Lincs To The Past

www.lincstothepast.com

Do you have any Lincolnshire ancestors? Well, if you do the LincsToThePast website is the place to go for parish and local records and what is great is that it's FREE to use.

I have used this website a lot as my Presswood family have lived within the same area of Lincolnshire for 200 years.

Unfortunately not all the parish records are available to view online and they are not transcribed but most of the parishes of Lincolnshire are small and rural so if you know which parish your ancestors resided in and the approximate year of their birth, death or marriage, then you can quite easily browse the images to find them.

When using the site to look for great, great, great, great grandfather, William Presswood's burial record in the parish of Stow-in-Lindsey I found out something really interesting...

...so I am going to run through how I found his record on the site.

Firstly, I had established an approximate date of death of c1841-3 for William from researching the family on the censuses and birth, marriage and death indexes. In 1841 the family was living in a hamlet called Bransby, Lincolnshire in the parish of Sturton by Stow or Stow in Lindsey.

On the website I searched "Stow in Lindsey burials"...

Lincs To The Past search (Link)

...which turns up the results below...

Search results (Link)

The results show all the records relating to the parish of Stow in Lindsey and burials, as you can see the records are split into books for certain years but not all record books are always available online, if there is an image next to the record description it means the images for that record set are available to be viewed online.

Click the book you want to look at and then browse...

Browsing the document (Link)

You can look through page by page, or jump a few pages on to find the date range you're looking for and use the toolbar to zoom the image.

1841 is found on page 29 where my ancestors burial is recorded...

My ancestors death record in the parish burial records for Stow in Lindsey Parish, Lincolnshire (Link)

Thanks to the curate who recorded his burial for he has added extra notes which inform me that William Prestwood (notice difference in name spelling) of Bransby "hanged himself, verdict of the Coroner's inquest, Being of unsound mind", which opens up more avenues of research...but more to come about William and his family in The Presswood Story.

At the bottom of the page you will notice that if you register with the website that you can tag or transcribe the documents, which means that you can find people easier next time by just searching a name to see which records are flagged up.

I find it is not always the best or easiest website to use for viewing images but I have spent many a happy hour browsing possible parish records for my ancestors and even transcribed a few. The website contains many different records related to Lincolnshire so depending on what you are looking for, you might find other records of interest to you and your research.

Copyright © 2013 Ruth Hogan

My ancestors were... Nonconformists

Low Mill Wesleyan Chapel, Knott Lane, Rawdon
My grandmother was born here, as her father was the caretaker

A nonconformist was a person or group of people who did "not conform to" the state religion which was the Anglican church (otherwise known as the Church of England) or Roman Catholicism.

My family history is full of nonconformist ancestors, mostly Methodists or Baptists, but I also have a few Salvationists (Salvation Army followers) as well.

There are many nonconformist groups or denominations, some of the common ones in the UK are:

• Baptists - believe in the "believer's baptism"(baptism after professing one's faith) rather than infant baptism. It is commonly performed with full immersion. The denomination was started in the early 1600s by John Smyth. (Wikipedia - Baptists)
• Methodists - came out of the Church of England in the mid 18th century, from a small group who methodically studied the Bible. The Wesley brothers, John and Charles were a part of this small group which travelled the country preaching the Gospel. (Wikipedia - Methodism)
• Congregationalists - believe in each congregation independently running their own affairs. The whole congregation would be involved in teaching, they believe there is no need for a priest to intercede between them and God. They believe to be the most like the early church and the movement began in the late 1500s. (Wikipedia - Congregational Church)
• Presbyterians - the roots lie in the European Reformation of the 16th century influenced by the theologian John Calvin. They were against the hierarchy system of the state church and are governed by individual courts of church elders. (Wikipedia - Presbyterianism)
• Quakers - separated from the Church of England in the mid-17th century and they believe that "Christ has come to teach his people himself". They are well known for silent worship, teetotalism, conscientious objectors and plain dress. (Wikipedia - Quaker)
• Unitarians - encourage their followers to find their own Spiritual path rather than follow a religion. They believe in one God and that Jesus was a prophet rather than God itself. (Wikipedia - Unitarianism)
• Salvation Army - sought to bring salvation to the poor, destitute & hungry. Founded by Catherine & William Booth (a Methodist minister) in 1865. (Wikipedia - Salvationist)

My great, great Uncle Ted in the Salvation Army Band c1901

How does knowing whether our ancestors were nonconformists help in the research we do?

Our nonconformist ancestors may not have been baptised, married or buried at their local parish church, but instead at their own place of worship. It is more common for parish records to be kept in full and still be available for us to view today. Nonconformist denominations often kept records also but perhaps not as fully as the Parish Church and if a church has shut down the records in the past may have become lost of even destroyed.

Baptism

The different denominations have different views about baptism, which can mean that your ancestor was not baptised always as an infant. Some believed in the "believer's baptism" which meant that your ancestor would not be baptised until they felt ready to profess their faith, often in their adult lives.

Marriage

Marriages before 1754 could take place in any place of worship but there were many "clandestine" (secret and illegal) marriages taking place.

In 1754, Lord Hardwick's Marriage Act was introduced to do away with "clandestine" marriages. For nearly 100 years all marriages had to take place in the Parish church by an Anglican vicar with the exception of Jews and Quakers.

In 1837 with the introduction of Civil Registration, it all changed again and Nonconformist places of worship could apply to become registered as a marriage venue, but the local Superintendent Registrar would have to be present to authorise the marriages until 1898. After this the church would have had an Appointed Person who would be responsible for maintaining an official marriage register.

Hedon Road Cemetery, Hull

If your nonconformist ancestor attended a non-registered place of worship they would have to have the legal marriage at a Registry Office followed by a religious ceremony at their place of worship.

Burials

Some nonconformist churches have their own burial grounds, but not all. By the Victorian era there were often local council cemeteries so some nonconformists may have been buried in them or even in the local Parish church burial grounds if there were no other options available.

Some useful websites to take a look at for nonconformists records are:

• Find a church on Rootsweb
• BMDRegisters
• GENUKI or GENUKI search
• London nonconformist registers are available on Ancestry

Other places to look for records:

• Ask minister in charge of church if church still open
• Local record offices
• The National Archives
• Some churches have their own record depositories

Some information for this blog post came from:
YOUR FAMILY TREE magazine 127
Wikipedia - Nonconformist Register
Wikipedia - Nonconformism

Copyright © 2013 Ruth Hogan

Divorce records...

Divorces are widely accepted today but in the 1800s they were relatively uncommon. The process of filing for divorce was much more difficult and complicated. 

A brief history of divorce in the UK:

• Before 1857, divorce was mostly only available to men and had to be granted by an Act of Parliament, which made the process very expensive. Technically you were not permitted to remarry neither (unless your name was King Henry VIII!).
• In 1857, the Matrimonial Causes Act meant people could divorce through the courts, which allowed ordinary people to file for divorce. You had to be able to prove that your spouse had committed adultery and a woman had to prove their husband had committed adultery plus incest, cruelty, bigamy, sodomy or desertion. It would have gone through an Open Court and only the High Court in London could grant a divorce
• In 1923, a private member's bill made it as easy for women and is was for men to file for divorce, solely on the grounds of adultery.
• In 1937, divorce was allowed on other grounds, such as drunkeness or desertion, but you could not file for divorce within the first three years of marriage.
• In 1969, the Divorce Reform Act was passed which enabled couples to divorce after being separated for two years, but fault did no longer have to be proved.
• In 1984, it was introduced that you could file for divorce after being married for one year instead of three years.
• Until 1996, men favoured better financially in a divorce. It was decided that assets should be divided more fairly and the contribution of the "homemaker" was better recognised.

(References: Guardian - Divorce Law, Law Teacher - Divorce Law, History of Divorce)

The first time I came across a divorce record whilst researching my family history was a few weeks ago when researching a distant cousin's husband, Victor Rettich. As his name did not seem English I wanted to see if I could find any migration records for him initially, so I put the details that I had about him into the Ancestry search engine and flicked through the records that it brought up. The divorce case was one of the first records to show up so I had a nosey and found out some inspiring information about their family...

...firstly the documents included their marriage certificate.

Marriage certificate of Emily Davidson & Victor Alexander Rettich (Click the image to enlarge)

Victor was a lamp manufacturer, the son of a gentleman and Emily was the daughter of an engineer Henry Davidson (he was the brother of my great x3 grandfather). They married on the 30th June 1889 at which Emily's parents and elder brother were the witnesses to her marriage with Victor, so one would presume they were happy with the match.

Nearly four years later, Emily filed for divorce and below are the details...

Details of case - page 1 (Click the image to enlarge)

...the first page tells us details about their wedding date and the children they had together, Veneta Annie Octavia Rettich born 6th April 1890 and Victor Henry Albert Rettich born 11th August 1891 who died at three months old.

Details of case - page 2 (Click the image to enlarge)

The second page goes into details about her claim for divorce...
...Victor committed adultery with Georgiana Borritt and other women
...he was violent towards her
...he left her for days without any provisions and no money for buying food.

Emily wanted a dissolution of her marriage, custody of her child and maintenance for her and the child.

A divorce was eventually granted on the 3rd December 1894.

The divorce papers

It is a very interesting but upsetting read, as it shows much detail and insight into their family life.

Her divorce was one of just 369 granted in the UK in 1894, a rare event in comparison to 2010 when there were just under 120,000 divorces granted in the UK. (Reference: Guardian - Divorce rates)

Emily would have had to bring up her daughter as a single mother with the stigma of being a divorcee, not an easy thing to do in Victorian England.

Copyright © 2013 Ruth Hogan

Questions to ask...?

When we begin researching our family history one thing we must do is talk to older relatives, they will have snippets of information that will really help you in the process of researching your family tree.

If you are just starting out it can be overwhelming to go and see and elderly relative you may not have seen for many years to ask questions about their family, so below are a few questions you can ask to get the conversation rolling.

Questions to ask?

• What were the names of your parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles?
• When were people born?
• Where were people born?
• Where did people live?
• What jobs did they do?
• Was "Polly" their real name or a nickname?
• What were they like?
• What did they enjoy doing?
• What did they look like?
• Do they have any old photos you can scan or take a photo of?
• Was there a family bible?
• Did they fight in the world wars? If not was there a reason they were exempt?

Great, Great, Great Uncle Ted with a work mate

You may find people are happy to talk about their family and come out with facts you would never have thought to ask, but other people may find their family background painful and not as willing to talk about it. Remember to be sensitive as you are talking about ancestors as older relatives will remember them and may even still be grieving for them. There can be facts in which you find interesting but to another relative they can be shameful, especially if great uncle Albert was a bigamist or spent time in jail.

Always take notes as you are chatting or even take something in which you can record the conversation to listen to at a later date. It is amazing what you forget afterwards or may get facts mixed up later on. Verbal facts will later need to be verified with records, do not take your relatives memories as fact until you have found records to back up your evidence.

My great, great grandparents
Edward Davidson & Martha Davidson nee Hair

Looking at old photos with elderly relatives can trigger memories and can help you put faces to names for future generations.

Important facts which you will require about each person are:

• Name
• Birthday
• Year of birth
• Place of birth
• Date of marriage
• Place of marriage
• Date of death
• Buried or cremated? If buried, where?
• Occupation

TOP TIP: Do not delay speaking to relatives, as time goes by facts are forgotten, elderly people can develop dementia or even pass away unexpectedly which can leave a wealth of information lost for future generations.

Copyright © 2013 Ruth Hogan

Finding a marriage certificate for your ancestors (post-1837)...

In 1837, the National Registration of births, marriages and deaths was introduced to England and Wales so "technically" if your ancestor was born, married or died after 1837 there should be a record to find for your ancestors...although some ancestors will always remain elusive.

There are numerous ways of finding records for your ancestors but I will focus this blog entry on the resources I regularly use for finding a marriage certificate.

Finding a MARRIAGE certificate:

We will search for the marriage of my great, great, great grandparents Mary Jane Peacock and Charles Hair whose life is discussed on the Davidson page of this blog in Chapters 9 and 12.

The process is very similar as searching for a birth certificate (see previous blog post). You need to do some background research using the censuses or by talking to relatives to gain some information about the couple. 

1861 census return for the Hair family

From the above census page we know they were both born in the Hull area and are still living in the area after their marriage. Their eldest child was two years old so we can start by making a few assumptions - that they married in the Hull area and they married in approximately 1859 or before. If you search the 1851 census for Charles you will find he is living with his parents as single which tells us that they probably married between 1851 and 1859 and definitely between 1851 and 1861.

Again using the FreeBMD site you input the information you already know:

FreeBMD search for the marriage of Charles Hair and Mary Jane

NB You do not have to fill in all the details if you do not know them, eg her maiden name.

This search provides only one result:

• Charles HAIR, Sept 1856, Sculcoates, Volume 9d, Page 243

If you click on the page number you can see the other names listed on the same page. In this example the other names on the same page are:

• Robert George COOPER
• Charles HAIR
• Martha HAIR
• Mary Jane PEACOCK

As you will notice it appears someone else with the same surname is listed on the same page of the register, there could be a few reasons for this:

• co-incidence that someone with the same surname was the next to be married in the parish church
• it could be a relative and they shared a wedding day

Looking into this further, it appears that Charles had a sister called Martha so it could be that they either shared a wedding day or that they married within a few weeks or one another and no-one else was married in the parish between their marriages.

To now order the certificate we go the General Register Office (GRO) website. Again if you have not already registered with the site you must do this and have your card details to hand to pay for the certificate. It costs £9.25 for a standard search in which the certificate could take a few weeks to come through or £23.40 for priority which would only take a few days. You would need the following information from the FreeBMD search to order the certificate:

• Year of registration of marriage 1856
• Either the groom or bride's surname at the time of the marriage (or both) HAIR or PEACOCK
• Either the groom or bride's forename(s) (or both) Charles or Mary Jane
• Quarter registered Sept
• District name SCULCOATES
• Volume number 9d
• Page number 243

NB The surname has to be their surname at the time of their marriage which is not always their maiden name if she had previously been married and widowed.

A few weeks later your certificate arrives through the post...

Marriage certificate for Charles Hair and Mary Jane Peacock

This certificate tells us one of the witnesses was a Martha Hair, it would be interesting to order the other certificate listed on the same page one day to find out whether this is Charles' sister and whether they shared a wedding day. The certificate fills in a few more gaps in the information you may already have to aid your research back further into the past.

NB After 1912 the surname of the other party (bride or groom) is mentioned in the registration transcription of the marriage and makes finding your ancestors marriage a little easier.

Problems you may have in finding your ancestors:

• name misspelt or variations of spellings
• transcription errors
• registered under a name which the person was not called regularly....nicknames or middle names were used as a first name
• mixed up first names and surnames or middle and first names/surnames
• the birth, marriage or death was not registered

Useful websites: Ancestry - Birth, Death & Marriages, FindMyPast - Birth, Deaths & Marriages, The Genealogist, FreeBMD, GenesReunited - Birth, Marriage & Deaths...and many more.

Copyright © 2013 Ruth Hogan

Comparing the Subscription sites...

In my previous blog posts I have mentioned the BIG SUBSCRIPTION sites quite a lot, as they're a resource I use a lot.

The chart below is a year old now but it may still be useful to those of you who're considering what subscription to get or even what site to subscribe to.

My advise would be to have a look at what records you might use for your research or records that you may find helpful.  For example if you know you had ancestors who moved to the colonies you may want a subscription to include the passenger lists and overseas records, in which case the best one may be the Ancestry Worldwide.

Please remember to leave your comments and feedback on the blog and feel free to suggest ideas for blog posts. Is there anything you would like to see here? Thanks for reading :)

Copyright © 2013 Ruth Hogan

Transcribing...

Yes, I finally took the plunge after more than ten years of researching and did it?

What have I done, you may ask....?

I have signed up to the FreeReg website to become one of their many transcribers*. I will be soon able to give something back to the world of researchers, as up to now I have solely taken information off these free websites.

The FreeReg website has been a vital tool for me in researching my family tree back beyond 1837**. It offers FREE access to parish records which have been transcribed by their team of volunteer transcribers. The only problem with the website is there are missing parish records which still need transcribing, so this is one of the reasons I have decided to become a transcriber, to help fill some of these gaps.

A baptism record from the Woolwich Parish records - the sort I will soon be transcribing

Recently, I have been researching my ancestors from Hull, East Yorkshire and have found it frustrating going back further than 1837** due to the lack of transcribed parish records for Hull on FamilySearch.

There are other websites available to search parish records online too, many of the big subscription websites such as Ancestry, FindMyPast and TheGenealogist to name a few and another big free website is the Church of the Latter Day Saints family history website FamilySearch. The subscription websites often offer a high quality digital image of the transcribed page as well, where as the free ones often don't BUT a huge number of parishes are still unavailable to search. FamilySearch is useful due to its range of records on offer but it often lacks all the transcribed details such as the father's occupation, any extra notes etc which can be vital when faced with two or more people with the same name, baptised in a similar period of time and in a similar geographical area. 

I am looking forward to starting the transcribing, although I have to go through a period of training first. They need to make sure I have the required skills to do the job properly and in detail. I will also have to learn to read old fashioned handwriting. I have already received my four test pages, which I will hopefully get around to transcribing soon!!

Once I have passed the training period I will be able to choose a parish of my choice to start transcribing. The parish I choose must be un-transcribed, the records need to be available to me and it must be within my chosen county. I will choose a county and parish of my choice related to my own family history research which means I will be able to transcribe alongside researching my own family roots!!!

*A transcriber is someone who types up (transcribes) what is written in old documents into a format upload-able for search engines so that family historians like myself, can search for their ancestors parish burials, baptisms and marriages by just typing in a name, date of birth and other vital information.

**1837 is a vital date for family historians, as this was when it became compulsory to register births, deaths and marriages with the General Registry Offices around the country. Before this parish records are the major resource for delving back to discover more about our ancestors lives.

Copyright © 2013 Ruth Hogan

Pre-1837 Parish Records

This weekend I have discovered the website below....

www.freereg.org.uk

An amazing site, easy to search on and well transcribed.

Copyright © 2012 Ruth Hogan