#52Ancestors, Land

I have been working on a wee project trying to map and connect all the families in one parish; their movements and their descendant’s movements through time.

It all started because I had thought I would use this particular parish as the focus of one of my assignments. I thought I would map the route the enumerator took and document each family and whether there was a connection to my family. That was until I re-looked at the census and discovered a family with our surname which we appeared to know nothing of.

I have spent some time, reading and transcribing the census for 1841 – the first time there is good information about the residents of the parish – and have done the same with the parish records which are available online. In addition, I have found and studied the Tithe Apportionment book and map for the parish.

I’m still not totally sure where they fit in, but I’m probably around 85%. If I could find another couple of wills maybe I will know for sure. In the process though, I discovered that of the five or so farms mentioned in the book which were solely in the parish, all were either owned by members of my family, or farmed by them as tenant farmers for absentee landowners.

A couple of generations earlier, my ancestor had owned the manor here. Exactly which farms made up the manor is not entirely clear. But in 1841 three were still in the possession of his descendants; four if you count the adjacent farm which for some generations had been owned by another family who were cousins several times over to my family.

Tenant farmers included two uncles and a second cousin – plus the mysterious family who instead of being tenant famers or landowners were recorded as Agricultural Labourers on every document I found. DNA is suggesting a link, I just need to find some further evidence.

This is just one parish – there are several others I want to study too, to give a fuller picture of where they lived and how they lived. Thanks to the COVID-19 #StayAtHome requirements maybe I will get them sorted in the next few weeks too.