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.)