Back again

 It has been a while. 

I can recommend the IHGS correspondence course in genealogy which has taken up quite a lot of time. 24 lectures completed at your own pace. Naturally some lectures are of varying amount of interest but there has always been something to be learned. The course is now nearly finished.

The book is also being updated from the 2020 edition - again occupying a lot of time. How can you check chapters a couple of times and still find typos and poor grammar? (no need to answer)

I also thought it would be of interest to produce a database on the lines of Custodian. The sqlite database was relatively easy to get going but a front-end for it has proved more challenging so the use of DBeaver has proved most useful in providing a place to enter and organise data.  Sqlite studio and DB browser are other apps that have proved really useful for that exercise too.

After another two trips to Lincoln archive and one to Essex archive there are many documents to read properly and transcribe.

In the past I have tended to only enter families into the Master Genealogist (and from there the web-site) when there has been enough of a group. I think this will change to include more individuals and couples, if only to get them recorded.

Another concern has been the Alce families of Sussex. Alce was a contraction of Alice and the two (with Allis etc.) were interchangeable for a time. Then the spelling appears to have become permanent - has the pronounciation of the name changed over time? Some early Alce/Allis families will be recorded to get going. 

Audrey Allis and "The Cyclist" magazine

 Some letters for sale on ebay recently caught my eye. They were to Audrey Allis from some servicemen and addressed to contact corner at "The Bicycle" magazine.

It seems that Audrey was a pen-friend to a large number of serviceman interested in cycling during WW2 and after the war she organised a large gathering or gatherings of those friends.

She was mentioned in the Daily Mirror of 6 April 1946 as the hostess of the "contact corner" party at Bayswater, and a photograph was included. A note about the party in "The cyclist" of June 1946 says that her uncle was the writer "Ragged Staff" aka Reginald Burgess "Rex" Coley who wrote a great many articles and some books on cycling. Rex was born in Walsall in 1898 and married Annie Palmer in 1929.

Who was Audrey? There are few candidates but after the party mentioned she seems to have disappeared with no references back to the magazine.

A wedding notice from 1837

 A marriage notice from the Yorkshire Gazette of 8 April 1837 was a little out of the ordinary:

"The blooming bride has withstood the blasts of upwards of fifty winters, whilst her lord has not yet escaped from the thraldom of his legal infancy,—being, we understand, above thirty years her junior."

 

Love as a surname or forename

 Having an ancestor's surname as a christian name is obviously useful in following family lines and can provide useful pointers.

Having come across Love as a surname (7114 of them in 1881 and well spread across the country) could Love as a forename indicate a family connection, or is it a christian name in its own right? (In 1881 there were 344 instances).

If used as a middle name is that more likely to be a naming after an ancestor?

Nurse children and Chrysome children

 I have found a number of burials in Essex for "Nurse children" (example: Roydon in the 1600s). I have seen an article on this but it still did not really explain how the children came from London to certain parishes in Essex or why. Can anyone help?

Another reference in a parish was the burials of some "chrysome" children. I have just found this: A child who has died before it's mother was "churched" and the Chrisom cloth (placed on the child at the time of it's baptism becames it's shroud. The entry in the parish register was then for a "Chrisom child" [source: The local historians glossary of words and terms by Joy Bristow]

I don't remember seeing these terms in any Lincolnshire parish register.

Goodman Allis

 In searching some parish registers for Essex, England I came across some people referred to as goodman or goody in the 1600s. One entry for Waltham Holy Cross in 1634 is an example "Richard Wesley the grandchild of goodman Allis of lipats hill was buried the 9 day" (June 1634).

I had not heard of this term before (let alone see it in a parish register) but it was apparently fairly common in the 1600s in puritan circles and was also used in America at the same time according to this web-site

https://donnagawell.com/2017/08/14/if-you-were-a-puritan-what-would-be-your-title/

A more thorough treatment is given in a paper by Norman H. Dawes, "Titles as Symbols of Prestige in Seventeenth-Century New England" from The William and Mary Quarterly,Vol. 6, No. 1 (Jan., 1949), pp. 69-83 (available via JSTOR).

As far as England goes was it a term just used in places with a strong puritan following or did it have more general use? I have not seen it in Lincolnshire parish records and in Essex it wasn't used in that many parishes. Interesting...

Essex, a soldiers burial

 Essex, England

In looking at the parish registers for West Tilbury, Essex there were a number of burials in the 1700s of soldiers from the fort which guarded the Thames. One very noticeable and sad observation was that they frequently had no names, just a note in the register saying "a soldier from the fort was buried on [date]" and sometimes followed by "another soldier was buried...."

Why did they have no names, especially since they were our soldiers? 

Quite a few soldiers buried were named and with rank, so what set the others apart?