Gloucestershire Archives!

Hello Friends!

I got back from England a couple of months ago. What an experience! While in England I worked at the Gloucestershire Archives. It was amazing! First of all, I don't think that I have ever met more friendly people before. They were absolutely the best. Not to mention all of the fun things they let me help with. I got to handle documents with things like this:

And this:

While at the archive, I worked on a few projects. I helped extract information from a collection of land records (like the pictures above). That was one of my favorite projects because I got to spend so much time practicing reading old handwriting. My other project involved organizing and cataloging a previously uncataloged collection. When I received the documents, they were just a bunch of lose papers in a box. When I was done, they looked like this:

I was proud of the outcome! They even taught me how to package the documents in a way that would best preserve them. It was a lot like wrapping presents!

Interning in England was the best thing ever. If you have the option to leave the country for an internship, you should definitely take advantage of that opportunity. My favorite place in Gloucester was the Gloucester Cathedral. It was so great to be able to walk in such an old and historic building, and to wonder what all has taken place there. The architecture was absolutely stunning. Being able to visit a place that contained so much history and was so old and beautiful was amazing. I was able to see the tomb of Edward II, and greatly appreciated all of the engravings on the floors and walls that marked the deaths of many people (I think I am the only one who took pictures of the floors, and appreciated the genealogical information found there). I went on a few tours of the Cathedral that helped me to understand more about the history of England, and the Church of England, which clarified history that will directly help me in my family history research. There was a portion of a tour that went down to the bottom floor of the Cathedral into a space that was used to hold the bones that were excavated from the burial grounds to make room for others to be buried there. The tour guides gave excellent accounts of the construction of the Cathedral, and also the beliefs of the Church of England and how those beliefs could be seen in various aspects of the Cathedral.

One of the most exhilarating experiences at the Cathedral was climbing the 239 winding, narrow, stairs to the top of the tower at 225 feet. On the way up, we were able to stop and hear the bells ring while being in the bell tower. There is one bell, the three ton Great Peter, which is England’s only remaining medieval great bell. It was hard to imagine the amount of work and the length of time it would have taken for such a big bell to be put into place.

I was also able to hear the choir practice while I was there. The acoustics were amazing and they sounded like angels. I gained a better understanding of English culture by being so up close and personal with the people and their history that surrounds them daily. The Cathedral is still used for Sunday services, and that simple fact showed that England’s past is still very much connected with their present. Every aspect of my time in England was educational and beneficial. It was a great opportunity.

When I wasn't at the archive, I was able to travel to Bath to see the Roman Baths! Other than it being a cold an rainy day, it was a great trip. It was so fun to be in a place whose history dates back so much farther than we can experience here. I constantly felt that I was surrounded by history. It was great!

Overall, one of the best experiences of my education!

Veni, Vidi, Vici

The conjugation isn't quite right, but since Chester was a Roman city we thought it appropriate. We accomplished what we came to do, had a good time doing it, and survived to tell the tale.

Thanks for reading of our adventures. We now turn it over to H, C, and A to recount their tales in Gloucestershire, Shropshire, London, and Cambridge.

In closing, here is a picture of B and K walking off into the internships sunset.

The End is Nigh

Our time in Chester is drawing to a close. Tomorrow will be our last full day in the archives together, though I will do some finishing up on Thursday. In Chester we've read over 600 probate disputes and over 100 wills. We still have parish registers indexes to read and of course hours of analysis await us, but the bulk of our evidence gathering is done.

So we thought we'd end the description of our Chester research with an account of the ecclesiastical court whose records we've been reading. The Cathedral Court of Chester was where the Bishop of the Chester Diocese presided over matters of canon (ecclesiastical) law. Until the 19th century these included matters of religious observance, grievances between lay people, complaints against the clergy, and probate. For our purposes we concentrated on probate cases. Wills began with the phrase "In the Name of God Amen" as seen above and ended with the mark or signature of the testator, as seen here (2 men, 1 woman). Red was the usual color, though if the person was in mourning they might use black. (All of these come from the Cheshire Archives; we've agreed not to reproduce documents, but I figured the signatures are not much use by themselves and don't violate our agreement.)

The real bonus of being in Chester was the opportunity of seeing the best preserved example of the Bishop's Court (also called Consistory Court) as depicted here. Other than the lighting fixture everything in this room was as it would have been when our 18th century people brought their grievances or wills to prove to the court.

The Gloucester Consistory Court was held in a corner of the cathedral now occupied by the gift shop, so it is difficult to imagine what once occurred there. But here in Chester, there was the table where the parties proponent and their advocates laid out their claims, all before the chancellor sitting above them. Too use a technical phrase, it was pretty cool. And nifty.

Hello from London!

Hi everyone! Dr. Harris asked me to contribute to the blog and share some of my experiences.

My time here in England so far has been fantastic! I love the people, sights, and history that surrounds me 24/7. It has been a marvelous experience that I still can't believe is taking place.

This past week I traveled from London to Shropshire to do some personal family history research as part of my internship. I first traveled to Ludlow where my ancestors, James and Ann Price, lived. After having researched this line for about a year now, this trip was very special to me. I stepped off the train onto the abandoned platform, and as the train faded away behind me, I was left with just the sound of birds chirping around me and a sign saying "Welcome to Ludlow" in front of me. I couldn't believe I was there!



I then toured the remarkable, fantasy-like town, stopping at all the important landmarks and strolling through the streets and "shuts" (a.k.a. "allies"). It was incredible to walk where they walked and to witness what life was like for them. It gave me a whole new perspective and appreciation.

Here is a picture of me on the street where my ancestor's lived, a shot of the town, and a picture of me in front of the St Lawrence Ludlow Parish Church.




I then took a tour of the castle ruins still standing from the 12th century! (You know a castle is old when people in the 1700s called it "a relic.") I climbed the tiny, warped, muddy stairs up to the top of the castle tower and was blown away by the vista before me. I instantly fell in love and have claimed Ludlow as one of my all time favorite places in the world. It is remarkable to believe my ancestors left this for the promises that awaited them in the New World.











Lastly I spent three days at the Shropshire Archives in the medieval town of Shrewsbury. This was another marvelous experience that I could not have had anywhere else. Not only did I gain a better understanding of my ancestors' world by researching primary documents, but I also learned a lot about different types of records: how they look, what they contain, how they are useful, etc. I also gained a better understanding of the archive process and how best to maximum my time there. I could not have asked for a better experience!

Well cheerio for now!

Liverpool, a Bus, and Faeces

Saturday we journeyed across the Mersey to Liverpool (sadly we did not ferry across, but bussed across in a tunnel). Our sole purpose was to view the famous Liverpool Docks -a site from which over 9 million people emigrated during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Among those 9 million were B's ancestors: Baldwick and Crane, K's ancestors: Lewis, Wright, and Meickle, and my ancestors: Harris, Parkinson. We stood at the dock overlooking the Mersey and the Atlantic Ocean in the distance awfully glad that we get to fly, not sail, across the pond. We had our own taste of interminable journeys on the bus journey to and from Liverpool. On the way there we were delayed by the bus breaking down and, once we got on the replacement bus, getting stuck behind a Roma horse-drawn wagon. Then once we wanted to leave Liverpool, the bus, which was supposed to come every 20 minutes, didn't come for an hour. We were entertained, however, by the increasingly drunken football revellers making their way to the pubs to watch the England-US World Cup match. The trip home was also slower than expected. Once again we were glad to be on modern conveniences because if this had been the 19th century the Donner Party overtones would have been disconcerting.

Now for the feces (faeces in British) portion of our story. At the Maritime Museum at the Albert Dock they had a display on customs officers. One station demonstrated how customs officials must be very vigilant in deciphering pure imported goods from those cut with cheap materials. For example, the difference between genuine tea leaves from grass clippings often mixed with tea leaves to increase, illegally, the profits of the seller. Well, apparently some clever smugglers mix legitimate goods with fecal matter. But that's not the best part. The best part is the fact that the museum chose this item, not grass clippings, to use in the display - with the encouragement to smell the faeces to determine if you could tell the difference between that and coffee. Really? We abstained from participating in this demonstration; we decided that learning we couldn't tell the difference between poo-poo and coffee would be a distressing things to learn.

Why Our Lives Might Be in Danger

In case you missed it, today is the World Cup match between England and the US. We couldn't have missed it because England flags are flying everywhere. And because the pub downstairs from our room at the Pied Bull held a FIFA trivia night a couple of nights ago. They would ask trivia and then play obnoxious American pop songs while people tried to figure out the answers. (Sort of a drunken version of "Jeopardy.")

The archive is closed today so we are traveling by bus to Liverpool (about an hour north-ish of Chester). Our Liverpudlian cab drive told us he wouldn't go to Liverpool on World Cup day if he were us. Uh-oh.

We hope we will be safe touring the docks and taking photos at Abbey Road, but if the US beats England today we may have to pretend to be Canadians for the rest of our stay.

500 and Counting

We have been at the Cheshire Archives 3.5 days and today we read our 500th probate dispute from the Chester Diocese. The real beauty is that we get to do this in the original documents. We sit in a row at Tables 1, 2, 3, each with a bundle of case files (like you see before K, above). I enter basic info on an excel spreadsheet, and if the cases contain the info we are looking for we take a digital photo of the entire case. It has worked out incredibly well.While the disputes are interesting as examples of family and financial conflict, they are also full of incidental details that surprise, entertain, and educate us. B fell in love with a man's estate inventory that listed, by title, each of his massive amount of books. K found a will forged by what could only have been the dimmest forger ever to appear before the diocesan court. He went to all the trouble to forge a will, witnesses and all, but then dated it for nine days after the death of the testator. That will was truly from beyond the grave. I was intrigued by the woman, who when her husband died married her servant. She had five children and all of his and her labor went to their upkeep. When the servant husband died, someone tried to sue her to get money from his estate. She claimed poverty because he had been a day laborer and because she still had to support his two, uh, spurious children. He sounds like a real catch.

The archives close at 5pm, but the sun doesn't set until 10pm. So, we stroll around Chester viewing the lovely Tudor-Stuart architecture and pleasantly squabbling about where to eat dinner. (A piece of advice, avoid the Mexican food in Chester.)

Better than an Alarm Clock

Turns out staying in the oldest coaching inn in Chester has unexpected benefits. For example, we no longer require alarm clocks. Between 6:30 and 7:00 each morning we can count on a variety of dulcet urban sounds waking us. Garbage trucks gather trash (a task they begin early, but seem incapable of completing in a timely manner). Beer delivery trucks appear and unload giant metal kegs onto the cobble stones (a perfectly charming noise early in the morning). And the bonus round is when the guy with the chain saw wandered around outside our windows. Okay, okay, it was probably a leaf blower, but it sounded just like a chain saw. If there were large redwoods in the vicinity of our inn, this sound would not have been as disturbing as it was.

Latin Matters

If only what we are reading at the Chester Archives and Local Studies was this easy to read. We can't reproduce an example here because we promised not to, but rest assured we have hundreds of photos of 18th century probate disputes written in Latin.

In case you're wondering Latin is a difficult language. I still have nightmares about heaven requiring correctly identified fifth declension nouns. But a surprisingly small amount of Latin, once learned, can get you through an enormous amount of ecclesiastical and legal history of early modern England. (It is also surprising that the FHL Latin word list doesn't contain some very important words - you know, like "sister" or "brother.") By the way, knowing what a thorn is matters and abbreviations rule the day.

So for those of you slacking on your Latin here is the list of words most useful when studying probate disputes, defamation, and penance cases (B and K will bring you Cadbury chocolate if you correctly translate these words).

Defuncti, frater, filius, relict, vidua, uxor, parochia, coram, apud, and femina non grava.

All scatological, spurious, and vulgar references, not to mention all words which question one's lineage and legitimacy, were helpfully left in English.

Oh the Difference a Vowel Makes

B was reading an inconstancy case (look it up) today and read aloud that Willaim so-and-so was "threshing" in the barn. This did not seem particularly scandalous to K and I. Then B clarified that he was "thrashing" in the barn. And he wasn't alone. (This will all make more sense if you looked up "inconstancy.")

Cheshire Archives - The Naughty Bits

Okay, they're not really naughty, but today B and K repeatedly said various words that had they said them in a pub or bus stop may have gotten them beat to a pulp. Nothing like reading eighteenth-century defamation and matrimonial disputes to expose one to a variety of colorful language. The kind of colorful language I shan't reproduce here. All that matters is we found a genuine case of sibling incest. I know, I know - you're thinking that's disgusting (and it is), but if you have read numerous articles and books on fears of sibling incest, but never seen any evidence of its real occurrence, this would be the highlight of your day too. That was probably the worst thing we read today, but there was plenty of wanton behaviour and neighborly brawling.

On the Roof with the Earl

For an American not many things seem more surreal than standing on a five hundred-year-old manor house in the midst of a tour directed by current, titled, owner of the house. Yes, that's right. We came to see a three-hundred-year-old diary (the original couldn't be located, but the Earl kindly made copies of the transcript pages that were missing from my copy), but instead we ended up on a tour - a tour that went decidedly beyond the scope of the normal public access to the house. It ended on the roof overlooking the large grounds at Stanway. We ranged through the house seeing where an 18th century midwife had etched her name into a pane of glass, discussing the horrible Victorian wing added to the house and when it subsequently, mercifully, was torn down in the twentieth century, and admiring the beautiful drawing room that had been completely refurbished in the 1720s. We then strolled past the 17th century entry gate, the medieval church, and stood in the tithe barn (built in 1370, thank you very much). We also stood in a sort of sitting room where the Earl opened a drawer that produced a bundle of letters and a lock of hair one of his ancestors cut from his head when his wife died. In 1755. He was incredibly tolerant of our goggled-eyed staring and clearly enchanted with his family's history.

Thursday also included stops in Upper Slaughter (nope, I 'm not making that up, it's just up the road from Lower Slaughter and just beyond Lower Swell, which is, of course, next to Upper Swell), Adelstrop, Stow-on-the-Wold, and over into Oxfordshire to see Chipping Norton and Swerford. These villages and towns are all in the picturesque Cotswolds. The day was perfect for travel and we were able to collect photos of the houses and grave markers for the Travell family.

That was Thursday. Friday was spent much more prosaically at microfilm readers deciphering property details from 18th century probates. A project that concluded today - in much haste as today was our last day in the Gloucestershire Archives.

Now that we've exhausted the archival possibilities of Gloucestershire we will see a few sites today and tomorrow before journeying onto Chester. We will arrive in Chester bright and early Monday morning as soon as the archive opens. In the meantime we will lunch in Cheltenham - a place once described as "an eligible residence for single gentlewomen" - and visit Tewkesbury Abbey.

Welcome to Gloucester

We spent over twenty hours getting here; we traveled by plane, train, and foot; we sloughed off the detritus of jetlag. Now the real work begins - research! (Yes, once again, that is as cool as it sounds.)

So far we have counted and recorded the list of probate disputes from Gloucester Diocese, looked up the history of several eighteenth-century country estates, looked at the diaries of Anne Travell, Thomas Hughes, Thomas Bridges Hughes, and Elizabeth Sharp Prowse, and read some letters from the Jackson family. I cannot included pictures here because we don't have permission to reproduce them.

We can, however, post pictures from yesterday's tour of the Gloucestershire Archives. Our archivist friend kindly showed us the acres of storage rooms (strong rooms) that must have meticulous care given to their temperature and humidity. They, through a genius trick of creating cave-like rooms within the larger structure, have done this without needing air conditioning. The funny thing is that there is one room that must have air conditioning - the one with modern documents. 800-year old parchment and paper does just fine with "benign neglect," but photos and recordings won't survive long at all without careful preservation.

The real highlight of the day was the discovering by B and K of Punter christening information in late 17th century Gloucester. See them here reading the original parish registers. (And yes, K impressed the archivist by knowing that the parish registers were on parchment because of a law passed during Elizabeth I's reign.)

First We Have to Get There

At long last we (myself and two students - who I shall call K and B) are headed to England for a few weeks of research. We were meant to go in April, but the volcano put an end to that. Now we will spend the bulk of June scrounging through old probate documents looking for siblings squabbling over inheritance. (Yes, it is as cool as it sounds. I'm not kidding.)

I am sure you are thinking, why does this merit a blog? I ask myself the same question. Mostly it comes from the fact that I am absolutely certain many exceptionally odd things will happen during this trip and I want a place to memorialize it. A trip once postponed by apocalyptic volcanic eruption must contain inherent wonkiness. Last time I went to England there was biblical flooding, Mr. Hemmings and the ice cream cone (a sage worthy of its own blog), the last Harry Potter book, an awkward dinner for one at a romantic get-away hotel, and the realization that just because Mount St. Michael might be a tourist site, and just because you have traveled by train and foot to see it, doesn't mean it would be open on a Saturday during tourist season. But I was generally traveling alone and blog-free and now there is no chronicle of that visit. What better way to teach about historical records than to create one as we go?

Also, I think this will be a great way for the students and I to share the joy of research (again I'm not kidding) with students contemplating an international internship. And it might just serve to convince our families that we really are working - even if K thinks we are going to weekend in Amsterdam.

B and K leave today and I fly out tomorrow. Barring plagues of locusts we should be well into research by Tuesday afternoon.