This project started because I wanted to get an understanding of an English village in the century when England decided to send convicts and their support team (soldiers and administration staff) to Botany Bay, Sydney, Australia.
Tetbury fascinated me after I obtained a photocopy of the source document D566 Z11, held in Gloucestershire Records Office, titled Religious Affiliations of Householders in Tetbury 1735 - 7 and appears to be completed Oct 24 1737.
Tetbury is in the Gloucestershire Hundred of Longtree (also spelled Langtree).
The Project has as its main core the pages of genealogical information, obtained by merging the Baptism, Marriage and Death records of Tetbury Church of England between 1700 and 1770. The dates represent 35 years each side of the census, which the family reconstructions was intended to support. The Census is listed in alphabetic order - the original is in house order.
It consists of a cover and 28 double pages, with extra comments written on the blank half page. Page 1 has 'This was taken in 1735' written in the seventh of twelve columns.
It names the heads of houses, with 'and wife', and numbers for children, servants and lodgers. There are 20 houses on each page, with 19 on page 27, and 7 on page 28, a total of 546 households recorded.
I accepted the personal challenge of trying to give the family members names, and in the process found that coding in HTML for the Web enabled me to make a dull set of details into a fascinating record of your ancestors and my friends - anyone whose story has been part of a twelve year project must become a friend!
The census records 2149 residents, 935 Masters and Mistresses (no house has more than two in this category), 878 Children, 213 Servants and 123 Lodgers. I found 2533 possible residents. This means I have 748 names to fill 334 Servant or Lodger positions. So I have 384 people 'floating' - some are 'wives'.
In the Summer of 2000, I spent 3 months in Gloucester Records Office researching Wills of Tetbury residents. I began by reading and making notes of William Denny's Will probated in 1661, and stopped at Will number 352, of Eleanor Watts Will dated 15 July 1817, then I listed the 80 Wills to 1856 (where the computer index ended).
| Supplementary information, points that appealed to me, and so on, are in my Notes. Some obvious questions I have tried to answer are the survival of twins baptised, and what names were favoured in Tetbury.
See Notes,
Twins 1701-70,
Boy's names,
Girl's names
and how the population grew.
| Every care has been taken with the information on these pages. The Parish registers are transcripts of photocopies from the microfishe, and errors can occur for many reasons. It is therefore strongly recommended that each entry is checked against original records.
For a practical example of information in the registers, see my page on Hester Winterson or on her cousin Hannah Winterson- be warned, these sites includes very large illustrations of pages from the parish registers. |
|
Summary of abbreviations:- |
|---|
Men of 1608 - lists all males available for Militiary service, age, height, profession, and their weapons.
Hearth Tax - the King set a tax based on number of hearths in each residence. Records of houses in Tetbury survive for 1662, 1671 and 1672,
Court Leet Roll - males aged 15 to 70 who attended an annual meeting
Not in Census Seems to be resident - a servant or a lodger?
Summary of Frames:-
Brown - Hearth Tax of 1662, 1671 and 1672
Tan - in other records before 1735
Yellow - They appear to be resident in Tetbury 1735-6.
Red - Ted Prince's research into other Tetbury records for 1735.
Green - Surname, Head of the house, House number in 1735 Census, wife and children, servants, lodgers, then religious affiliation - Church, Presbyterian, Baptist, Quakers, Others.
Teal - The individual appears in other town records for Tetbury.
Seagreen - in Overseers records, as provider or recipient.
Black - Grave memorials recorded by Bigland.
Blue - Will of an individual
Orange - contributions by descendants of the family
|
All dates are converted to new style (year starting on Jan 1st) and shown as year - month - day.
|
Say Thanks to