| Angermünde was the birthplace of Max Dietrich(92). The town was founded in 1233 in what was then Mark Brandenburg, in the border area of the river Oder. The old town suffered little or no war damage, and is therefore one of the few almost completely preserved town centres in Brandenburg. |
| Aynsome, nowadays Aynsome Manor Hotel, is about 1 km north of Cartmel in what is nowadays Cumbria but was formerly Lancashire "over the water". At the moment I do not know when the house was built, but it was bought in 1745 by John Machell (1119), then of Hollow Oak in Colton. It remained in the Machell and then Remington family until sold around the beginning of the 20th century by the Rev. Thomas Machell Remington. The period of ownership by these two families is described by Cockerill 1989, which also contains a photograph of the house. |
| A charcoal fired blast furnace was in operation at this works between 1711-1963. The site was previously that of an iron forge and bloomery (making blooms, which were masses of puddled iron made into a thick bar either by squeezing or hammering, according to my dictionary) that operated from 1685-1711. The works finally closed in the 1970s, although an English Heritage website says that much of the equipment of the last survival of the charcoal furnaces of Great Britain is still in place. An aerial photograph is viewable on English Heritage. The works were long associated with the Machell family . |
| This Ballastowell (or Ballastole as it was more usually
spelt), has disappeared from modern maps, but is shown on the first
edition of
the County series of maps and probably also appears on early editions
of
the one-inch maps of the UK Ordnance Survey. One such one-inch map was
probably the source of the frontispiece of the 1979 book by J W and C K
Radcliffe, A History of Kirk Maughold, on which Ballastowell
can be seen. The first Stowell entered in the Manorial Rolls for the
farm is one John Stole in 1597. Thereafter, according to the Radcliffe
book, the farm was continually in Stowell hands until the last owner,
Edward Stowell, who succeeded in 1832. The farm would have been
inherited by the oldest son. Younger sons and their families, again
according to the Radcliffe book, settled in Ramsey, just a short
distance to the north, and many went to sea. Ballastowell is shown on the old Ordnance Survey County series maps and can be seen on the Oldmaps website. |
Bennwil is a farming village or commune in the district of Waldenburg
in the Canton of Basel-Landschaft, Switzerland. We think that John Holinger
(17) was originally a citizen of Bennwil. There is a
Wikipedia article
on Bennwil with further details, at least for readers of German.
Parish records have been microfilmed by the LDS church and are:
|
| Bilbrough is a town about 5½ miles from York. The parish church of St. James has registers which start in 1695. My five times great grandparents John Briggs(11) and Mary Rawden(12) (Rawdon) were married here in 1755. |
| In the 19th century a village on the northern outskirts of Southampton, and nowadays part of Southampton. James Steward(123) lived there at a house called Hill Top for a while and later the house was taken over by his eldest son James Dick Steward(181) |
| Blythe Hall is a listed Grade II building which was on the market in 2007 for 3.5 million, and there is a recent photograph of the house taken for the purposes of the sale. The house has a history possibly dating back to the 12th century. It was probably rebuilt and extended in the early 1800s. It was owned by the Hall family from 1693, (when the house and land were bought for £670) until sold to Thomas Langton(1289) in about 1804. The two younger Langton children, Thomas and John, were born there, and a preliminary sketch of the house was made by their elder sister Anne in 1834 after the house had been sold to Edward Bootle Wilbraham in 1826 for £8,424.16.5 1/2d, following the collapse of Thomas Langton's finances. The sketch is in the Ontario archives. |
| Bowden was a parish in the county of Roxburgh. The village lies between the Bowden Burn,
which runs into the Tweed by Newton-St-Boswells some 4 km to the NE, and the Eildon Hills.
According to the Old Parochial Records, Mungo Thorburn(1249) was born in Bowden on 15 Nov 1748, but baptized in Galashiels. He and his wife Isabel Redford(1250), together with three of their children, were also buried in the churchyard at Bowden, though at the time they died they were living at Birkenside in the parish of Legerwood, some 12 km to the north. |
| D H C Briggs (1972) writes that the Bowlalley Lane Unitarian Chapel
was built around 1725. But the history section of the local Unitarian
community's website
says that the congregation was established in 1672 and that the first
church was built by 1693 in Bowlalley Lane, copying its style from the
London Merchants' Halls. A replacement was opened in August 1803, still
in Bowlalley Lane in the heart of the city. The chapel was moved to a
more suburban site in Park Street in 1881. The earliest known members
of the Briggs branch of the family were members of this congregation,
and the birth and baptism dates of the younger John Briggs(11) in
1727, and of his children over the period 1755 to 1772 are recorded in
the chapel register. The chapel records, deposited at the Public Record Office, Kew, have been microfilmed by the LDS church for the period 1705 to 1835 (FHL film 828133). The register contains births and baptisms only. |
| The family connection with Bradford is the Church of England church of St. Stephen's, in St. Stephen's Road, West Bowling. This church was designed by James Mallinson (1819-1884), who from 1847 was in partnership with Thomas Healey in a local ecclesiastical architecture practice. St. Stephen's was completed in 1860 and my great-grandfather Thomas Alfred Stowell was appointed as the first incumbent (Perpetual Curate) and remained until 1865. The first three of his fourteen children were baptised there. |
| Cantsfield is a township in the parish of Tunstall. There
seem to have been both a Cantsfield House and a Cantsfield Hall. The
township is only about 1 km west of Halfway House and another km west
of
Lowfields, which lies just over the border in Yorkshire. The location
can be seen using the Ordnance Survey Getamap page
and entering either the place name or the UK grid reference (SD 631
729). The Carringtons lived at Cantsfield, and according to the current owners theirs was Cantsfield House, photographs of which can be seen on their website, and also a brief history of the house which I think is based on The Dated Buildings of South Lonsdale by Emmeline Garnett, a copy of which I have on order. Chippindall (1933) has an appendix to his paper on the Tathams dealing with the Carringtons of Cantsfield which is the basis of what I have written in the Carrington page. |
| Clapham lies just off the road between Kirkby Lonsdale and Settle, and is 11 miles from the former and 6 miles NW of the latter. Its significance in this family is that my 4 times great-grandfather on my mother's side, the Rev. William Currer was Vicar of St. James' Church, Clapham, from 1755 to 1803 (according to the GENUK website for Yorkshire, West Riding. I also note that a Canon Rawdon Briggs was Vicar there from 1915 to 1925). Also, my 3 times great-grandmother Ann Currer, daughter of the above William, was baptised there on 27 May 1763, and later married my 3 times great-grandfather Rawdon Briggs there on 10 Dec 1791. The position of the village can be seen on Getamap pages of the UK Ordnance Survey. |
| Earlston is a village and parish in the SW of Berwickshire, on the west side of the river Leader. One of my thrice great grandfathers William Lauder was minister of the Antiburgher concregation there from 1804 until his death in 1852. My twice great grandmother Jane Lauder was born there in 1820, and married Robert Riddel there in 1843. |
| Farfield Hall is on the west side of the valley of the River Wharfe, beside what is now the B6160. It is some 2.5km south of Bolton Abbey and 2km north of Addingham, to which township and parish it belongs. The NGR is SE076516. Between about 1802 and 1804 it was the rented residence of the family of Thomas Langton(1289), and the birthplace of his two elder children William(1290) and Anne(1292). A modern photograph of the house is on the web, and a sketch by Anne Langton is in the Ontario archives. |
| Flockton is a village in parish of Thornhill. In the 19th
century the church, dedicated to St. James, was a chapel of Thornhill,
and a perpetual curacy (that is to say the curate was entitled to a
share of the tithes). The church records are therefore part of the
records of Thornhill. The records for the chapel of Flockton for
1713-1812 are part of vol. 40 of the transcripts published by the
Yorkshire Parish Register Society, nowadays available on microfiche
from
their website. This volume is the basis for the IGI entries for
Flockton (Batch no. P009791), and is on FHL microfilm 496812. The village is connected with the Milnes branch of my family, and my great-great grandmother Marianne Milnes(8) was baptised there in 1801. Her father lived at Manor House, Flockton, and her eldest uncle John Milnes at Flockton Hall. In Langdale's Topographical Dictionary of Yorkshire (1822) R. Milnes Esq. is one of the patrons of the church. |
| Hull, or Kingston upon Hull, is the earliest currently known home of the Briggs branch of my family. |
| Hulme is a district of Manchester, and 17 Mytton Street, Hulme is where John Holinger(17) and his family were living at the time of the 1861 census. Mytton Street no longer exists, but is shown on the 1848 edition of the old 25 inch county maps (Lancashire and Furness) viewable through Oldmaps at NGR 383405, 396197 (SJ 834 962). It was probably about where Abbeyville Walk is nowadays, between the B5218 Chorlton Road and the A5103 Princess Road. |
| This is the village or parish from which one of my four times great grandfathers John Tatham (112), yeoman, is said to have come. It is about 3 km north of Burton in Lonsdale. The nearest Church of England church is St. Peter's at Cowan Bridge, in Leck, just over a km NW of Ireby. St. Peter's is described as a chapelry in the Parish of Tunstall. The church of St. John the Baptist in Tunstall is 4.3 km SSW of Ireby. Ireby is only just over 3 km from the churches in Burton in Lonsdale, to the S, and Thornton in Lonsdale, to the SE. Ireby is actually in the parish of Thornton-in-Lonsdale. The UK grid reference of Ireby is SD 655 755. |
| In 1935, Col. W H Chippindall, in addition to having written about the Tathams, wrote a pamphlet for the Chetham Society of Manchester (Chetham Soc. Publications, New Series, Vol.95) on the History of the Township of Ireby, which I understand contains pedigrees and which may shed light on the ancestors of John Tatham(112) when I get a chance to look at a copy. It appears that the Tatham connection with Ireby continued through the 18th century, and a William Tatham of Over Hall was High Sherriff of Lancashire in 1724. One grandson Charles Tatham was a Lt-Colonel in George Washington's army, and the other grandson Sandford Tatham was a Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy. |
| The Keith Chapel, which was demolished in 1898, is described
in the book “Old London Churches” (Elizabeth and Wayland Young, 1956) as
follows: This was a large plain proprietary. It became notorious when a Scottish Episcopalian parson called Alexander Keith, fresh from training in the Fleet Chapel, began to celebrate Fleet marriages there. The customers were more exalted than elsewhere, and Horace Walpole’s letters contain accounts of midnight ceremonies with curtain rings. Keith was excommunicated and imprisoned in 1742 but such was his fame that some other persons opened a marriage shop in his name, just opposite the chapel. |
| The GENUKI pages for the West Riding of Yorkshire quote Langdale's
(1822) Topographical Dictionary of Yorkshire as follows: The village, situated upon a hill on the road from Keighley to Skipton, was amongst the first donations to the Priory of Embsy, by Cecilia de Romille, the foundress. In that house it continued until the dissolution, when it was granted by Henry VIII to Robert Wilkinson and Thomas Drake, of the parish of Halifax. In the 2 Edward I (ca. 1274? or ca. 1549 if actually Edward VI) is a licence to Drake to alienate the Manor of Kildwick to John Garforth, of Farnhill, by whom, or his son, 1st of Elizabeth (1558/59), it was sold to Henry Currer, Esq., and from whom it has lineally descended to the present owner, Miss Currer. The Currers who owned Kildwick Hall were not the branch to which my ancestors belong, who were of Skipton, though there is a common ancestor. |
| The Gazetteer of Scotland published 1806, Edinburgh, describes it thus: "A parish in Berwickshire, situated on the border betwixt Lauderdale and Lammermuir. It extends about 3 miles in length by 2 1/2 in breadth, comprehending an area of 8 miles. The surface consists of an assemblage of hills, rising gradually from the Leader, interspersed with deep mosses, in which are found large trunks of different kinds of trees, which renders it highly probable that the hills and glens, with the circumjacent country, were formerly a part of an immense forest. The soil of the arable land is chiefly a blackish mossy loam, intermixed with sand, and the gravel formed by the mouldering down of the adjacent rocks. It is tolerably fertile, and would be productive of heavy crops, were it not for the disadvantages of an exposed situation and a weeping climate. The hills afford pasture to 3770 sheep, 560 black cattle and 120 horses. Birkhillside, the seat of the family of Shillinglaw, is the only mansion of note. There are 3 ancient towers, one of which is very entire, and affords a striking monument of the taste of our ancestors. Population in 1801, 495." This is pretty much what it must have looked like when Mungo Thorburn(1249) (1748-1825) and his wife Isabel Redford(1250) (1761-1826) were around, as they both died at Birkenside, adjacent to Birkhill. According to their Monumental Inscription at Bowden, Mungo Thorburn was a tenant, presumably tenant farmer, there. |
| A Gazetteer of Scotland publiched in 1806 at Edinburgh and quoted on the GENUKI website
describes it as a parish in the county of Roxburgh, 5 1/2 miles in length, and from 1 1/2 to
2 miles in breadth ... The village of Lillies-Leaf is situated on the great road from E. to
W. through the S. of Scotland, and contains upwards of 400 inhabitants ... Population in
1801, 673. The first nine of the eleven children of Mungo Thorburn(1249) and Isabel Redford(1250) were baptised at the parish church here between 1784 and 1803, after which the family seems to have moved to Legerwood, in Berwickshire. |
| The parish of Long Horsley, St. Helen, abuts,amongst others, the parish of Mitford. Information on church records and their repositries ca,/an be found on the GENUKI website. The LDS church has microfilmed the original records in the Northumberland Record Office and the FHL film 252953 contains baptisms, marriages and burials 1668-1723, then baptisms 1723-1797, marriages 1723-1960, banns 1754-1815 and burials 1723-1797. Then FHL film 252954 contains baptisms 1798-1959 and burials 1798-1959. Longshaws is within the parish, so one would expect some Fenwick entries in the parish records, which begin in 1668, but none have turned up so far. |
| Samuel Lewis's (1842) Gazetteer of England describes Longshaws as a township in the parish of Long Horsley, some 5½ miles WNW of Morpeth in Northumberland. I am not entirely sure that this is the place to which the pedigree of Fenwick of Langshaws and Nunriding refers, but it is not far from Nunriding (about a km and a half) even though in a different parish. The location is at NGR NZ120882. |
| Lowfields, together with Halfway House, was one of a number
of farms owned by John Tatham (born in 1688) of
Cantsfield and bequeathed to his youngest son Francis.
However, Francis did not marry and on his death in 1780 bequeathed
Lowfields and Halfway House to his sister Dorothy who married John
Tatham of Ireby. Thus Lowfields came into that branch of the Tatham
family from which my great grandmother Emma Tatham(69)
was descended. The last Tatham owner of Lowfields was Leonard Tatham
(137), Emma’s brother, who was a bachelor and whose
portrait hung at the top of the stairs in my father’s house. Leonard Tatham died at Lowfields in November 1928, aged 86. According to my father, he left Lowfields to Alfred Stowell, the oldest brother of my grandfather Percy Stowell, but basically neither Alfred nor any of his brothers wanted the property, which was too far from Manchester for convenience, and the property was sold. Lowfields was a place which obviously featured greatly in the early lives of my father and his cousins and siblings. |
| My two gazetteers have litle to offer on Melling. It is a parish and
village on the SE side of the Lune valley. Various houses in the village
have associations with the Remington
family, in particular Crow Trees which became the property of my thrice-great
grandfather Reginald Remington (1770-1854) and so the birthplace of my
great-great-grandmother Ellen Remington (1799-1881). The 1847 county series
of Ordnance Survey maps shows both Crow Trees and Old Crow Trees. These, and
various other dated buildings are described by
Emmeline Garnett (1994). The parish church is St. Wilfrid's. The FHL has microfilm of various records, including parish registers from 1625 (FHL film 1849660) and bishop's transcripts for 1677-1853 (FHL films 1502454 and 1502455).The film 1849660 (items 12-24) is of the original parish registers. Item 12 contains the records from 1625 to 1752 and being the oldest is in the worst condition and difficult to read. Most of it has however been transcribed and published by The Lancashire Parish Register Society, and this publication included baptisms 1625-1721, burials 1629-1721, and marriages 1636-1752, and is the basis for the IGI entries for this parish. Later records are relatively more legible and the remaining items are:
|
| A parish and village at the confluence of the rivers Font and Wansbeck. This is the parish to which Nunriding, where my Fenwick ancestors lived, belonged. Information on church records (St. Mary Magdalene, NGR NZ169856) and their repositries can be found on the GENUKI website. The LDS church has microfilmed the original records at the Northumberland Record Office and the FHL film 95003 contains the parish records of baptisms 1665-1812, marriages 1659-1812 and burials 1667-1812. FHL film 1564884 (items 2-3) contains marriages 1837-1901, and burials 1880-1903. The IGI batch no. for marriages is M000731 and for baptisms P000731. |
| Although in the record the birthplace, in 1869 of my grandfather Christopher Rawdon Briggs(3) is spelt as a single word, is it possible that it was also written Moor House. This is described in Langdale's 1822 Topographical Dictionary of Yorkshire as being in the township of Stanley with Wrenthorpe, and parish of Wakefield, 4 miles from Wakefield. It is also described, then, as the seat of John Maude, Esq. |
| Nunriding is in Northumberland, 4 miles NW of Morpeth. Whellan (1855), given in the GENUKI website, describes it as a township in the parish of Mitford. Nunriding and Langshaws were where a branch of the Fenwick family lived. There is a Nunriding Hall (NGR NZ132876), but none of the gazetteers to which I have access say anything about the hall. |
| Outwood Hall was the residence of my great-great grandfather Henry Briggs(7), who moved there from Overton in 1857. It was the birthplace of my grandfather's elder brother, James Briggs. After Henry Briggs died (1868), according to the diary of Alice Sophia Briggs (1919), one of Henry's daughters-in-law, the house was broken up. |
| Prittlewell is nowadays part of Southend-on-Sea. The Anglican parish church is St. Mary the Virgin. The Essex Record Office, Wharf Road, Chelmsford, holds microfiche of the parish registers on microfiche D/P 183 (baptisms 1649-1893, marriages 1645-1712 and 1729-1898, burials 1645-1852). The records up to 1812 have been copied by the LDS church (film/fiche 6035499). The village of Prittlewell as it was shown on the first (1880) edition 1:10,560 County Series of UK Ordnance Survey maps can be viewed at the Old Maps website. |
| This Didsbury church, in which my parents were married in 1933, later burnt down and all the records were lost. |
| The church of St Mary at Hill is described briefly in the touruk website. |
Parish records exist both as originals held at the Guildhall
Library,
London, and as various sets of transcripts, and there are different
microfilms of these sources available through the FHL of the LDS
church.
|
| The church is connected to the Steward branch of the family, and Richard Steward(127), born about 1730, is said to have been of this parish. |
| Skipton also known as Skipton-in-Craven, is near the River Aire and nowadayson the A65 north-west of Leeds. The parish church is Holy Trinity, and many of the Currer branch of the family were baptised there, particularly in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The IGI seems mainly to have used published transcripts, or excerpts, of the parish registers edited by W J Stavert between 1894 and 1896. These cover the period 1592 to 1812 (FHL British film 100098). Bishop's Transcripts also exist, and have been filmed by the LDS church for the period from 1600 to 1857 (FHL British Films 919155, 919156 and 184917). |
| Southchurch is nowadays part of Southend-on-Sea, Essex. The Anglican parish church is Holy Trinity and parish records are supposedly available on microfiche at the Essex records office for the period from 1695 to about 1945. At the time of her marriage, Sarah FIRMAN was said to be of Southchurch parish, but I have found no baptismal record between 1761 and 1770 (she was probably born around 1763). The name FIRMAN does appear in the burial records, an Edward FIRMAN being buried on 30 Nov 1785 and a John FIRMAN on 5 Feb 1792. I don't know what connection, if any, these have with Sarah. |
| Summersgill (SD641633) is a farm in Wray (currently occupied by G R Batty), Lancashire LA2 8QX Tel: (01524 261342). In the 18th century it was the property of a branch of the Remington family. At that time Wray-with-Botton was a township in the parish of Melling, the present parish church, Holy Trinity, was only built in 1840. |
| Thornhill is a parish town on the south side of the River Calder. Overton and Flockton are both within the parish. |
| Tunstall is a village and parish in NE Lancashire with which the Tathams, Carringtons, Fenwicks and Battysons are all associated. It lies about 1 km NE of the confluence of the rivers Lune and Greta. Within the parish are Cantsfield, Burrow with Burrow and Leck. The parish church, St. John the Baptist, lies a bit away from the village centre (at GR SD 614 739), and parish records start in 1625. Original parish records (Lancashire Record Office no. PR 3331/1/1-11) have been microfilmed by the LDS church (FHL British film 1517648, items 8-18) and contain baptisms 1625-1846, marriages 1625-1900, burials 1625-1884 and banns 1823-1900. Transcripts of the registers have also been published by the Lancashire Parish Registers Society (Vol.40,1911) and contain baptisms 1626-1812, burials 1627-1812 and weddings 1625-1812 (see also FHL British microfilm 844802 item 4, which is the source for the LDS batches P005331 and M005331 for this parish). |
| Wakefield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, is where my grandfather Christopher Rawdon Briggs() was born, at Moorhouse. The town and its churches has various associations with my ancestors. |
| The St John's Church (C of E) is where two of my great- great-grandparents John Holinger(17) and Jane Townend (or Townsend) were married on 21 Jul 1849. The parish register has been microfilmed by the LDS church and marriages for the years 1845-1917 are on FHL British film 1542103. |
| The other church is the Westgate Presbyterian Chapel, with which the Briggs family has associations. There my great- grandfather Archibald Briggs(5) was baptised, as were also his older brothers Henry Currer Briggs (198) and William Briggs(200). The manuscript records of this church for the period 1761 to 1837 are on the LDS church FHL British film 828167, items 1-2, and the FHL batch no. for christenings is C087581. |
My Bartholemews Gazetteer (1943) describes Riddlesden as an ecclesastical district and village in Bingley parish. East and West Riddlesden are described in the GENUKI website, quoting descriptions from Langdale's Topographical Dictionary of Yorkshire (1822), as single houses in the township of East Morton, and parish of Bingley. The deposited registers for the parish of Bingley start in 1577.
© Copyright John Stowell 2007