I am very excited to announce that I am one of the speakers for All About that Place 2024! It will begin very soon (27 September-06 October), so do look out for my talk. I am participating on behalf of the University of Strathclyde (Strathclyde Institute for Genealogical Studies) and will be talking about unexpected discoveries and how I have handled one in particular. For more information of how to take part, you can find further information here.
I will also be attending the APG Conference (Association of Professional Genealogists) next week (19-21 September), which is fully online and promises to host some fascinating speakers and topics.
For today’s blog post, I wanted to share with you all three websites that I have discovered recently. They do all have a Medieval theme, but I hope they show that Medieval research is not all dusty documents and trying to read Latin. They are by no means ‘new,’ but they are new to me. That just goes to show how much there is for us all still to learn- there is so much out there to discover!
The Gough Map
The first source I wanted to share is not a database as such, but a map. It is called the Gough Map of Great Britain and is considered to be the earliest map of Great Britain (as we would recognise it). There is much more information about the map on its dedicated website, but it seems that to this day, its origins are still unclear. Who made it? Why was it made? Exactly when was it made? Researchers are still looking for definite answers to these questions, but they believe that the earliest text dates from the 1370s. Other text has been dated to the 15th century, which suggests that the map was in use over a fair amount of time.[1]
The Map itself was part of the Linguistic Geographies project, which (in brief terms) hoped to learn more about the map itself and to present a searchable, digital version for all to be able to access.[2] The team was made up of many individuals from Queen’s University, Belfast, University of Oxford and King’s College, London,[3] with research apparently still ongoing.[4]
What can it do?
The website lets the user search for a modern place name and will then bring that up on the Gough Map. Beware that only a place name on the map will be returned. It sounds obvious, but not every place name of every town, city and village is included! There are a couple of ways to search: either through the Digital Map tab or the Search tab. The former is perhaps a bit more exciting, as it shows the map alongside the search box. Something else to be aware of, is the form of the map itself. To our view, Britain looks as if it has fallen over and is shown on its side! It takes a bit of getting used to, as does the level of accuracy. For the time, it is pretty impressive, but it is worth remembering the time in which it was made and the lack of modern tools that we have today.
Coming from the South West of England, naturally I wanted to see how that part of the country was represented. Both Somerset and Dorset were clearly named in red. I could also see Bristol and Exeter clearly marked. Dorchester was a bit more difficult and I had to use the search function to pinpoint that one- some of the text is not clear, due to its age. As mentioned above, not all towns and villages are marked, and that seems to be particularly the case in the South West. The map is a bit more detailed the further east and north you go, but it is interesting to see recognisable place names that have survived all of this time.
It has to be said that it probably won’t appeal to those not interested in mapping or with a specific purpose in mind, but I found it a fun diversion for a little while. I think it is worth exploring even if it is just to marvel at how remarkable it is for a document of its age. There are also various blog posts on the website, as well as some interpretive essays (under the Contexts tab) which give some further insight into the map and how it has been used in research so far.
The Southampton Tudor Project (Tudor Revels)
The next website is more of a database and particularly useful for those with ancestors or a general interest in Southampton (Hampshire, England). Focusing on the Tudor period of history, the website contains information for Southampton individuals between 1485-1603 and (as it notes on the website), it takes advantage of the high volume of Southampton related records that survive from that time.[5]
Like the Gough Map project website, Tudor Revels has many articles of interest relating to research performed with the available records, as well as a very useful page of links to other websites which relate to Southampton and Hampshire research. But the most amazing thing is the Records page. As the website also states, the goal was to reach 5,000 individual record entries by the end of 2013, so that gives you some idea of the scope of the project! Obviously, as researchers we should be checking the original sources wherever possible (we are all only human and errors can creep in- it is also good practice too), but as a starting point for this period of Southampton’s history, this is a wonderful resource!
I know that when I first began researching in the Medieval and Early Modern period I did feel a bit all at sea, as the sources available are so different to the ones I had been using for later periods. I feel that there is also a slight shift in mindset too. Instead of being given a good amount of information from records such as the Census, you do have to pull out smaller snippets of information from a real variety of resources. Then comes the evaluation as to whether those snippets of information are related and can help to connect the family you are working on. So a project such as this is most helpful for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it does make the records both more accessible in terms of understanding and use (the step of extracting information from the records has been performed, with any potential language barrier being overcome) and also for those not located within travelling distance to the archives where they are held. Secondly, if an individual appears multiple times over the years, the search function should be able to capture that. This also makes it quicker for the researcher in the first place, as they do not have to spend the time trawling through the records themselves. Thirdly, there always seems to be a ‘References’ tab on each person’s entry so that the original could be accessed and checked in the future.
Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash.
Not all Medieval Genealogy is like this!
What can it do?
It is true that there are always caveats and that is the case for any resource. There still needs to be an evaluation of the entries found, to assess the relevance to the research being performed. Also, we do have to remember that there is the possibility of human error in entering data, not to mention errors made in the original record (it can happen!), spelling differences, palaeographical issues, translation issues and probably others which I have not mentioned. That all being said, this is a resource that is still well worth exploring for yourself.
There is the ability for a simple or advanced search, the latter enabling the use of specified search terms including name, dates, nationality, parish and trade. There are also currently 20,412 individual entries (ordered by name) which is more than a fair amount.[6] Sadly, my target surname of ROWSELL (which I always use as it is useful for my One Name Study) returned no results at all. That is not surprising, as my theory is that the name is much more Somerset based in general. However, picking the name ‘Robert’ at random, returned over 800 results, all of which can be sorted by date (ascending or descending). Each person entry contains timeline, details, finances, and biography tabs (as well as the references tab). Not all of these tabs are populated, but the timeline for one Robert a Bere records entries that could be attributed to him between 1513-1528. This Robert was a carter and possibly born in around 1490. It seems that he took trips carrying goods to Sarum (Salisbury, Dorset) on a fair few occasions and the sources for this information can be found in the References tab. Sometimes I feel that the references could be a bit fuller, so that they connect more easily with the bibliography of records used on the website. But, I would certainly recommend having a look if you have ancestors from Southampton, or are interested in the area during the Tudor period.
England’s Immigrants
The final website I want to talk about in this post is another database of names, but as the title suggests, this concerns those who immigrated to England in the Medieval period. This project has captured names from a slightly earlier period to the Tudor Revels, as the target period here is 1330-1550. It is a joint project between the Universities of York and Sheffield, along with The National Archives (Great Britain) and the Humanities Research Institute.[7]
Now, many of these websites and databases are not necessarily created specifically with genealogists in mind, but the outcome is that they can be useful to those from multiple disciplines. Historians researching all aspects of this period of history would no doubt find it useful, as well as us genealogists. Imagine in this case, that you came across an ancestor who seems to have been a migrant in this period. This would be a good resource in which to help with research into that ancestor. In modern thinking, we perhaps think that migration is a newer phenomenon and that our ancestors did not move around a great deal at all. That may have been the case for some. I certainly have ancestors who stayed generation after generation in the same village or area. But there is always an exception which proves the rule. There are those that did move around more that we thought they would have. Recently reading The Book of Margery Kempe[8] really brought that home to me. My thoughts on that work would fill another blog post I am sure, but simply put, she was a Medieval woman alive in the early 1400s and undertook many religious pilgrimages. She travelled to Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela in Spain. She travelled to what we would now consider to be Germany and that is not to forget the amount of travelling she undertook around England. My point here, is that people can and did travel, so it is not so impossible to think that some of our ancestors could have been immigrants from other lands, even during this earlier period.
What can it do?
The England’s Immigrants website contains around 64,000 names which are fully searchable. The resources used come from a variety of sources, but the one which made me aware of this website, is taxation documents.[9] There were various taxes on immigrants into England and where these documents survive, they can tell us a little about those who migrated into the country from elsewhere. There is a detailed background section on the website which goes into this in more detail,[10] but the search function works much like the Tudor Revels project website. There is a simple or advanced search, the latter enabling the searcher to specify things such as name, dates, occupation, title, relationships, nationality, document type- the list goes on. There is also the option to browse the entries instead. It needs to be remembered though, that at this time, it was not just those who came from the continent or beyond who were considered immigrants, but also anyone coming in from Scotland or Ireland too.
One aspect I did like regarding the search function of the database, was the option to filter by place of residence. I was then able to narrow by county, so naturally I chose Somerset. There are not as many entries for Somerset as for other counties (I believe the sources have not all survived quite as well), but there were entries right through from the 1330s to the 1540s. There were also a range of nationalities represented, including ‘Dutch’ (which may mean German more than Dutch), Norman, Irish, Hollander, Breton and Fleming to name a few. The largest group by far were classified as French- they accounted for 91 of the 745 entries. It is worth bearing in mind here, that some entries may not have a defined nationality attached and that the nationalities used may be slightly different to what we would think of them as today.
Each individual record contains (where available) name, place of residence, place of origin, nationality, duration of stay, the document the information was taken from (with much fuller references!) and links to other people or entries. I was interested to find a man from Picardy named Peter le Monyer who was resident in Wells, Somerset in 1337. He came from Amiens and was a domicile in the household of William de Montagu. A bit closer to home, a Utrechter named John Vanuttricioum was resident in Crewkerne, Somerset in 1436. There was also a Norman from Rouen name Clement Rowsell in 1544, who had been resident in England for 20 years. I see a possible future avenue of research for a connection between ROWSELL and potentially French origins in terms of spelling and local corruption of that spelling…!
Overall though, this is another website I would recommend, even if it is just to explore the early immigrants to your own area.
In conclusion…
I am sure there is much more that I could say about all three of these websites, but I will finish here by insisting you go and explore them yourselves. Until next time!
[4] Bodleian Libraries. The Gough Map of Great Britain: Home- The Gough Map of Great Britain and its Making.http://www.goughmap.org/ : accessed 02 November 2022.
[5] The Southampton Tudor Project. Tudor Revels Southampton; About & Links- The Southampton Tudor Project: From Records to Revels. http://www.tudorrevels.co.uk/links.php : accessed 06 November 2022.
[7] England’s Immigrants 1330 – 1550: Resident Aliens in the Late Middle Ages. Home: Welcome to the England’s Immigrants database.https://www.englandsimmigrants.com/ : accessed 06 November 2022.
[8] Windeatt, Barry, ed. (2004) The Book of Margery Kempe. Annotated edition. Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer Ltd.
[9] England’s Immigrants 1330 – 1550: Resident Aliens in the Late Middle Ages. Home: Welcome to the England’s Immigrants database.https://www.englandsimmigrants.com/ : accessed 06 November 2022.
Welcome to my latest blog post! It certainly has been a little while since the last one, but life has conspired against me being able to write recently. Life has been extremely busy, what with client work, tutoring work with the University of Strathclyde and I have also moved house! So all in all, a lot has been going on in the last few months.
However, I do now have some time to share my thoughts with you all again and I am very excited to do so! So what have I been up to otherwise? Well I am continuing research on my One Name Study. I read an email from the Guild of One Name Studies recently and liked how the author had described their ONS as a marathon and not a sprint. That certainly applies to mine too. After having put together a fairly complete database for Somerset Rowsell births last year (see my previous post on the subject), I have been extending that to Rowsell births for the rest of the country. To begin with, I did think about doing that after I had completed databases for Somerset marriages and deaths too, but I was on a roll and decided to keep with the births for the moment! It is going slowly but steadily, as there is quite a lot of data to deal with, but hopefully that will be complete soon. Then of course, I have to think about how to share the information with you all. GOONS does have guidance on that, so that is something else I will explore in the upcoming months.
I have also been delving further into the research I undertook for my MSc Dissertation and have been ploughing on with trying to transcribe and translate Medieval Inquisitions Post Mortem, specifically for Somerset women. Women can be an under researched group of individuals at times and the IPMs themselves certainly need a great deal of further research, as so many have not even been transcribed (let alone translated). This sadly makes them pretty inaccessible for the researcher in general, so I hope to be able to contribute (eventually!) to rectifying that situation. Sometimes you just need a catalyst to get you back into researching or thinking about a particular area again, and mine had to have been the talk I recently presented for the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy. This was based on the IPM work I have finished to date and was a great start to doing in person talks again! I am due to give the same subject to the Frome Family History Group in March next year, which I am very excited about. I met the group when I attended the Frome Family History Day back in May this year.
Some of you may remember my previous blog posts regarding one Gouly de Chaville (click here and here for a link to these posts) and the legacy of his surname. At the time of writing, there was so much more that I could have said, so I hope to write some more about him. I hope to do some more research on his grandchildren and great-grandchildren too, as there is some exciting research to be done in Australian and South African sources. One day, perhaps this might even lead to another One Name Study, but one step at a time! It will have to go in the queue behind my other idea for an ONS: Incledon. That surname is another story altogether, but it is a side of my own family that has presented quite the brick wall, so I have been wondering if an ONS approach might help.
There are of course many other things that I might be writing about as the year goes on (forgive me but I think in Academic years rather than calendar years at the moment!), but everyone has to start somewhere, especially after such a break as I have had. The other problem is that there are so many ideas to put down, that finding the time to explore them all is difficult. So in the vein of taking it step by step and starting somewhere, I will probably concentrate on the main three above. Due to time constraints, I won’t be able to post quite as much as I have in previous years, but do look out for my posts on the first week of the month.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Shersca Genealogy!
It seems like only yesterday that I was writing the same message to you all last year. The time has absolutely flown by.
I was not able to create a final blog post for the year as I had hoped- things have just been so very busy. But, I still have an idea in mind, so you will see that in the New Year instead.
There are various ideas for blog posts that I have planned- some as a continuation of ones I have already written and some new. I will not say too much now though. I will let you be surprised instead!
So, all that remains is for me to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I thank you all for supporting my blog and taking the time to read it! Let us hope that next year really will be better (and will contain lots of genealogy and family history).
It is very satisfying when a blog post comes together unexpectedly. All of a sudden, something sparks an idea and off you go! I had not intended to write a second instalment about the meeting of Archaeology and Genealogy, but here it is!
The beginning of an idea
The first part of this idea explored the presentations of the Society of Antiquaries Conference: Seals and the People of Britain. Out of all of the presentations, of most interest to me was Helen Geake’s Women and their Seals. A discussion of the seals catalogued by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Helen Geake’s presentation introduced me to a further aspect of Medieval history and one that may be useful for research into Medieval ancestors. This post is a continuation of the idea of Genealogy working together with other disciplines, but this time in the area of burials.
Burials, but a different approach?
Burials are of course events that genealogists are very familiar with. They are a fundamental event that becomes even more so before the introduction of Civil Registration in 1837. Therefore, they are nothing new to genealogists and you may wonder what more I can say about them in this post?
The point I hope to make, is how we can improve our work in genealogy by considering separate, disparate aspects of research all together. The end result could then be a better understanding of not only our ancestors, but of their way of life and how they understood their world. This is something that we can then pass on to our clients, to help them better understand their own ancestors. Additionally, we might just realise how much we can learn from other historically based disciplines and how much they can learn from us.
Photo by Meta Zahren on Unsplash.
Another meeting of Archaeology and Genealogy
Earlier this month, I was lucky to get tickets to Professor Alice Roberts’ latest tour, discussing her book ‘Ancestors.’[1] I am sure you can understand the appeal for a genealogist of a title like that! I am by no means an archaeologist, but I have always found that area of historical research fascinating. In some ways, it is the polar opposite to genealogy- we examine documentary records to research our ancestors and archaeologists use objects to do the same. If you have ever watched programs like Time Team, you will know that the two are not always mutually exclusive either. Digs that focussed upon uncovering buildings or structures within written history often used documentary records to aid the investigation (where possible).
So naturally, I jumped at the chance to hear Alice Roberts speak. As you may expect from someone with her experience, the presentation was engaging and accessible, especially for those of us who aren’t so familiar with the archaeological world. I am still in the process of reading the book, but the presentation dealt with some of the subjects included within. These subjects are seven specific burials and more specifically, what they can tell us about our ancestors. Whether that is what the bones can tell us, what the grave goods can tell us, or what the DNA can tell us. The latter reminded me of Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived,[2] which also goes to show how all of these different disciplines are interlinked; DNA research, Archaeology, Anthropology, Historical research in general and of course, Genealogy. We simply focus on different facets of the same entity.
What can genealogists learn from other disciplines?
Whilst Alice Roberts focuses upon burials from pre-history in ‘Ancestors’ (as a Somerset person, ‘Cheddar Man’ is of great interest) it got me thinking about how genealogists consider burials. As I mentioned above, we are used to using written burial records, which do not always contain a great deal of information. We then have to assess these in relation to other records to ascertain the likelihood that the record pertains to the person we are looking for. But what other techniques do we use, or even could we use?
Obviously, as genealogists we are not going to go around digging up graves. Most of us would not have the requisite skill and the ethics surrounding excavation is a big consideration and best left to the professionals! So, I am not suggesting that we dig up our ancestors, but the next best thing for us are grave memorials. We all know that in general, the wealthier the person, the more likely it is for them to have a headstone or some other memorial. But what do we do with a memorial if we find one (the issue of transcriptions surviving where the original memorial has not, is something to discuss another day)?
What else can burials tell us?
Dutifully, we gather the name, the age and place of death and burial, along with the names and information of any other family members recorded. But do we always go further than that? Do we think about the way in which information is recorded or whether it looks particularly intricate for instance? What about the location of the burial or memorial, or even the location of the church/graveyard it is in? On the other hand, what about the lack of a memorial? Small things such as this may indicate a particular religious persuasion, the level of wealth and status or perhaps even how the subject was thought of by the people left behind. A particular inscription (biblical or otherwise) may suggest that the person was well loved or thought of. On the other hand, the subject may have chosen the inscription themselves. In some cases we may never know, but does this show pragmatism or narcissism?!
I have spoken about my summer trip to Derbyshire a lot in my last few posts (it obviously had an impact), and I am reminded of this again. Chelmorton (the village I was staying in), of course had its own church surrounded by graves. I happened to notice the ornate nature of many of the headstones- indeed they were certainly more ornate than many I have seen on my trips around Somerset graveyards. But what does this mean? Does it mean that those being buried in Chelmorton were wealthier? Or is it an example of a tradition of using more ornate headstones in that particular area? Some more research would be needed to understand the differences here and why they may have come about. It does indicate though that yet another aspect beyond collecting family information is that of wider societal views and trends.
A meeting of more than archaeology and genealogy
So, whereas Alice Roberts is largely interested in pre-history, the techniques of looking at more than just the ‘bones’ as it were, is still applicable to genealogy and family history. Perhaps there are sources that historians and archaeologists use that genealogists could also utilise (and vice versa)? Future research would be needed to fully explore this, but one example is the Portable Antiquities Scheme that I mentioned earlier. Not only does it contain seals (of various dates and materials), but coins, jewellery, vessels of different purposes and much more. This can all help us to understand the world of our ancestors. As Alice Roberts uses bones and grave goods, we can use documents, memorials, objects and history to help in our understanding.
We may be purveyors of family trees, but really we are also historians and social ones to some extent too. Without the ‘why’ surrounding the names and the dates, there is not as much meaning. What many people enjoy are the stories, and without investigating the wider background, the stories of our ancestors are left a little bare. There is so much more that cross-disciplinary work can tell us, whether that is local/social history, archaeology or DNA research.
