to say that there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial. INDENTURE A contract originally cut into duplicate halves along a jagged line, matching when placed back together. LAUGHING HEIR An individual receiving an unexpected inheritance from a distant relative. PARAPHERNALIA The separate personal property of a married woman, such as jewellery and dress. TIME IMMEMORIAL A right enjoyed since ‘time immemorial’ was enjoyed since before living memory. In a 1275 statute, time immemorial was given a specific date: 6 July 1189.…

CENSUSES Decennial censuses were first introduced in 1801, with the first modern census carried out in 1841. The census records up to 1911 are available on the subscription genealogy sites – findmypast.co.uk, ancestry.co.uk and thegenealogist.co.uk, or sometimes at the local archive office, which you can find here (discovery.national archives.gov.uk/#archive). INTERNATIONAL GENEALOGY INDEX (IGI) This is a free family history database featuring several hundred million names taken from church records from the early 1500s to 1885, as well as personal family information submitted to the LDS church (familysearch.org/search/collection/igi). BISHOPS’ TRANSCRIPTS An act of 1598 required church ministers to copy their parish registers and send the copies to their bishop each month. These bishops’ transcripts contain records of baptisms, marriages and funerals and continued to be produced right up until the 19th century.…

1043 Edward the Confessor, son of Æthelred the Unready and one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings, is crowned at the cathedral of Winchester on 3 April. 1495 The oldest dry dock in the world is built under the orders of Henry VII in Portsmouth. Construction of the Mary Rose begins here in 1510. 1620 The Mayflower, stuffed with pilgrims, begins its journey from Southampton for the New World, making an extended stop at Plymouth on the way for repairs and supplies. 1775 Jane Austen is born on 16 December at Steventon Rectory near Basingstoke in Hampshire. 1796 Jane Austen begins work on First Impressions, which eventually becomes known as Pride & Prejudice. Her first published novel, Sense & Sensibility, will finally appear in 1811. 1812 Navy pay office clerk John…

Who Do You Think You Are? Thursday 6 July, 9pm BBC One Charles Dance has often played posh during his career, yet according to the actor: “There’s nothing aristocratic about me – at all.” Rather, his mother was an under-house parlour maid, someone whose life was largely spent toiling downstairs rather than upstairs relaxing in grand rooms. As for his father, Charles knows little about a man who died when his son was just four years old, not even where he was born. If this seems an unpromising starting point for Charles’ research, it’s soon easy to see why his family’s story has been chosen to lead the first tranche of episodes in the 14th series of WDYTYA?. Not only does the star of Game Of Thrones and Jewel In…