Research Forum

My great grandfather was William Tripp Marshall married to Isabella Clara Gray.  His son my grandfather Victor Launcelot Marshall had several siblings.  His mother passed away, the male side of the family moved in with Victors sister and her husband, The Cousens.  The 2 younger daughters Violet and Mary appear to have been sent to a school in Enfield Middlesex. I am curious why this would have occurred.  
I wonder if anyone can enlighten me.  Would they have come back to Weston after finishing school. 

regards Sue 

I have just come across an entry in a Welsh paper dated 1950 concerning a Mrs CRITCHARD, of Axmouth Cottage donating funds to an organ in the local church. This is in memory of "her son Gunner Thomas LEWIS who died last year in Singapore"(CRITCHARD is an Axmouth name)

I have found a Thomas Brian Lewis born 1927 (no mother's maiden name given on GRO) in Bridgend District & died in Singapore in 1949 aged 22yrs. However I have not found any Lewis marrying a Critchard except for one in 1939 when Irene CRICHARD married Glandwyr LEWIS. Irene was not born until 1918 so could not be the mother of TB LEWIS

Any thoughts

Hubert STOKES was born in Birmingham in January 1881 - mother's maiden name PALMER.

He was just 2 months old on the 1881 census of Birmingham with his father, Charles STOKES – born in Portbury, a Policeman and his mother, Eleanor.  Charles and Eleanor (a widow) were married in Bristol in 1877.  Only the last two children on that census were Charles’s – the others should have had the surname HOWES as they were from Eleanor’s first marriage

Hubert was christened at Ss Philip & Jacob in Bristol in 1882 giving his birth date of 14 Jan 1881.

Eleanor died in 1885 and on the 1891 census Hubert can be found with his grandparents, Charles & Lavinia STOKES in Wraxall.  He was entered as Herbert and was said to have been born in Bristol.

Please can anyone find what happened to Hubert (Herbert) after 1891 and also what happened to his father, Policeman Charles STOKES, born 1849 in Portbury – he was not the Charles STOKES who was Landlord of the Priory Hotel at Portbury. Thank you.

I am researching my TUTTON family ancestry, but doing this from Yorkshire I am not easily able to visit Somerset.  I have a Will for Samuel Tutton, who was buried at Bleadon on 29 March 1771.  His Will includes the following statement "My first will and desire is that I may be buried in the parish church of Bleadon in the vault with my late dear deceased wife, which vault lies near the monument which I erected to her memory".  Would anyone local to the church know if that vault and the monument to his wife can still be seen in/ around the Church?  And if anyone has a transcription or photo of any inscription they would be able to send me, I would be very grateful.  Thanks in anticipation.

Thanks for all the responses on my research for my family, the BROOKS family, who owned Whitecross Nursery in Walliscote Road. Somebody put me in touch with Brian Austin, who produced some excellent finds for me. He found that William Brook's son( William owned the Nursery until 1943) was an excellent rugby and soccer player, who played for the County. Sydney Edworthy Brooks was born in 1888 and was killed in a car accident in 1943. Any information about him would be great. Thanks,Graham.

A previous post on the Research Forum (‘Mystery of Sarah Cardingbrook’) raised an interesting example of what date and in what year a marriage took place.  Surely the answer should be obvious, you say – the date entered in the Parish Register.  However, the complication is that up until the mid-18^th Century New Year’s Day wasn’t as we now consider it.  Below I try to explain my understanding of it – hopefully I have this correct, but I’m sure someone will comment if not…  

Before 1752 the ‘legal’ New Year began on 25 March.  This means that in parish records 31 December 1749 (for example) is followed by 1 January 1749 (not 1750 – as we would describe it) and the year 1749 continued right up to 24^th March, which was then followed the next day by 25^th March 1750!  The same pattern is true in any year prior to 1752.  Our current New Year’s day of 1 January was finally adopted in that year (1752), when Government ruled that 31 December 1751 should be followed by 1 January 1752.  This means that you have to be extra careful when you look at any records in parish registers covering the January to March period before 1752.  The two different dating systems are often described as ‘Old Style’[OS] or ‘New Style’ [NS] and generally any date you see for the period 1 January to the 24 March in any year prior to 1752 needs to be corrected ‘forward’ by one year to be equivalent to our modern use.

A slight complication is that even before the new ‘legal’ date of New Year was formally changed in 1752 there was a period of years when people started using two calendars – with an increasing recognition of 1 January as the start of the ‘civil’ year.  So, you may see this reflected in Parish Registers, where double dating of the dates between 1 January and 24 March can often be found.  In this form a date like 1 January or 24 March may appear as 1749/50 or 1749-50.  In modern terms, in which we take 1 January as the start of the year, this would mean that we would consider both these dates to be in the year 1750.

Suffice to say there is a further calendar complication – if one is being pedantic – that in September 1752 the legal calendar was shifted again and 11 days dropped to conform to the modern Gregorian calendar rather than the previous Julian calendar.  This means 2 September 1752 was followed by 14 September 1752…..some thought that the Government was robbing them of 11 days of their life!  But it is too complicated (for me at least) to amend a date (as written in a historic document) from (by way of example of George Washington’s birthday) from 11^th February 1731 to 22^nd February 1732…. I do correct for the year in my family tree, but don’t attempt to amend the date. Is that what others do?