Monks in Motion - Lives of the Benedictines

The project 'Monks in Motion', led by Dr James Kelly of Durham University, is shedding light on the lives of the Benedictine monks from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. This newly launched database details the membership and activities of the English and Welsh Benedictine order from the time of Mary I's reign until 1800.

Following the dissolution of the monasteries in the time of Henry VIII, the first English Benedictine monastery in exile was established in Douai in 1607. It was followed by a further three monasteries across France and Germany. Prior to these foundations, which provided a nationalized focus, some aspiring English monks joined European communities, entering religious life in Catholic countries such as Spain. Living in these exiled communities but also returning to England to serve on the Catholic mission, the English Benedictines’ mobility made them unusual amongst the Order in Catholic Europe.

The database only includes those individuals who entered the Benedictine life (for however short or long a time) after Elizabeth I came to throne in England in 1558. The monks have been recorded according to their place of entry, the majority under one of the four foreign English foundations – St Gregory’s, Douai; St Laurence’s, Dieulouard; St Edmund’s Paris; Ss Adrian and Denis, Lamspringe.  A final group of monks are recorded under ‘Elsewhere’, cataloguing all those who cannot be included under the previous groupings. It includes those Scottish monks who were aggregated to the English Benedictine Congregation.

Week 3 - Longevity - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

The prompt for Week 3 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Longevity - the oldest person in your family tree, longevity in a job or career, the person it took you the longest to find.

This prompt immediately took me to my father's family, and sent me reflecting on the long lives of Dad and his siblings.  My father, Peter Jeffrey Green, was the second youngest of 10 children and he passed away almost 5 years ago at the age of 87.  A fairly long life by most standards, but it paled alongside several of his siblings.  All ten siblings lived to at least 70 years of age.  I would doubt there are many big families around who could make that claim (if you can, I would love to hear from you).

The only photo I have of all 10 siblings, with their father.

The ten Green siblings in birth order order are :
Frank Walter Arthur - died age 97
Ernest John Thomas - died age 76
Isobel May Victoria - died age 80
Phyllis Muriel Argent - died age 101, only two weeks before she would have celebrated her 102nd birthday
Jessica Evelyn Sibyll - died age 77
Olive Eleanor Lorraine - died age 90
Nancy Mary Constance - died age 93
Leslie William Murray - died age 88
Peter Jeffrey - died age 87
Marjory Beryl - died age 71

With the exception of Leslie, all the siblings married and had children, so I have quite a large number of cousins.  As Dad was second youngest and was in his 40's when my sister and I were born, we are the youngest by quite a stretch, and our eldest cousins are close to 40 years our senior, having children several years older than we are.  Family reunions can be quite a generation game.

General Register Office PDF Pilot

Have you been ordering birth and death certificates online from England and Wales via the General Register Office (GRO)?  It has just been confirmed that the latest pilot scheme to deliver PDF copies of birth and death records has been a success and will be extended.

Over 79,600 PDF applications had been processed in the three months from the introduction of the pilot on 12 October 2017.  The GRO previously conducted a three-phase PDF pilot between November 2016 and April 2017, but has yet to establish a permanent PDF scheme.  As a result of this popularity and positive feedback, the pilot scheme has now been extended past the minimum three month period.  The scheme applies to births from 1837 to 1916 and deaths from 1837 to 1957, but (sadly) excludes marriage records.

By allowing family historians to order digital copies of records at £6 each with a 5-working day delivery period, it provides a cheaper and quicker alternative to ordering print copies, which cost £9.25 each or £23.40 for priority deliveries.

Personally, I have been taking advantage of this new service quite a bit over the past several months and have had a very positive experience.  All certificates have arrive quickly, and all but one have been correct.  For the one that wasn't right, I simply emailed the GRO pointing out the error (they had supplied the wrong certificate) and the correct certificate arrived within a few days, at no extra cost.  I'll be ordering a few more certificates shortly, and am hoping they will extend the pilot to include marriage certificates soon.

Chruch of Ireland Gazette goes online

Almost 70 years of editions of the Church of Ireland Gazette, the Church of Ireland’s weekly newspaper, have been published online for free by the Representative Church Body Library.
The editions date from March 1856, when the paper first appeared, to December 1923, after the Irish Free State was declared, and cover both modern Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Historian Dr Miriam Moffitt said: “The Gazette is wonderful because it provides not only an outline of the events that impacted on the Church over the last 150 years, but also because it gives us an insight into the attitudes of its readership.”
The Gazette ran birth, marriage and death notices relating to clergymen and their families, as well as news stories, columns and advertisements.  Maybe you can find out more about events in your family's parish or other interesting snippets about their lives.

Week 2 - Favourite Photo - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Genealogist Amy Johnson Crow has started a genealogy challenge for 2018. "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" is a series of weekly prompts to encourage us to share some of the information about our ancestors that we have accumulated.  This week's prompt is "Favourite Photo", and it has led me to look back through the collection of family photos I have accumulated - both in printed and digital formats - and pick out a few that stand out for me and think about the stories behind them. 

This is the wedding photo of my maternal great-grandparents, James Nicholas Clark and Pricilla Veronica Mulholland.  James worked as a contractor and eventually as an overseer for Brighton City Council.  They married on the 3rd August 1898 in Brighton, Melbourne.  It was James's second marriage.  His first, to Eliza Hawley, ended in divorce, which was fairly rare at the time.

The divorce was reported in the Brighton Southern Cross on 14 August 1897, which I found thanks to Trove.  James and Eliza had two children, whom Eliza also left when she deserted James.  He remarried just under a year later, and he and Pricilla had a further 12 children.  My Grandmother, Gladys Daisy Clark, was their 5th child.

This photo is one of the first I borrowed from my grandmother and had copied back when I first started my family history research, and when I purchased my first scanner it was also promptly digitised.  When my grandmother passed away in 1995 I was fortunate enough to obtain the original, an old sepia photo on cardboard that I keep carefully stored away and a copy on display.  I have very few photos of this generation of my family, and even less originals, so I find this one quite special.