Where can you visit a private library within a church? Or see rare examples of the macabre funerary art which swept Europe after the Black Death? Or find graffiti recalling the incarceration of Levellers in 1649? Catherine Sampson reveals all.
Three Wokingham Families by Peter Must reported by Bryan Pledger. The talk started with a photograph of the blue plaque on Montague House in Broad Street stating the house was named after Henry Montague, a schoolmaster in 1654. The Winkfield records of the Mountagues from 1538 in the Berkshire Record Office has the Will of Thomas Mountague 1628. There is a plaque to him in Winkfield Parish Church. He died on 31st March 1630. His Will divided his estate between Henry and his sons Henry and Zacheus, and his brother Jonas and his son Thomas. From the Book of Clerics, Henry c1573 -1632 was in 1610 a schoolmaster in Oakingham. William Whitlock, Lord of the Manor of Beches, Wokingham’s mother -in-law in her Will appointed her friend Henry Mountague to be an overseer. Henry married and had children including Henry, Thomas and Zacheus. He died in 1634 and in his Will, signed Henry Mountague, listed a house in Wokingham that included a School…
Reading Branch meeting 27th February 2020 Speaker: Guy Grannum Guy gave an interesting talk on how he came to research his Barbadian roots and the types of documents that can aid with Barbadian ancestry. Guys started researching for his parents 25th wedding anniversary, and discovered an international family covering South Africa, Gibraltar and Majorca. Unfortunately, early civil registration records gave no clue to the origins of the family name, as there were only a handful of entries. Most entries date from 1955 onwards. Through his work at The National Archive (previously the Public Record Office), Guy discovered his grandfather and great-uncles listed in Colonial Office Lists, stating that they were all born in Barbados. As Barbados was a British colony, and now an independent state within the Commonwealth, many of their records have a British base. The hardest thing is to work out where the records are held and what the access is to them. Some are available through subscriptions sites as well…
Heraldry can help with family history research, and there are many sources freely available online.
Reading Branch meeting 30th January 2020 Speaker: Simon Burbidge Simon spoke of his research into his ancestors who had been divorced by the time of the 1901 census. Prior to 1858 Divorce was subject to Ecclesiastical Law with basically consummated or unconsummated marriage. It required an Act of Parliament and grounds were usually separation, civil suit or adultery. Only 2 divorces a year were recorded in 1670, 322 between 1670 and 1838 and in 1900 there were 560 with only three women suing for divorce. Notable cases from past were 1804 De Manville which involved custody of a child, it was ruled that a child belonged to father unless in danger of being harmed. Other cases included Lord Melbourne the Prime Minister and Caroline granddaughter of Richard Sheridan. Palmerstone re launched a Bill in 1855 which became Law in 1858. In 1920 Legal aid became available for Divorce. Details are available online in Ancestry TNA index J77 / 78. This was a very…
Report on Presentations by Members by Bryan Pledger The story my sister told me by Peter Beaven Peter started with “Once upon a time” and said “when my cousins came to see us they used to talk about Budleigh Salterton. His sister had a story about this family that a mother and daughter travelled by coach and stayed overnight. The young lady was in a four poster bed and during the night she left the room and then came back but in the morning found there was a man in her bed so they had to get married. He discovered the birth of Mary Strickland on the LDS Family Search web site which stated she was born in Buddleigh Salterton but baptised in St Michael Paternoster Royal London. Actually she was registered at the Methodist Register Office in Paternoster Row, near St Paul's. In the memoirs of Charles Gardner it talks about the marriage of Grace Lea who stopped the night at Salisbury and…
At the Newbury Branch January 2020 meeting Ellie Thorne of the Berkshire Record Office outlined the history of the Plenty company, an innovative and successful engineering firm founded at the turn of the nineteenth century. Lifeboats, steam engines, boilers, pumps, diesel engines and even a delivery van were produced at Plenty's Eagle Ironworks in the heart of Newbury.
Berkshire Family History Society works to meet the needs of those researching their ancestry across the UK and overseas – as well as those looking for former relatives in historic Berkshire. You do not need to be a member to benefit.
The society offers:
Research Zone in central Reading that is free to use and open to all
Free access at The Centre for Heritage and Family History to online resources like FindMyPast, the 1939 Register, The Genealogist, the British Newspaper Archive and Ancestry (the worldwide edition)
Regular free help and advice sessions
Meetings in Abingdon, Bracknell, Newbury, Reading and Windsor; and a virtual Computer Branch which meets online. All meetings are open to everyone
Community forum – informed answers to research queries and advice from experienced researchers
Members’ Area with data and other information not readily accessible elsewhere
Indexes and transcriptions of Berkshire’s historic records on CD — parish registers, probate documents, monumental inscriptions, maps, First World War history and more
Quarterly magazine, the Berkshire Family Historian, for members
a chance to join in project work, recording, transcribing and helping to preserve records
Links to the research experience, advice and support of members worldwide