Feeling the cold

Here in NZ it's been too cold over the last week to spend much time sitting at the computer - been feeling very sympathetic towards our poor ag lab ancestors who must have had much less pleasant living conditions over winter.

Brickmakers

A descendant of the GODMAN family recently contacted me - they were brickmakers so it's prompted me to look at brickmaking in Wing. Perhaps you can help?

* Any descendants of Richard HARRIS, George TRUEMAN, or Laurence FAULKNER out there?

* Does anyone have any photos of the brickworks at Littleworth, or of anyone known to have worked there?

* Does anyone know when the yard finally closed? And does anyone have any snippets of evidence to suggest there was brickmakers or brickmaking in Wing prior to 1859?

* It would be nice to have a photo (old or new) of a building in Wing known to be made of bricks from the Littleworth brickworks - I dare say there are probably a lot that fall into this category.

Robert VALLENTINE's prize essay

Anyone keen to learn about the retention of moisture in turnip land? Then you'll want to check out the essay by Robert VALLENTINE of Burcott Farm published in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society in 1856. Unfortunately one of the pages is blurry so some of the wisdom of his 20 years experience in growing turnips is lost, but an entertaining read none-the-less!

You can also check out page 269 of the same book for a much longer (54 page) article about farming in Buckinghamshire at this time. My poor printer isn't thanking me, but I'm off to snuggle up in front of the heater and extend my knowledge of Bucks agriculture!

Online books

If you want to flesh out the lives of your ancestors, historical books are a good place to start. Both Google and Microsoft are making books available online, not a completely new concept but now easy to search and in some cases fully downloadable in PDF form to read at your leisure. The books each have scanned to date are quite different, so be sure to check out both sites if you are hunting for information, say on ag labs in Bucks.

Google Books (my find this morning - English Agriculture in 1850-51 by James Cain, published 1852)

Live Search Books (my find this morning - The Village Labourer 1760-1832 by JL Hammond and Barbara Hammond, published 1911)

If you find something interesting, leave a comment with the details!

June update

New for this month is marriage strays. Did your ancestor acquire a wife or husband from parts unknown? Perhaps their marriage took place in one of the other parishes covered in the Phillimores transcriptions (which generally ran up to around 1812), and if so you will hopefully find them on my new marriage strays page.

I have also updated the Non-conformist and Methodist pages as we have been able to identify the BRAND family as Primitive Methodist - thanks for the information Bert!

And lastly I have added a link to the TYRRELL Family History Society - as I type this their website appears to be down but it definitely exists so keep trying if you are having problems.