Wisdom Wednesday: Old British Currency

For a long time, I was surprised to see information about antique British money in UK genealogy books. Then I discovered poor law and hearth tax records.  Before or after the changes in the relief regulations in 1834, your ancestors will appear in parish rate books either as a poor person who received the amount of money listed or as a rich person who was assessed money to pay relief.

The old pound had the value of one pound of sterling silver and was divided into 20 shillings or 240 pennies. At one time, the old penny weighed 240^th of a pound.  Each shilling had 12 pennies. The symbols for each were: £ for the pound, s for the shilling and d for the penny.

In old literature, we see references to other values such as crowns, florins, and guineas. They equaled five shillings, two shillings and one pound plus one shilling (£1 1s), respectively.

I think it is best to learn how small combinations were written because that is what you will find in parish rate books.

£12 10s 6d was the notation for twelve pounds, 10 shillings and 6 pennies. It was commonly written as £12-10-6.

10s-6d was also written 10/6 and pronounced ‘10 and 6.’

10/ meant ten shillings (half a pound).

On 15 February 1971, British money went to the decimal system and one pound was divided into 100 pennies or pence. The shillings were retired.

Online you can find more information at:

www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/coinage.jsp

www.victorianweb.org/economics/currency.html

www.resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/moneyold.htm

Wisdom Wednesday: Museum of London

Some of my older posts suggest resources for researching in London. Let me add one of the most obvious of all – the Museum of  London which covers all aspects of the city and its inhabitants from pre-historic times to the present.

The Museum of London www.museumoflondon.org.uk has two locations:

1.      150 London Wall, London, EC2Y 5HN

2.      Museum of London Docklands, No. 1 Warehouse, West India Quay, London, E14 4AL
 

Large history collections are a wonderful source of information about the city where your ancestor lived, filling in the story and background. There are a few collections within the museum that might yield names and employment records, if an ancestor worked for such widely dissimilar employers as the Port of London or Sainsbury supermarkets. From the museum’s main page, click ‘Collections and Research’ to begin accessing this gold mine of information.

Besides maintaining its displays, the MOL organizes walking tours with titles such as ‘Roman London’ and ‘Shakespeare’s London’.

Both locations are open seven days, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. except Dec. 24-26. Admission is free.

Note: The Museum's logo is not just an example of contemporary art, it represents the city's borders through the ages.

Wisdom Wednesday – Lusitania Sinks 7 May 1915

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the Lusitania sank one hundred years ago tomorrow. I hope my post will beat the deluge of bloggers commenting. This ship lives in American myth and legend. Most historians and genealogists would love to know more and love to know the real story.

Here are some facts from the RMS Lusitania website:

-Owned by Cunard Company, Lusitania was launched of 7 Jun 1906. She would make 101 round-trip voyages (or 202 crossings) during her 7-year-and-9-month career.

-On 7 May 1915, there were about 2000 people on board and 1200 perished. The wreck of the Lusitania lies at 51°25′N 8°33′W, about 300 feet underwater and approximately 11 miles south of the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland.

Lusitania was carrying a great number of Americans and women and children as well as war materiel for the British Army. The sinking of the Lusitania and resulting deaths of civilians and neutral nationals aboard the ship is considered one of the first modern examples of “total war” and a turning point in World War I.

Many Americans believe that the Lusitania disaster was the tipping point that caused this country to enter the First World War. However, most historians do not agree. The sinking of the steamship is often credited for turning American public opinion against the Axis Powers. Germany, fearing American wrath, restrained itself in submarine warfare, which may have been its best chance to win the war.  “Yet, it was Germany’s very resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 (in addition to the decoding of the Zimmerman Telegram) that finally forced the United States to declare war.” From www.rmslusitania.info

I am anticipating reading the new book timed to appear for the centennial, Dead Wake by Erik Larson, the author of Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts. According to the review by Alexandra Alter in the New York Times, it took Larson five years to do the research, always a good sign. He was able to find war telegrams, love letters, diaries and autopsy reports.   It is available from the usual online and bricks and mortar book sellers.

Wisdom Wednesday: 2015 UK Military Anniversaries

The latest Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS) ezine reminded me that there are three significant military anniversaries during the next ninety days! As genealogists we saw that last year’s commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the First World War gave us new databases to search. I am thinking of soldiers wills and war diaries put online for the first time in 2014. We still have three years before these commemorations end, presumably on 11 November 1918.

FFHS tells us that the first two events happened in 1915, and the third will be the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, famous in history as well as language and song. You can subscribe to this free online magazine here.  This issue highlighted these events:

1.        The Gallipoli Landings (April 1915)
2.        The Sinking of the Lusitania ( 7 May 1915)
3.        The Battle of Waterloo (18 Jun 1815)

The Gallipoli Landings

While all countries involved will recognize this centennial, it will be significant for Australians and New Zealanders as they join together to remember the Gallipoli campaign, which marks the first major military action fought by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) during World War I. The battle involved more than 550,000 Allied troops on land and in ships off the coast of Turkey and lasted more than eight months. Troops first landed on April 25, known in Australia and New Zealand as ANZAC Day. This year there will be a Commonwealth and Ireland ceremony at the Helles Memorial in Turkey, the site of the largest ANZAC commemoration outside of Australia and New Zealand.

“In London, there will be three separate events taking place on the 25 April. For details please visit the Australian High Commission (UK)website.  Please visit the Australian Memorial website for details of ceremonies taking place, exhibitions and links to ‘The Anzac Collections Project’ where you can read stories of ordinary people caught up in the extraordinary events of the war. For details of ANZAC commemorations in New Zealand, please visit the New Zealand Government website which includes a useful and informative ‘Guide to Gallipoli’. “ (FFHS)

Note: The only North American unit in this battle was from Newfoundland, then a British dominion and not part of Canada. Information about the role of the Newfoundland Regiment can be found at www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/first-world-war/fact_sheets/gallipoli

The Sinking of the Lusitania

“The sinking of RMS Lusitania occurred on 7 May 1915; an event regarded as having been a turning point of the First World War. The ship was torpedoed by the German U-boat U20 and is reported to have gone down in 18 minutes off the coast of Ireland. The sinking was a contributory factor to the American entry into World War One. Of the known 1,960 people on board, 768 survived and 1,192 perished in the disaster…The Lusitania Resource website contains much information on its history, Passenger & Crew Biographies, and Lusitania Facts..."  (FFHS)

To read some very poignant biographies, please visit www.rmslusitania.info.” This website seems to be the best on the subject. On the home page, the menu on the left lets you choose passenger list, crew list, survivors, victims, stowaways…plus a few more categories.

Note: A new book about the Lusitania is topping the non-fiction charts even though it has not been released, as I write this. It is Dark Wake by Erik Larsson, the very successful author of The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts.

The Battle of Waterloo

The phrase 'meet your Waterloo' has been with us since the fateful day in June 1815. In commemoration of the bicentenary of Waterloo, the 2015 issue of FFHSs ‘really useful information leaflet’ contains an article by military historian, Simon Fowler, which will assist you in researching those who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. Download the leaflet here www.ffhs.org.uk/rul-2015-03.pdf.

Tuesday's Tip: The Domesday Book

A person asked me at last month’s meeting of my UK Gen Research group, “What is the Domesday Book?” To my surprise, I remembered the basics: it’s a list of landholders recorded during the reign of William, the Conqueror which began in 1066. Not bad, but here are more details: 

What is the Domesday Book?

It is a listing of landholders and values in England in 1086 ordered by William the Conqueror, which contains information for that year and 1066, the year of the conquest.   

Why is it important to history and genealogy?

It is “the oldest survey of land, owners and occupiers in Britain.” (Herber)

What information is included?

Technically the land was all owned by the sovereign until he/she granted ownership or tenancy to a major tenant. In return the tenant could lease land to a subtenant who could further subdivide it. Everyone in the chain owed the king or queen soldiers in time of war and/or other payment or service. This is the essence of the feudal system.

The Domesday Book is a listing of more than 13,000 land holders at the major tenant and sub-tenant level. There are few, if any, ordinary people.

What area is covered?

There are two volumes. The first, called Little Domesday, covers the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. Great Domesday, covers the rest of England, except London and Winchester and the counties in the north; Northumberland, Cumberland, Durham, and northern Westmoreland.

What would an entry for a parish contain?

Thanks to Mark Herber’s book, Ancestral Trails, page 673, we know that the entry for Dunsford, Devon translates from the original Latin:

Saewulf holds DUNFORD. He held it himself before 1066. It paid tax for 1 virgate of land. Land for 1 plough. 3 smallhoolders, pasture, 20 acres. Value 40d

             For more information go to the website www.domesdaybook.co.uk
                It has the list of names from the book. 

What do the experts say? How can genealogists use the information?

“You are most unlikely to trace your ancestry to persons named in Domesday, unless you find a link to nobility, but it is fun to read entries, over 900 years old, about places in which your ancestors lived.” (Herber)

“Information about ordinary people's lives does exist, but it often occurs in records created for other purposes. In general, archival records contain information about wealthier landowning members of society, so most ordinary people are less well documented. Before 1538, when parish registers began, births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials were not officially recorded, though some notes may have been kept by the priest. However, many other records which contain genealogical information start well before 1538, and continue long after.”  (The National Archives)

I am not an expert but…the earliest English ancestors who I can document are a man and woman married about 1575. I would need to trace back another 500 years +/- to get to 1066. It seems like a daunting task, going well before Henry the VIII required records be kept. I would need a miracle or a connection to nobility, both highly unlikely.

For more optimistic information about genealogy at the turn of the last millennium, check the websites for medieval genealogy and the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy listed below.

Sources:

Herber, Mark. Ancestral Trails. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2006.

www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk

www.domesdaybook.co.uk

www.nationalarchives.org.uk/records/research-guides/medieval-sources-for-family-history.htm

www.fmg.ac  - Foundation for Medieval Genealogy

Wisdom Wednesday: London in 1700

    
Waller, Maureen. 1700:  Scenes from London Life. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000.

Most of my English ancestors are from rural areas. What I know about London life I learned from Oliver Twist and Tim Cratchit.  I needed a book to fill in some details and found the one above at a used book sale. The first five chapter headings were intriguing and should catch the eye of all genealogists: marriage, childbirth, childhood, disease and death.

I am not surprised to find that the author wrote an entire book about marriage after reading the first few pages of this book’s ‘Marriage’ chapter. She points out the constraints put on marrying couples by the church, including the costs. People were put off by the reading of the banns, seeing them as an invasion of privacy. Since this practice continued into my lifetime in my childhood church, I never really gave it any thought. Waller describes the clandestine marriage mills in London where about one-third of the ceremonies in 1700 were performed, in order to avoid the church requirements.
 
Waller later wrote a book that used all the information she gathered about London in 1700 called Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father’s Crown. This book is about the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Mary II and Queen Anne whose reign ended in 1714.

            Other books by Maureen Waller:

The English Marriage: Tales of Love, Money and Adultery
London 1945: Life in the Debris of War
A Family in Wartime: How the Second World War Shaped the Lives of a Generation
Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father’s Crown
Sovereign Ladies: Sex, Sacrifice and Power – The Six Reigning Queens of England

All of the books are available on amazon.com.

 

Wisdom Wednesday: Colonial UK Immigrants

In the Spring, I wrote four blog posts that described distinct immigrant groups that settled in various parts of the original thirteen colonies. These posts were based on a book by genealogist, William Dollarhide. He felt that if you knew where your ancestor settled in the colonies, you could narrow the range of places he could have come from in the UK. My posts dates and topics are:

            26 Feb 2014 - British Origin of U.S. Colonists (New England Puritans)

            12 Mar - UK Origins of Virginia Cavaliers
            26 Mar - Quakers from the North Midlands
            9  Apr - Scottish/English Borderlands to Rural America

Referencce:

Dollarhide, William. British Origins of American Colonists, 1629-1775. Bountiful, Utah: Heritage Quest Genealogical Services, division of AGLL, Inc., 1998.

-A much expanded discussion of the four group's influence on American culture can be found in the following book:

Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

I found this book which uses the same four colonial groups described by Dollarhide to illustrate the history of American culture as it has changed through time. It argues that our original British folkways underlie most of our regional cultures. Oxford press states, Americans “have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time.”

-This Fall I was asked to speak on a topic where a summary of the above information would be helpful so I developed this chart:

Groups	Dates	To	From
Puritans	1629-1640	New England	East Anglia (50%)
Cavaliers	1641-1675	Chesapeake Bay	West Country & London
Quakers	1675-1715	Delaware Valley	North Midlands (67%)
Scots/Irish	1717-1775	Rural Areas/ Borders	English/Scottish Border + N Ireland

Wisdom Wednesday - Genealogy in a UK Graveyard

Genealogists are interested in cemeteries, in part, because of the information on the gravestones themselves and in any written records maintained by the graveyard owner. When looking for information from an English graveyard, I think North Americans have heard many rumors before they even begin the process. They bury people one atop the other…they remove the gravestones of the first burials…and so on. What is the real story?

Visiting a UK parish church is an experience like no other. In almost all rural settings the church appears to be in the center of a cemetery. The graveyard is not confined to the space behind the building, as in North America.

In the past, all of the church ground was not considered consecrated. Until the last century, there was a common practice to bury the ‘good’ people on the south side of the church and the others on the shadowy north side. Those who took their own lives or the lives of others were buried on the unconsecrated north side, which also was used for secular activities such as games, festivals, and fairs in the 1600s and 1700s. Less charming were the cockfights also held there.

Until the eighteenth century, corpses were usually buried in a fabric shroud. As bodies decomposed, they would take less space. Because more people qualified to be on the south side, the land there may be higher than on the north side. Both facts lend some credence to the belief that more than one body was placed in what we think of as one plot, perhaps one atop the other.  Overcrowding was and is an issue.  Today more than 70 percent of those who die in the UK are cremated.

Notes: In 1667 and confirmed again in 1678, the shroud needed to be made of pure wool. The Wool Acts were intended to promote and support the wool industry. Clergy and later, the family needed to certify that the shroud was woolen or a fine would be levied. These acts were repealed in 1814.  Some parishes owned a casket for the body that was used during the service.

Gravestones became popular in the seventeenth century. The earliest in today’s churchyards often date from the eighteenth century. The stones are considered the property of the person who erected it, and defacing a stone is considered trespass. Check with the parish clergy to see if there is a map or burial records for you to read and to see what the rules and regulations are.

Many local family history societies have recorded the inscriptions on the gravestones and these are available online at the society’s website. You may need to be a member to access the records online, but the dues are usually less than £20 per year.

Source: Friar, Stephen. The Companion to the English Parish Church. London: Chancellor Press, 2000.

Wisdom Wednesday: Finding Electoral Registers

Last but not least, let’s talk about where to find an electoral register. The source for these records on a national basis is the British Library, 96 Euston Road, London, www.bl.uk which has a partnership with www.findmypast.co.uk. The website has begun its digitization in 1832 and is moving forwards.

Beginning with 1947, the British Library has a complete set of registers for the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).  A complete list of their holdings is in a publication titled, Parliamentary Constituencies and Their Registers Since 1832, which also includes earlier burgess rolls and poll books. Once in hard copy, it can now be downloaded at www.bl.uk/reshelp/finhelprestype/offpubs/electreg/parliamentary/constituenncies.html.

Because of concerns about identity theft and commercial use of the lists, restrictions apply to the electoral registers from the past ten years.

Having voting information after 1832 is not always helpful to American genealogists because it is just too late. Locations of earlier records can be found in the following pamphlets:

Gibson, Jeremy and Colin Rogers Gibson. Poll Books c. 1696-1872, a directory of holdings in Great Britain. Birmingham, UK: Federation of Family History Societies, 1994.

Gibson, Jeremy and Colin Rogers. Electoral Registers since 1832and burgess rolls. Birmingham, UK: Federation of Family History Societies, 1990.

Check on purchasing copies at www.ffhs.org.uk. Even the British Library states that if the early roll you need is not listed in one of the above, “it may well be that no copies of the register sought survive.”

Wisdom Wednesday: UK Voter Disqualifications

In my last post, I mentioned very generally who would be included in the election records because they were qualified to vote by age and land ownership or tenancy, above a certain assessed value or rental amount. In the Gibson and Rogers booklet cited below, there is a nice list of who was disqualified and that may be a better beginning point. You simply will not find your ancestors if they fall into any of the categories listed.

The occupations that disqualified a potential voter will surprise North Americans.

                    -          Before 1887, active policemen, while serving and six months after leaving the force.

-          Before 1918, election agents and other paid election workers; postmasters; those receiving welfare, their spouses or children; collectors of government revenues.

Less surprising to North Americans are these types of non-voters. People who were and are not allowed to vote in the UK and who also might not be allowed to vote in some U.S. states includes:

 aliens

              people with mental disorders

anyone serving a prison sentence (UK laws prohibit anyone convicted of election bribery from voting for five years after the crime.)

A purely British reason for disqualification was being a conscientious objector between 1918 and 1923. Another is being a peer. On the other hand, peeresses were allowed to vote by the reform bill of 1918 but the right was taken away again in 1963.

Gibson, Jeremy and Colin Rogers. Electoral Registers. Birmingham, UK: Federation of Family History Societies, 1990. www.ffhs.org.uk

Wisdom Wednesday: UK Voting Records – An Introduction

This post is the first in a series about voters’ records in the UK. Because they list addresses, the members of a family of voting age, and land ownership and leasing details, genealogists can use them as an alternative to the census and to further their understanding of land records.

The United Kingdom has kept voting records, called Poll Books, Burgess Books or Rolls, and Electoral Registers, depending on the time period. Poll books are generally early records of those who voted and how they voted in parliamentary elections. Secret ballots did not begin until 1872.

Burgess books or rolls listed the freemen of a borough who were often entitled to vote for members of parliament and for members of the borough corporation. Note: A borough is a self-governing place with a corporation and privileges granted by a royal charter. This term has wider uses today; see www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borough.

Since 1832, electoral registers of people eligible to vote in parliamentary elections have been compiled annually, with the exception of the war years: 1916-1917, 1940-1944. They were compiled twice a year from 1919 to 1926 and again from 1945 to 1949. Registers for voters in local elections were kept was well, such as those for county council kept since 1889.

Voting was not secret?! Before telling you how to find these registers and books, it may help to discuss the differences in voting between the UK and North America because they can be distracting when working with this data.

            Voting Age

Until 1971, men could vote when they reached age 21. Since then, the voting age is reduced to 18 years. The exceptions were soldiers and sailors age 19 and 20 after World War I. Women over age 30 got the vote in 1918. That age was reduced to 21 in 1928 and 18 in 1971.

            Qualifications

Who was qualified to vote varied between the counties and the boroughs in the UK, and the various boroughs had customs that widely varied with each other. To be simplistic, citizens could vote if they were of legal age, and owned or rented property, based on the value of the real estate or the amount of rent paid. The necessary values were changed over time.

            Plural Voting

You might find an ancestor on more than one voting list and wonder how that can be. In 1948, ‘One man, One vote’ became the law of the land. Before that year, there were three geographic categories; residence, business and university. You could vote in all three before 1918 and between 1918 and 1948, in two of the three.

_____________. UK Electoral Registers and Their Uses. London: British Library, Social Sciences Collection Guides, Official Publications. www.bl.uk/socialsciences

Gibson, Jeremy and Colin Rogers. Electoral Registers. Birmingham, UK: Federation of Family History Societies, 1990.

Herber, Mark. Ancestral Trails. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2006.

Wisdom Wednesday: Gretna Green Elopement

In the second season of Downton Abbey, Lady Sybil Crawley and the chauffeur, Tom Branson, headed for Gretna Green, Scotland, with plans to elope. Since Lord Grantham’s estate is in Yorkshire, if any of us North American’s were listening carefully, it probably seemed they were just heading for the nearest border where marriage laws were different.

Indeed that was the case, but people came from further away to marry in this first town inside Scotland on the main road from London to Edinburgh. In fact, the phrase “Gretna Green Elopement” came to mean any marriage ceremony performed without complete parental approval away from the local parish church. The village today advertises itself to couples wanting a destination wedding, similar to Las Vegas without the neon.

For genealogists with English families, it might pay to look at the Scottish records if you are having trouble finding a marriage in the south.

In 1754, the Hardwicke Marriage Act declared that brides and grooms under age 21 needed parental approval and all weddings needed to be performed in a Church of England. However, the laws of Scotland differed and much younger teens could marry without permission. About fifteen years later, Gretna Green had become the border town most known for these ceremonies.

Scottish law allowed for "irregular marriages", meaning that if a declaration was made before two witnesses, almost anybody had the authority to conduct the marriage ceremony. The blacksmiths in Gretna became known as "anvil priests" because the blacksmith’s shop was at the main crossroads in town, and the smithie performed so many marriages over his anvil. (wikipedia, Gretna Green)

Wisdom Wednesday: Scottish Games and Festivals

Last weekend, I went to my local highland games. I am still humming the tune played by all of the pipe bands in the competition. While I didn’t spend a lot of time doing genealogy, I could have.

These games featured a tent with genealogists from the Mormon Church who were doing individual counseling. They did two workshops during the day, one “Basics of Genealogy” and the other “Genealogy and Your Scottish Records.” Not all games will have this element, but if you are headed to one, check the schedule on their website before you leave home. Only pack your genealogy notes and questions, if you can consult with a genealogist.

On the other hand, every Scottish festival has clan tents or booths. These are almost always together and separate from the vendors and food purveyors. Most of the booths have some info for family researchers, if only a map* and list of septs (branch families). I saw some pedigree charts Saturday so some genealogy was taking place. I did observe that visitors had to talk to the clans people and not wait for them to begin the conversation.

As my program said, in that combination of English and Scottish perhaps spoken or written only in North America:

“Search for a bit o’ yer ancestry ‘neath ane o’ the mony clan tents.”

For information about the larger highland games that might be near you, consult the website of the Association of Scottish Games and Festivals: www.asgf.org. Next year’s Glasgow Lands Scottish Festival will be in Look Park, Northampton, Massachusetts Saturday, 18 July 2015, www.glasgowlands.org.

* To find where your surname is most prevalent in Scotland, consult the Great Britain surname project, University College, London, at www.gbnames.publicprofiler.org

Wisdom Wednesday: Easter Books

The happy holiday of Easter in Britain was the traditional date for paying the required ‘dues’ or tithes to the parish coffers. This was convenient because Easter nearly coincided with the beginning of the calendar year until 1752. Before that date, the first day of the year was Mar 25, Lady Day, celebrating the conception of Jesus (nine months before Christmas). In most parishes, each person was accessed two pence from the lord of the manor to his humblest servant. Another tithe based on ability to pay was collected at the same time. The practice was stopped by national legislation in 1836.

Records were kept in Easter books or rolls. There is quite a bit of variation among the parishes about what was collected and what was recoded. Some books have alphabetical lists of what was owed while others list the amounts paid in the order in which the money was received.

In 1989, Sue Wright wrote two articles about the Easter Books that are now downloadable as PDFs at www.localpopulationstudies.org.uk/authoridx.htm. The first article describes the records and the second one lists the books that exist and where they were archived. Now the first place to look is the holdings of the local County Records Office (CRO).

Happy Easter!

Wisdom Wednesday: Scottish/English Borderlands to Rural America

From 1717 to 1775, 275,000 people came from the border counties in England and Scotland to settle the northern and western areas of the American colonies. Some acted as a buffer between the Native Americans and the settlers on the seacoast. The skills and mindset from over 700 years of violence on the English/Scottish border served them well.

During the reign of KIng James I of England (James VI of Scotland) from 1603-1625, the first king of all of Great Britain gave people in the border area peerages and land in Northern Ireland to try to calm the troubles. Thus the Scots/Irish were created. They are not welcomed by the Irish, and as we know, there are still problems today.

One way to avoid the troubles was to emigrate. One hundred fifty thousand people came from ports in Northern Ireland in the sixty years before the American Revolution. The seaports were Belfast, Londonderry, Newry, Larne and Portrush. Another 75,000 came from ports in Scotland including Wigtown and Kirkcudbright. The northern English ports where another 50,000 immigrants departed were Liverpool, Maryport, Morecambe and Whitehaven. These immigrants had two things in common. First, they all lived on or near the Irish Sea, the body of water between Great Britain and Ireland, or they were former residents of that area or the borderlands

A study of the surnames in the 1790 U.S. Census showed that these immigrants went to all the colonies except the small coastal places - Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware. The largest concentration was in southwestern Pennsylvania, and western Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Later their descendants would settle in large number in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

Source: Dollarhide, William. British Origins of American Colonists, 1629-1775. Bountiful, Utah: Heritage Quest Genealogical Services, division of AGLL, Inc., 1998. ISBN 1-877677-69-8

Wisdom Wednesday: Quakers from the North Midlands

The Quakers who came to the Delaware Valley and especially to William Penn’s colony of Pennsylvania were primarily from England’s North Midlands. About two-thirds of this wave of immigrants came from the counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Derby, Nottingham and Staffordshire. The remainder of the settlers were from Bristol and London. (Source: Dollarhide, William. British Origins of American Colonists, 1629-1775. Bountiful, Utah: Heritage Quest Genealogical Services, division of AGLL, Inc., 1998. ISBN 1-877677-69-8)

A notable exception to these geographic generalities is William Penn himself. The son of an admiral, Penn was born in 1644 and lived much of his first twelve years at his family's country house in Wanstead or at school in Chigwell, Essex. Later at Oxford, he was influenced by the Quaker Thomas Loe. Penn refused to attend chapel and was kicked out for nonconformity. His father eventually sent him to Ireland where he had another estate. While there, Penn connected with Loe again in Cork, and by 1667 he had become a convert and regular attender of Quaker meeting.

In 1675, the first settlers came to the Delaware River’s eastern shore in what is now New Jersey but was then known as West Jersey.

On 29 Aug 2012, I posted a blog entry about the origins and records kept by Quakers. You can easily find it in the list of topics under, ‘UK Quakers.’

Wisdom Wednesday: UK Origins of the Virginia Cavaliers

Another migration began as the Great Migration of Puritans to New England was ending. Settlers with more conventional religious beliefs came to the Chesapeake Bay region to supplement the people who had begun settling there in 1607. Between 1641 and 1675, the face of Virginia would change.

England itself was in turmoil. Religious differences between the established church and the Puritans had taken on political overtones. The Civil War of the 1640s brought Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans/roundheads to power, and King Charles I was beheaded. Some of the Royalists or cavaliers needed to leave.

Virginia was an inviting possibility. Sir William Berkeley who had been knighted by the king on a battlefield was made Royal Governor of Virginia in 1641.  When he arrived here, Jamestown had 8000 poor residents. Berkeley quickly set out to reproduce the privileged society he had known in the West Country of England. He attracted many ‘second sons’ who could not inherit land in the UK, but having grown up on an estate, this kind of farming was all they could do.

All counties in England are represented in the wave of migration but again a majority came from two areas – the West Country including the counties of Gloucester, Somerset, Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire and Hampshire; and London and its surrounding counties. George Washington’s great grandfather, John Washington, immigrated to Virginia in 1656. John’s father had been an Essex clergyman. Essex although usually considered part of East Anglia borders on the city of London.

These families, not those of the earlier, original settlers, are known as the ‘first families of Virginia.’

Sources:

Dollarhide, William. British Origins of American Colonists, 1629-1775. Bountiful, Utah: Heritage Quest Genealogical Services, division of AGLL, Inc., 1998. ISBN 1-877677-69-8

Smith, J.R. Pilgrims and Adventurers: Essex (England) and the Making of the United States of America. Chelmsford: Essex Records Office, 1992.

Wisdom Wednesday: British Origins of U.S. Colonists

Finding the UK parish where your ancestors lived is one of genealogy’s most difficult tasks for some of us. If your family came to America before 1837 when civil (government) registration was required, you must rely on the church records in a parish.

This week I found a slim but very helpful book by the famous genealogist, William Dollarhide.

Dollarhide, William. British Origins of American Colonists, 1629-1775. Bountiful, Utah: Heritage Quest Genealogical Services, division of AGLL, Inc., 1998. ISBN 1-877677-69-8

He suggests “if an American today has a British ancestor who arrived during the colonial period, there is a very high chance that he was part of one of these four waves of migrations.”

·         From East Anglia came the Puritans to New England during the Great Migration, 1629 to 1640.

·         From the West Country came the cavaliers and their servants to the Chesapeake, 1641 to 1675.

·         Quakers from the North Midlands came to the Delaware Valley, 1675 to 1715.

·         People from the English-Scottish borderlands came to the rural areas of the colonies 1717 to 1775.

If you know where your colonial ancestor lived in America, you can begin to pinpoint where he came from in Britain.

During the Great Migration about 21,000 Puritans came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Although they came from all counties in England, over half came from East Anglia; Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex plus Cambridge, Hertford, Huntington, Lincoln and parts of Bedford and Kent.

Another group of Puritans came from the west of England where the counties of Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire meet. Their beliefs were less strict and their customs different from the East Anglicans so they moved on to Connecticut, Maine and the Island of Nantucket once on this continent.

If you check my post on 2 Oct 2013, you will find information from a book by J.R. Smith about American connections in Essex, England including John Winthrop and William Pynchon, Puritans in New England, but he also highlights other Essex men in the Delaware Valley and Virginia. For example, William Penn was born in Wanstead, Essex.

Next post: Details of the Quakers and other groups of British colonists who went to specific places in America.