Migration of poor
families
Poor Law Guardians were sometimes asked to defray the expenses of poor
families and a number of requests have been found by Angela Hillier for
families to emigrate to the United States. In 1838 Abingdon Union
granted a request by the parish of Appleton and Eaton for permission to
spend £10 to ‘defray the expenses of Richard Parrett and his
family to America’. Meanwhile Wokingham Guardians refused a £7
grant to Widow Brent to accompany one of her daughters to America in
1837. Two months later her daughter who had paid for her mother’s
passage applied for compensation and this too was refused.
Adoption appeal
The Berkshire Adoption Advisory Service, York House, Windsor, assists
people who’ve been adopted look at their records and trace parts of
their family history. There used to be a mother and baby home called
Burnell House at 27 Bolton Avenue, Windsor, which became a family
centre but was later sold and demolished. The name Burnell House was
transferred to another family centre also in Bolton Avenue. This too
was sold off. The Berkshire Adoption Advisory Service is anxious to
locate any photographs of the first Burnell House which would help
place it in context for people whose birth mother stayed there. If you
can help contact Alison Vincent, York House, Sheet Street, Windsor.
Tel: 01628 683765.
Black and Asians in
Britain
As part of a nationwide project to map the historical presence of
Blacks and Asians in Britain the Berkshire Record Office is gathering
references to them in parish registers in the county. If you come
across any references while searching registers pass them on to the
BRO. They have already found an entry for Thomas Goree, an African
adult who was baptised at Cookham in 1771 and readers of this magazine
will remember a number of others mentioned in the December 2002 issue
of the magazine.
What’s on
Windsor camera obscura Photographs form an important element in family
history and if you’ve got connections with Windsor you might like to
visit an exhibition at the Local History Room at the Town and Crown
tourist information centre at Windsor until the end of September. It’s
called The Camera Obscura: A Different View of Windsor’. All
photographs in the exhibition are for sale
Oxfordshire family
history open day
The Oxfordshire FHS annual open day will be held at Exeter Hall, Oxford
Road, Kidlington, Oxford, on Saturday 4 October from l0am until 4pm.
Reading charter anniversary
The Berkshire Record Office summer exhibition, which ends on 13
September has as its theme the 750th anniversary of the grant of the
first charter to Reading. The end of the exhibition coincides with the
record office’s annual open day. As usual visitors will be able to see
behind the scenes of the building usually closed to public access.
London local history
fair
The Guildhall Library and Guildhall Art Gallery are hosting an event
devoted to London and its history called London Maze. With over 30
stalls from London’s museums, archives, local history libraries and
historical societies, expert talks, guided walks, and tours of Roman
London’s amphitheatre it should be a wonderful day out for family
historians with an interest in London. It takes place on Saturday 11
October from 10am to 4pm and entry is free.
West Middlesex FHS one-day
conference
‘We seek em here, we seek em there’ will be held on Saturday 13
September at the Public Record Office from 10am until 3.3Opm. Among the
speakers will be
Michael Gandy, Beryl and John Hurley and Chris Watts on sources at the
PRO.
Museum of English Rural
Life
Construction work has begun on the new Museum at the former St Andrew’s
Hall, Redlands Road, Reading. Building work is due for completion in
the summer of 2004. There will then follow the task of transferring the
collections and setting up the new exhibitions, and the new Museum will
open officially in the spring of 2005.
Regimental museum
The Museum website of the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and
Wiltshire Regiment at Salisbury Wardrobe is called the Wardrobe because
it was once owned and used by the bishop of Salisbury in the nearby
Cathedral. The museum holds all the records for the Royal Berkshire
Regiment and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Royal Regiment (Berkshire and
Wiltshire). It is the only regimental museum in the country to have its
war diaries on site and available to researchers. The curator is David
Chilton who is extremely proactive and very helpful. Because it is
located at Salisbury it very often gets missed out of the Berkshire
circuit. In addition to the war diaries they have a mass of photographs
that relate to the Berkshire Regiment. The website can be found at
<www.thewardrobe.org.uk>.
British in India and
southern Asia
If you have family connections with India you may be interested in a
new website at <www.indiaman.com>. Visitors to the website are
free to join the discussion group which covers the modern-day countries
of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Burma, Singapore, and
Malaysia.
A free download of The Indiaman Magazine is also available. The latest
issue has articles on the Gloucestershire Regiment, Regiments of the
East India Company and even a recipe.
Research Centre news
Changes in the Research Centre are continuing, which is the sign that
it is alive and not moribund. The Bookshop and Administration area on
the ground floor have now been resited and partially equipped with new
furniture. Combined with other things taking place at the same time
meant that the Bookshop reorganisation took much longer than expected
to complete and I apologise for that. Hopefully any further changes in
the Bookshop will be minor tuning, not major ones.
Still to come as a major change is relaying the computer section, for
which plans, as I write, are now complete. They are the last of the
planned reorganisations and we hope they will make your enjoyment and
ease of researching your family history better and more comfortable.
I was hoping to be able to report by now that the Reference Library
Catalogue was accessible on our website but due to the enormity of the
task of simplifying the detail and layout, this has not yet been
possible. It is still our aim that all members will be able to look at
the catalogue and find out what we hold of interest for them and their
research without having to be in the Centre first. [It is can now (Dec
2003)
be browsed on
this
web-site.]
On one of the recent monthly Research Centre Tours, a member remarked
that even though she had been in the Centre many times, both as a
researcher and as an assistant, she was very surprised at the range and
compass of our holdings. In particular she had never before appreciated
the wealth of research material available on all the other counties of
England and Wales, as well as Scotland and overseas countries such as
Australia. For new researchers, the biggest surprise is the almost
complete coverage of all English and Welsh county 1851 census returns.
When researchers combine their findings in 1851 with those made from
the 1881 national census transcriptions on CD ROM and the 1901 English
and Welsh census accessed through Broadband in the Centre, they
suddenly find they have gained information on three generations of one
line of their family in one day. Why don’t you come along and try
things for yourself?
Computer Group
A new Branch, our sixth, the Computer Group, has just been established
(see page 42). It will meet on the first floor of St
Peter’s Church Hall, Church Road, Earley at 7.l5pm on the third
Wednesday of each month. Meetings are open to all who want to know more
about using computers for family history and begin on 15 October with
Phil Wood talking about census information now available on your
computer. Kevin Tomes from Parchment Printers will join us on 19
November to demonstrate scanning and repairing photographs. After a
break for Christmas, Chad Hanna will describe how to get the most out
of the FamilyHistoryOnline website on 21 January. Each meeting will
also include a half-hour surgery dealing with your software and
hardware problems, a computer related bookstall and a raffle. Car
parking is available and the No 17 bus stops nearby at the Three Tuns.
Jane Longhurst Award
As many of you will know the daughter of one of our founder members,
Liz Longhurst, was murdered earlier this year. To mark her tragic death
we decided to institute an award for the best article in the magazine
over the past year. We asked the Editor of the Reading Evening Post,
Andy Murrill, to judge the award. This is his report.
“What a magazine. It’s packed full of interesting, thought-provoking
and detailed articles. Making features interesting when they contain so
many facts is extremely difficult but, almost without exception, your
writers managed to pull it off. There was no verbosity and the writing,
as in newspapers, was usually sharp and accessible which makes the
information easier to digest.
I found John Siblon’s piece on black people’s place in British history
very challenging and I also enjoyed Peter Ford’s article on nineteenth
century justice. Other stories that stuck in my mind were tales of farm
workers and the piece concerning school log books. But I found two
features particularly engrossing.
In second place is Janet Keet-Black with what I found to be a charming
account of the history of the Reading Wagon — a gypsy living wagon. I
have seen one at the Museum of English Rural Life at the University of
Reading so I have to confess I had a particular interest in the subject
matter. But Janet’s writing is crisp and clear and she presents her
information in an easy style.
But the winner is Neila Warner with her account of ‘rough music’ in the
nineteenth century. Being a newspaper editor I usually think the best
story of the day is the one most people talk about — sometimes it may
just be a small downpage piece. I have been telling everyone about
rough music as Neila’s article was a great yarn about how wife beaters
were treated in rural communities. It made me chuckle in places and I
was hooked from start to finish. Her writing has a good pace and really
brings the tale to life.
Congratulations to Neila, and to all the contributors to this fine
magazine.”
with any
queries