Besthorpe is the ancestral home of the Howes family. The line can be traced to this village/parish south west of Norwich, potentially as far back as the 15th century.
See Bottling it in Besthorpe for more about family connections to the area, and specific places such as The Carr, Bottle House, with census descriptions 1841-71 and map extracts for these.
Historic documents
“Besthorpe Terrier”, Bishops Visitation 1729
The Besthorpe parish register from 1729 has as its first couple of pages ‘A copy of the Besthorpe Terrier exhibited at the Bishops Visitation 14th day of June 1729’. » Continue reading “Besthorpe Howes family roots”
Of all the ancestral home towns and villages, that of the direct Howes line, namely Besthorpe in Norfolk, has been the most neglected to date. This stands alongside the minimal details held on the last known family member to spend all his life there, 3x great grandfather James Howes. The direct line can be quite easily traced back to him, born in the village at the turn of the 19th century {1}.
This article seeks to establish a greater understanding of the Besthorpe area as well as filling out the personal details for James. » Continue reading “Bottling it in Besthorpe Giving the Howes line a home”
Discovering more about the Smith part of the family tree has proved remarkably easy, after having put off looking for ages due to the very common surname.
See Entirely to the Water from Birth for first stages.
Now it was time to find great great grandmother Harriet Smith’s siblings and their immediate offspring. The practice of using the mother’s (or grandmother’s) surname as a middle name was very helpful –
Bacchus for two of the girls, Harper (the grandmother’s name) for one of the boys. » Continue reading “Hanging by a thread Discovering the Smith family”
Shortly before Christmas, I decided to check through notes I’d left myself a few weeks earlier, indicating that half cousins the Malletts needed further work {1}.
Flora Mallett married Frank Webb 1917 in Norwich. A search on Ancestry’s database came up with three daughters – Muriel, Margaret and Ileane, all born Norwich. Ileane died young, so nothing further to search for, but Margaret got to marry Wilfred Henry Ward (1946), and Muriel married Jack R Boddy in 1943. » Continue reading “My type of relation Or: A fine Boddy of a man”
It is gradually getting easier to find old maps, or rather current maps with historical details, online. Two areas of interest to me have recently come my way, and are reasonably new. Not forgetting some pointers on using the 1851 England boundary maps available on FamilySearch.
Historical Maps of Norfolk
Norfolk County Council has a historic maps section to its website. With the interactive map explorer you can view historical maps alongside historical aerial survey data and modern day Ordnance Survey maps. » Continue reading “Exploring Historical Maps”
Samuel Myhill (born about 1856, Dilham, Norfolk) featured here almost a year ago with the first results of a scanning session on old family photos. He married my great great aunt Mary Watts in 1879. I have finally been able to get a better picture of what happened to most of their children, appearing as adults in one of the photos, largely thanks to the latest 1911 census update on Ancestry.
To work backwards, my favourite approach, from the youngest offspring:
Sidney Frederick Myhill
Born 16th December 1887, Dilham. » Continue reading “Making a Case for the Myhills”
