Treasures from the To-Do Pile: North Yorkshire archive & maps

Last March, Linda Elliott's Mad About Genealogy (English and General Genealogy News & Links) had a great post on the North Yorkshire County Record Office and all the goodies they have online.I had left a note in my To-Do-Pile to remind myself to get around to it someday....
 
The archive section of the North Yorkshire County Record Office website has more goodies than I can describe in one post.  I've played there for hours now, and I still haven't seen it all.  If you have any connection to North Yorkshire, this website is a must! 
 
Here's a snip of just one section of the webpage.  Notice that just this one little part of their site has links to historical maps, photographs, online archive catalog, and links to other excellent sites.  As with most large and intricate sites, the search options take a little getting-used-to, but the time is well worth the effort.
 

I played in the map section and found lots on Malton, Hutton's Ambo, and Rilington.  My direct-line surnames ETHELL, ROSE, BEETHAM, and MUNKHAM have ties to that area in the 18th & 19th centuries.  It was a joy to see the maps and I am confident that more work with these maps will improve the research I have to do to firm up the latter 3 surnames.  Here's a snip of one of the maps showing Rilington and the location of St. Andrew's Church.  I haven't yet proven a link to this specific church, but my people were bound to have been in the neighborhood!
 
Conclusions

• Wouldn't it be nice if all the counties of England (or anywhere, for that matter) had similar sites? !  Thank you, North Yorkshire!
• Thank you, Linda for sharing this wonderful resource.
• Yet again, I've found great stuff in the To-Do Pile... the pile is shrinking, slowly but surely.  I think I am, finally, getting control!
• I must check out the Archive section of this fabulous website.

Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Rachel GRICE: Update

I'm still working through the Weaverthorpe microfilm.  I've already renewed it once and still haven't made it all the way through for the first time!  The film does not have its own index, but the FamilySeach entries online have helped me find some of the entries.  Otherwise, I'm basically reading the entire film page by page.  I've certainly seen films with poorer quality images, but some of this film is very hard going.  So, I'm expecting to renew the film again next week; and, that will keep it at my local FHC indefinitely.  

There are several GRICE entries and I am extracting each one.  I've started to make family group sheets for them all in an attempt to confidently sort out all the Grice's.

The baptism of Rachel Grice

Online, unsourced notes show her birth and/or baptism on 2 June 1816 in Weaverthorpe or West Lutton.  With this film, I now have my own real source for Rachel for a specific event with a specific location!

This image is fairly easy to see on the microfilm reader; my photo here does not do it justice.  Transcription of the entry on a page of baptisms for the Weaverthorpe parish, Yorkshire, in 1816:

June 2 / Rachel Daughter of / John & Sally / Grice / (abode) West Lutton / grocer / (performed by) Abm Ashworth

Perhaps the most significant information here is that specifying an occupation for her father John.  There are clearly two John Grice's in town in this time period and this entry will certainly help correctly determine Rachel's line.

The Marriage of Rachel Grice and Joseph Ethell

Again, all I had here were unsourced notes from other genealogists.  But, now I have this beauty:

I've read about 60 years' worth of Weaverthorpe BMD entries now, and this is the only ETHELL in the lot!  Joseph may have been "of this Parish" at this time, but he was not part of any extended family raised here!  This entry is unusual in Weaverthorpe in that, where only one of the couple signs their own signature, it is usually the groom.  I'm assuming the witness, Charles Grice, is Rachel's older brother, but that could change as I proceed with all the other Grice's!

 Conclusions

• I think I will still need to look at the original parish records, rather than relying only on these Bishop's Transcripts.  The original entries could well have additional or even different information.
• I'm feeling more confident about the potential for keeping the different Grice families straight. I think I am going to be able to present a fairly solid line of evidence to confidently identify Rachel's parents and at least her paternal grandparents.
• I'm still proud that I've stayed focused on Weaverthorpe for several weeks now.  But, I must admit, even with all this success, I am getting bored and am eager to change to researching and writing about something else!

Related Posts

Research Diary - Weaverthorpe, Yorkshire
First Friday Folder - Joseph Ethell & Rachel Grice

Source

Bishop's Transcripts for Weaverthorpe, 1631-1852. Church of England. Parish Church of Weaverthorpe (Yorkshire). FHL # 990,896. Item 3. [There are very few page numbers, but the images are generally in chronological order.]

First Friday Folder: Richard ETHELL & Mary BEETHAM

I'm taking it easy this month: I know this is a very thin folder!  I selected this couple because they are (probably? hopefully?) the parents of Joseph ETHELL, the subject of last month's FirstFridayFolder and my recent Weaverthorpe post.  I'm still working on the Weaverthorpe/Helperthorpe microfilm and I just don't want to change gears right now.

The Couple

I am very hesitant to post this information at all: I have no primary sources and there are clearly problems with what I do have. Please do not add this data to your database, but for this discussion, here is what I have right this minute:

Richard ETHELL was born 17 March 1784 in Rillington cum Scampton, Yorkshire and died 18 December 1845 in Low Hutton, Yorkshire. Mary was born 10 September 1774 in New Malton, Yorkshire and died 26 June 1856 in Huttons Ambo, Yorkshire. They were married 23 November 1801 in High Hutton, Yorkshire.

The Problems

Oh, dear, where do I begin?!

• Richard seems a bit young to be getting married and what is the likelihood that a 17-year-old would marry a woman 10 years older than he?
• I have to be very careful about the town names, given the possibility of confusing the script for 'Hutton' versus 'Lutton' or 'Sutton.'
• The first child I have for them, Thomas Beedison ETHELL, was born (or is it a baptism?) before the marriage date and before Richard would have turned 16 years of age.
• I have a number of variant surnames for Mary: Beedam, Beedison, Beetham, Betham.  If the Thomas I just named goes with this couple at all, perhaps Mary was a widow and has another surname all together.
• The biggest problem is my complete lack of anything I can honestly call 'evidence.'  Some of my info is from two family researchers who are generally very thorough, but their conclusions are conflicting and not all their pieces are sourced.  That's why I'm working on their son's generation and reading the Weaverthorpe/Helperthorpe records for my self right now.

The Folder

It's hard to have organizational problems in a folder that only contains a few items, but there were still a couple of things to do.  I had not printed a new family group sheet for 4 years, which isn't so bad I guess since I have not been working on them in that time.  There were two copies of the 1841 census image and no annotation to explain why I had two!  And, neither of them had been entered in my database.

The Good News
The best thing I have going for me here is Richard ETHELL himself. Noted English genealogist, Pauline Litton, is an Ethell/Ithel descendant and has used the family research as examples in her publications and speeches. It is her reputation that gives me confidence that the other two family researchers and I do indeed have the right people and that we just need to tidy up around the edges!  I've seen two of Litton's articles and would like to find more.  Also, she has registered the ETHELL surname at the Guild of One-Name Studies.  What I really need to do is to write to her! And, I'd like to buy her book,too! 

Conclusions
There are certainly problems with my Ethell/Beetham couple, but I can't really do anything here before I thoroughly deal with my Ethell/Grice couple!

It's nice to be able to use the research of others as a help in my genealogy, but my ETHELL line is a good example to show that there can still be conflicts and problems.  Clearly, I still need to find and study the sources and build my own solid evidence trail.

I'm proud of myself for staying focused on Weaverthorpe.  I'll be even more proud if I can stay focused until I've finished the film, analyzed it, and made a thorough plan for what to do next....  

Disclaimers

I have no connection to nor do I receive any special consideration from The Guild of One Name Studies or Litton's Swansong Publications.

Research Diary: Weaverthorpe, Yorkshire

This post is a report on how my research on ETHELLs and GRICEs of my last First Friday Folder post is going.  Ah, the unexpected things I learn....

DAY1

Having reviewed my folder on great-great-great-grandparents Joseph Ethell & Rachel Grice, and feeling well-prepared for my research, I arrived at the local Family History Center and set myself up at a microfilm reader.  My goal was Item 3 of FHL # 990,896: Bishop's Transcripts for Weaverthorpe, 1631-1852, Church of England, Parish Church of Weaverthorpe in Yorkshire, England.  My first thought was 'How inconvenient that I'm going to have to scroll through 2 whole items to get to the one I need, drat!'

I am still compulsive enough that I at least write down the title of every item on a film and annotate my notes about whether or not I read an item.  First, I wrote down the film number and what my general goal was: birth and marriage data on Joseph, Rachel, and their children.  Then, I wrote out the title entry for Item 1 and my note that I was not reading this one at all: whoever even heard of 'Helperthorpe'?  I need Weaverthorpe and so there. 

But the compulsive me, while rapidly scrolling through Item1 on my to Item 3, did a random stop and read one page.   And, there was a GRICE!  This is not a super common surname so I figured I'd better check this out before I went any further.  I ran Google maps on one of the FHC's computers and found that, wonder of all wonders, Helperthorpe is only 0.8 mile from Weaverthorpe! 

I had broken one of the cardinal laws of genealogy: know your geography before you do serious research!  Fortunately, the Genealogy Elf had given me a GRICE on my random stop.  Otherwise, I probably would have sent the film back to Salt Lake without knowing what I had in my hands.

Quickly reading backwards just 3 pages from my random stop yielded 4 more GRICEs, but the year was much to early to be of use to me now, so I went forward to an intermediate section title page which said "Helperthorpe -- 1790-1807, 1802, 1809-1812." As 1790 was where I had decided I would focus my reading in Weaverthorpe, this seemed like a good place to start my notetaking for Helperthorpe.  I saw that Helperthorpe must be a pretty small place because there were only 3 baptisms and no marriages nor burials for the entire year from Lady Day 1790 to Lady Day 1791.  I also found a notation for one year specifying that the marriages and burials for that year were recorded at Weaverthorpe.  So, clearly, these two locations are linked and I must consider them both in my ETHELL / GRICE quest.

I read through to 1850 in Helperthorpe and found 15 GRICE entries (including 3 children of a Wilson/Grice couple.  I can't yet connect any of these to my lines, but I've just begun!

DAY 2

Before I left for the FHC, I went to the GENUKI website and ran Weaverthorpe through the church database.   I searched for all churches within 6 miles of Weaverthorpe.  I quickly got a list of 26 churches (18 Church of England and 8 Methodist of one sort or another).  Here's a snippet of those search results:

I'm already pretty confident that my GRICEs & ETHELLs are connected to Weaverthorpe and to Lutton.  Now, I see that if I had run this search earlier when I should have, I would have also known to search in Helperthorpe and Butterwick.

At the FHC, I scrolled ahead to Item 3 to read Weaverthorpe. [I had already run Google maps on Hornby of Item 2 and found that it was 60 miles away and I don't feel a need to read it yet!]    I started reading/notetaking in the third section, dated 1760-1775.

There are more GRICEs here, but the script is different and it appears to be spelled 'grifse,' which I think is GRISSE, a possible alternative spelling.  I was hoping I was making a good assumption when I found this marriage record:

Banns of Marriage between Richard Grice & Ann Kellington were published on Tuesday ye 12th ye 19th & ye 26th of May by Mr Geo Lawson Mininster. / The above Richard Grice, spelled Grifse in ye Baptismal Register of Lutton, Batchelor & Ann Kellington also of Lutton Spinster, were married in ye Chapel of West Lutton by Banns on Wednesday ye twenty ninth day of May in ye year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred & eighty two by me...

Wasn't that nice of the minister to specify the exact name he wanted!  Altogether, I extracted 14 more GRICE entries this day.  I still can't confidently claim any of them, but I am starting to form family groups.  Once I get to the 1830s, I hope to find the link I need.

DAY 3

Whoops! I woke up with the sudden realization that I wasn't looking for GIB/GIBS/GIBB/etc.  That's the surname of Rachel's possible mother.  I think I would have come to my senses if I had seen a GIB, but it bothers me that I hadn't actually include the surname in my goal statement.  The little research I've done before on Rachel has never found any GIB (etc.) families anywhere near a GRICE or ETHELL.  

Well, I'm eager to get on with reading the Weaverthorpe film, but I won't make it to the FHC today after all.  Life gets in the way sometimes....  But, I've sat here instead and reviewed all the notes I've made so far.  I'll try again on Thursday!

MEMO TO SELF

• Always run the church locations before reviewing any church records in England.
• Always look at a detailed map and see the nearby towns, too.
• Make sure the goals I specify for reading any film have all the surnames I'm looking for.

NOTE

There are no page numbers in either of the two Bishop's Transcripts used here.  All the records are in rough chronological order.  The film is unusually clear and easy to read for the most part.

First Friday Folder: Joseph ETHELL & Rachel GRICE

I selected the folder of this set of great-great-great-grandparents because a film of Bishop's transcripts for Weaverthorpe in East Yorkshire, England has arrived for me at my local Family History Center and I need to get ready for starting this research project next week! 
 
The Couple
Joseph ETHELL was probably born 7 April 1816 in Huttons Ambo, North Yorkshire, and probably died 18 Jan 1889 in North Yorkshire.  Rachel GRICE was probably born 2 June 1816 in West Lutten, Weaverthorpe, North Yorkshire, and died about March 1895 in Castleford, West Yorkshire.  They were perhaps married 16 July 1835 in Weaverthorpe and at least 2 of their 10 children were probably born there, too.  These dates/places are from two, usually very thorough, family researchers who were kind enough to share with me. Unfortunately, I have no record of the exact sources they used, nor do they agree exactly with their details.

I have Joseph and Rachel together in the following censuses, all in Yorkshire:

1841  -  South Elmsall, South Kirkby
1851  -  Glass Houghton
1861  -  HIghtown, Castleford
1871  -  Gow Close, Glover's Row, Whitwood
1881  -  Discomb Row, Welbeck Street, Castleford

Obviously, there should be a good deal of information about this family in the Bishop's transcripts of Weaverthorpe.  On the other hand, the family could have really been in one of the little, adjacent parishes and not have used the Weaverthorpe church itself.  Another caution is that I know they were members of a Primitive Methodist Chapel by 1849.  Their marriage should still be recorded in the parish church, but the early baptisms might not.  At any rate, I need to see this film and I am hoping it will give me some "real" sources!  And, if they are not there, at least I'll know to start looking in neighboring parishes.

The Folder
The organization of the folder is in pretty good shape.  It includes a family group sheet, census summary and images, and a few other copies of records.  (I am missing a few censuses for some of the children, but I think four of them may have died young.  Perhaps I can find death info in the film next week.)

There was just one 3-page printout from GENUKI in 2006 on "The Ancient Parish of Weaverthorpe" that my current system files under the location rather than in a couple's folder.  Reviewing the three pages before moving it to my Yorkshire notebook, I saw that the website included a link to the 1834 Electoral Roll for Weaverthorpe and I don't remember having tried it before.  Unfortunately, a quick visit there showed no Ethell, Grice, or anything close in the surnames.  But, I did see that they have more maps and have added 8 church photos.  Clicking on the link to the Methodist Chapel leads to a nice photo and a database search for other nearby churches that very quickly showed me that there are 6 churches within three miles of the chapel.  GENUKI is a wonderful thing!!


The Biggest Problem: Geography
Is it just me or does anyone else have trouble keeping Yorkshire place names straight?  It may be 'English' but it usually feels like some language I have never, ever seen....


There is a Huttons Ambo (High Hutton & Low Hutton) only about 16 miles from Luttons Ambo (East Lutton, West Lutton, Lutton).  There is also a Sutton in North Yorkshire.  With different scripts in that time period, I think these locations could be mixed-up.  Also, sometimes they seem to be giving a local neighborhood name but the larger city sometimes.  For instance, I have one notation that Rachel was born in West Lutten and one that she was baptized about two miles away in Weaverthorpe.  And, I also have that daughter Jane may have been born in Elmsall or in South Kirkby, which are only about a mile apart from each other (and only about 60 miles from Weaverthorpe).  Where these seem to be different places, it could just be someone referring to a larger or smaller neighborhood name for one location.  I need to keep a map handy and to keep an open mind!


Conclusions

• GENUKI is a wonderful resource for anyone researching in England.  The aids to finding nearby parishes are outstanding.  The site is continually adding info: I need to check back more often!
• I must pay continual attention to place names and geography, especially in Yorkshire.  Keeping civil and ecclesiastical parishes sorted is hard enough, but when the names themselves are so similar, it is even worse.
•  I still need real sources for the basic events in this couple's life.  I hope that my having reviewed this folder before starting to work on the microfilm will help me focus my search and keep the locations straight.

Line of Descent

Joseph Ethell = Rachel Grice

Jane Ethell = William Carr

John Henry Carr = Ann Matilda Causier

Bertha Carr

Great Resources: England

The London Gazette is an official newspaper in the British Isles and has been continuously published since the 17th century. My first reaction when I read that it now had a fully searchable online archive was 'Why bother? My people weren't in London.' But, I still visited the site and searched for the fairly uncommon surname CAUSIER and for some of my CARRs, all of whom were in Yorkshire and neighboring areas. ... Now I know that the London Gazette is much, much more than a London paper!

I found Great Uncle Grice Ethell CARR in bankruptcy listings:
11 May 1888 -- p. 2733
18 May 1888 -- p. 2874
16 May 1888 -- p. 6264

His address is listed as "Bridge-street, Sandal-road, Wakefield, Yorkshire" and is a "Grocer and Tea Dealer." The prodeedings are being handled in the Wakefield Court. This data adds to what we know about where he lived and his occupations. The second child of William CARR and Jane ETHELL, his name is actually three of the family surnames! By the 1891 England census, he was back in Whitwood Mere and working in the glass foundry.

I didn't know what the listings were referring to; 'bankruptcy' wasn't mentioned on any of those 3 pages and working backwards to the beginning of each listing had not made it any clearer. So, I went to RootsChat and posted a query there. Within in 2 days I had 3 great responses and that's how I learned great uncle Grice Ethell CARR had filed for bankruptcy. I don't see much in the the genealogy press about RootsChat, but I think it's a great resource for anyone doing research in England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, etc. Everyone is very nice and very helpful.

I made these website thumbnails using Thumbizy which I learned about a few weeks ago from the Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter. But, I'm not totally satisfied with them here and will try something else next time.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I neither work for nor receive any consideration from any of these groups. Actually, I don't work for anyone.