18TH CENTURY ANCESTORS
There are plenty of resources available to take your tree back even further, says Pam Ross
Y ou’ve done all you can to find your family back to around 1800. Is it time to call it a day? Quit while you’re ahead? Or do you slip the reassuring hand of the 19th century and try to go further back in time?
Researching the 18th century needn’t be difficult, it’s just different. You don’t leave familiar territory behind entirely; wills, parish registers, directories and newspapers are still available though it might take more work to find them.
Civil registration certificates and census returns can still help you in your search. For example, Henry and Cassandra Austen, Jane Austen’s brother and sister were born in the 1770s and lived long enough to appear in a very faint entry of the 1841 census at home in Chawton, Hampshire. Three other brothers lived beyond the 1851 census – all long enough to warrant a search for a death certificate and burial.
Church sources
Parish registers found in all parts of the British Isles are an essential back-up to most 19th century research, but when you reach the 18th they become one of your main resources. Unlike registers compiled in the 19th century they were generally written on a blank page, often providing the date, the names of the participants and little else.
However, if you’re lucky, they can give you a lot more information. That’s why it’s always so important to avoid simply taking names and dates from an index but to look at the original entry as a matter of course.
The blank page of a parish register had a lot to offer ministers, rectors and vicars, also known as ‘ incumbents’, who had an ear for gossip and a literary bent. With the freedom of the blank page before them some of them, or their parish clerks, were tempted to embellish the information they included, adding personal information about the people being baptised or buried. For example, four-year-old Margaret Hill was “killed by falling into a coal pit” in 1792 at Brierley Hill, Staffordshire. One father in 1783 reported in the parish register to have “turned out two children by different women here to be baptised within seven days of each other”. You might even find the rumoured name of the father of an illegitimate child – something that’s unlikely to be included in an online index.
If you have trouble finding a register entry, try looking for bishops’ transcripts (BTs), which were compiled annually from the register and sent to the bishop.
The late 18th century brought the lucky people of the Diocese of York some additional information in their parish registers, known as ‘Dade’ registers after the Reverend William Dade (see an example on page 19). From 1777 until 1812 baptism entries might contain the names not only of parents but of grandparents and even great grandparents. Scottish and Irish registers followed their own, slightly different, patterns and there are excellent guides at scotlands people.gov.uk/ guides/church- registers and www.nli.ie/ en/family-history- introduction.aspx.
Most English and Welsh parish registers and BTs are at county and diocesan archives, often in one and the same place. Some are indexed and available through online commercial providers. Other indexes can be freely accessed via FamilySearch, FreeReg, Online Parish Clerks and the websites of some county archives.
Irregular marriages
Irregular marriages were performed by ordained clergymen without regard for the rules set down by the Church of England. They were at their peak in the
You might even find the rumoured name of the father of an illegitimate child
early 18th century; often referred to as ‘Fleet’ marriages because of the large number performed within the vicinity of the Fleet Prison in London. It’s said that by the 1740s over half of London marriages were irregular, with many involving participants from outside the city. Two hundred thousand records of Fleet Marriages are held at The National Archives (TNA) in class RG7. Many of the surviving records are online at
bmdregisters.co.uk and ancestry.co.uk. There were churches all around the country with clergy known for a similar relaxed attitude. If you find a small village with a disproportionate number of marriages it might be a clue to such activity.
Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1754 was an attempt to put a stop to irregular marriages, making it necessary for all marriages, including Catholic and nonconformist, to take place in a Church of England church. Only Jewish and Quaker marriages were exempted.
Those seeking an irregular marriage after Hardwicke’s Act had to head to Scotland as Lydia Bennet and George Wickham were thought to have done in Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice. Gretna Green, on the border of Scotland and England, today advertises itself as “a wedding venue since 1754”.
Up to 1754, marriage entries in English and Welsh parish registers had largely followed the same pattern since 1538. They gave the date and the names of the bride and groom, sometimes with an indication of their parish of origin and whether they were married by licence. Hardwicke’s Act gave a set format to Church of England marriage entries with a space to indicate whether the marriage was after banns or by licence, which parish the bride and groom claimed as home (although they might only have lived there for a matter of days), their marks or signatures, and the marks or signatures of the witnesses who were sometimes relatives.
Hardwicke also required banns to be read in the parishes of both the bride and groom for three consecutive weeks prior to the ceremony, and some parishes kept separate ‘ banns registers’ giving researchers a second chance of finding a marriage. This format stayed the same until the introduction of civil registration in 1837.
Marriage by licence was not the special licence of romantic fiction, but a more mundane affair which could be applied for by anyone of any social class. Jane Austen’s parents, George and Cassandra, were married by licence in Walcot St Swithin, Somerset, on 26 April 1764.
The licences themselves have usually not survived because they were handed to the officiating clergyman at the time of the marriage. However, an ‘allegation’ or affidavit and a bond signed in the presence of the bishop’s representative might still be in diocesan or county record offices, and some are with online providers too. The bond guaranteed the couple were free to marry – on payment of a fine if they gave false information. You might find the bridegroom’s occupation, the names, occupations and locations of the couple’s fathers or the name of a widowed mother, the age of the bride and groom (sometimes simply given as ‘21 years and upwards’) and the location of the proposed marriage. The groom and a male relative or friend usually signed the bond.
Marriage by licence did away with the necessity for banns. People who applied for
licences included some nonconformists who didn’t want to have banns read in the established church. Also, the parents of an illegitimate child might be persuaded to marry before the father had the chance to abscond, leaving the child dependant on parish funding. Other people who might marry by licence include soldiers or sailors about to depart for distant lands or minors under the age of 21.
Hard times
The parish church was the centre of the world for many of our ancestors and provided some support in times of need. It appointed unpaid officers to administer the Poor Law in England and Wales with the intention of alleviating poverty among the parishioners. Parish officials collected the poor rate – money from those in the parish deemed to have sufficient income to pay it – and paid it out in small grants to the poor of the parish (often surviving in overseers’ accounts). It’s possible that your ancestors paid the poor rate one year and benefited from it a few years later.
Many parish rate books have survived, noting who paid the rate. These are mostly in local archives, but some are online. They’re useful in establishing whether your ancestor was alive to pay the rate but don’t usually give any family information. People on the receiving end of the poor rate, however, were much better documented.
If your ancestors fell on hard times then they became ‘chargeable’ to the parish. The parish had to find the money to see they didn’t starve. Entitlement was a big issue, so parishes were keen to establish whether a person had ‘settlement’ in their parish or had strayed from another parish who did have responsibility for them. A person could claim settlement in a parish if they had been born there, held parish office, been apprenticed there or for several other reasons. ( There’s a good explanation of how settlement worked in The Parish Chest by WE Tate.) This often gave rise to disputes, resulting in those claiming settlement being interviewed by the local Justices (usually wealthy landowners). A record was kept of the interview and if it has survived it can give you a wealth of information about your ancestors such as where they were born, where they claimed settlement and for what reason, how many children they had and who they had married. If they were judged not to belong they could be asked or forced to leave, and a ‘removal order’ issued.
Women who became pregnant outside of marriage could become embroiled in settlement and bastardy disputes. If they married, they took on the place of settlement of their husband. If the father refused or was not free to marry, then the parish chased him for payments for the child’s upkeep. This gave rise to so-called bastardy interviews where the woman was asked to name the father, and the issuing of a ‘ bastardy bond’ to force him to pay up.
All these disputes also might go to court at the county’s quarter sessions. Court
If your ancestors fell on hard times they became ‘chargeable’ to the parish
records at county level are at local archives with the parish’s records of settlement and bastardy. A few have found their way online with the commercial providers such as Ancestry’s London collection. FamilySearch can direct you to many of them on microfilm at a Family History Centre near you.
The parish Overseers of the Poor could arrange apprenticeships for poor children. The documents, if they’ve survived, can give you details of what trade the child was apprenticed to (some poor girls were little more than slaves, apprenticed to learn the ‘art and mystery of a housewife’), the name of the child’s father or widowed mother, the length of the apprenticeship and the age of the child. Surviving papers are in county archives with the other parish records as described above.
Apprenticeships could also be arranged privately or through the Guilds in the City of London and other ‘guild towns’ such as Coventry, which have their own records.
Private apprenticeships were subject to tax between 1710 and 1810. Class IR1 at TNA holds the record books giving master’s name and occupation, the name of the apprentice and sometimes their parentage. You can download and browse images free at discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk. They show Jane Austen’s aunt, Philadelphia Austin (sic), being apprenticed to a Covent Garden milliner in May 1745.
Death and taxes
During the 18th century, the parish church provided the only available burial ground for most of the population. Many church burial records comprised just a note of the name and the date of burial, occasionally with an age at death. You can get help in finding burials via FreeReg, Online Parish Clerks, the online commercial providers or through the National Burials Index, a copy of which you’ll find at many archives. FamilySearch has some burials too.
Some burial entries contain additional information, but you’re likely to find even more on a headstone in the churchyard. Monumental or memorial inscriptions have been transcribed all over the UK by family history societies. The results are variously with the online commercial providers, free online through enthusiasts for an area, in books, downloads or CDs produced by family history societies, or at local libraries and archives. The Federation of Family History Societies ( ffhs.org.uk) will tell you which society covers which area.
Some valuable information, such as age at death, appears on headstones if your ancestors had sufficient income to afford to erect one. You can find family groupings with married names of daughters and also, occasionally, family members who died overseas or elsewhere in the country remembered in their local parish graveyard.
By no means everyone made a will but they are always worth searching for and not always confined to the wealthy. A poor widow with a copyhold plot of land might want to ensure it was passed on according to her wishes.
The family information contained in a good will can be invaluable. Relatives might be named and relationships given. It might lead you to more information in a marriage settlement or a previous will of a parent or grandparent. If there was no will, or an inadequate one, creditors or relations might apply for ‘administration’. These, too, are worth looking for. While administrations, or admons, contain less information there’s often detail about relationships. Jane Austen’s short will is free to view at bit.ly/AustenWill. It wasn’t
The family information contained in a good will can be invaluable
witnessed so there’s a signed affidavit attached, stating that the handwriting was genuine. The will was proved in London on 10 September 1817 which means that the people named as executors applied for permission to administer Jane’s estate.
Before 1858, wills were proved in the church courts. The highest in the land was the Prerogative Court of Canterbury; its wills are available via TNA and Ancestry and include wills of people dying abroad. Wills proved in the Prerogative Court of York are available via the Borthwick Institute ( york.ac.uk/media/borthwick/
documents/ 5simpleprobate.pdf) and wills proved in the lower courts of bishops’ dioceses (administrative areas of the Church of England) around England are available via diocesan and county archives. Welsh wills are free to view online at the National Library of Wales, Scottish wills are available via Scotland’s People. For advice on surviving Irish wills try familysearch.org/ wiki/en/ Ireland_ Probate_ Records. Some wills in England and Ireland are available via Ancestry and Findmypast, for a fee. Some county archives have their own wills online but others have to be viewed at the archives
themselves. There’s a good guide at TNA ( bit.ly/ WillsPre1858).
The court where a will was proved or administration sought depended partly on where a person’s property was – if it was spread beween two dioceses, for example, a higher court would deal with it. Phillimore’s
Atlas and Index of Parish Registers, available in libraries and online at Ancestry, shows very clearly where you might start looking for the will of an inhabitant of a particular parish. Wills of maiden aunts can be particularly useful when they remember a wide range of family members.
There are other records which will help you place your ancestor, or somebody with the same name, in a particular location at a particular time. Poll books, newspapers, directories and enclosure awards are all useful, with printed sources via archive.org and Cengage Learning at academic libraries. But wills probably give most insight into a family if you’re lucky enough to find one. They are still underused resources, partly because they’re not all online and it can take some effort to find them; most local archives now have good online catalogues so you should be able at least to find out if your ancestor’s will has survived (see page 51).
Your 18th century forebears may have paid the Window Tax, payable on the number of windows in a dwelling. As you’d expect, many owners of large houses blocked up some of their windows to minimise the amount payable, but there are still some records of payments being made. These usually just list the property, details of payment due and the name of the owner, but are a useful indication that a head of household was alive at the date of the entry. The tax was repealed in 1851. In an echo of present day letters to The Times, FamilySearch quotes from Felix
Farley’s Bristol Journal, 1804: “In answer to the enquiry… whether his spectacles are to be considered as one or two windows, he may rest assured they will be charged as two lights, if the space between them exceeds nine inches.”
Window tax records are usually available at local archives or through commercial websites. Although this article primarily focuses on England and Wales, tax records for Scotland on ScotlandsPlaces ( scotlands
places.gov.uk) are also worth exploring. Other taxes aimed at the wealthy were on luxury goods such as silk, wine and hair powder. During the 18th century, wigs were often worn by the aristocracy and aspiring middle classes, by judges and other servants of the courts (a practice which lingers to this day) and by footmen and other retainers. The wigs or ‘perukes’ were made of human or animal hair, larded to make the curls stick. A final layer of powder served partly to disguise the smell of these sometimes infested concoctions. Those who didn’t favour a wig had their own hair powdered.
By the end of the century, hair powder was considered ripe for taxing. Although taxation accelerated the end of the fashion there are rare survivals of records. They’re likely to be found with quarter sessions records in county archives such as Warwickshire, 1795-1797, ( archives unlocked.warwickshire.gov.uk), Wiltshire, 1796-97, ( wshc.eu) and also in London Metropolitan Archives ( search.
lma.gov.uk). They give names of people licensed to wear powder and so might name a spouse, children or servants.
Migration records
According to a recent biography of Jane Austen by Claire Tomalin, Jane’s redoubtable Aunt Philadelphia travelled alone to India to find a husband. The army frowned upon soldiers’ relationships with the Indian population so this was not unusual. Most young women travelled with a parent or guardian, but Philadelphia was an orphan. You can find her marriage to army surgeon Tysoe Saul Hancock on 22 February 1753 at Fort St David, Madras among others in the extensive records held by the British Library, free to search at indiafamily.
bl.uk/ui/ Home.aspx while findmypast. co.uk has more. Many 18th century migrants from the British Isles were connected to the army, navy or the East India Company. Ancestry has British and German Deserters, Dischargees and POWs Who May Have Remained in
Those who didn’t favour a wig had their own hair powdered to conform with the fashion
Canada and the USA, 1774-1783 by Clifford Neal Smith. It contains rare and useful evidence of listed soldiers who, having separated from their regiments, settled within a short distance of their last known location after fighting in the American Revolution.
Convicts were sent to Australia from 1787. TheGenealogist has convict registers from that date. For further advice see familysearch.org/wiki/en/ Beginning_ Research_ in_United_ States_ Immigration_ and_ Emigration_ Records
and familysearch.org/wiki/en/Australia_ Convict_ Records.
Navy records are dealt with on page 54. The records of the East India Company are at the British Library ( bl.uk/catalogues/ iofhs.shtml).
Working lives
Some useful occupational listings cover the 18th century. There’s a free version online of a printed Roll of Commissioned Officers in the Medical Service of the British Army from 1727 at archive.org. The first Army List was published in 1740. Earlier, look for Dalton’s English Army Lists and Commission
Registers 1661-1714. The Navy Lists came later, first as Steel’s Navy List in 1782. All record only officers. There are a few online but it takes some searching for early versions. Hard copies are at The British Library, the library of The Society of Genealogists, the library of TNA and scattered in libraries all over the UK. Not every library will have a full run so it’s wise to check dates in their catalogues.
Records of all services, including marines description books from 1755, are at TNA. Findmypast’s collection of British Army records contains both officers and ordinary soldiers from 1760 ( findmypast.co.uk). These include Chelsea pension records which were not confined to those housed at the Royal Hospital; there were many ‘out-pensioners’. There’s more detail on militia records on page 63 of this magazine.
If you have ancestors in the church, it’s worth looking at the Clergy Database ( theclergydatabase.org.uk), which details the careers of Church of England clergymen. Jane Austen’s father George and her two clergymen brothers can be found there – James, 1765-1819, and Henry, 1771-1850. Beware, though, that the spread of dates given in the database might cover the length of their career, not the length of their life. The project is ongoing and they’re always grateful for further biographical information.
Making it work
Family profiling, or building up a picture of more than one family of the same name, is an important technique to learn for 18th century research. You need to use a process of elimination instead of positive identification. Work backwards and forwards across the divide between the centuries and across the dates of availability of different documents. The answer to your query might still lie in the 19th century, in a document relating to a distant relative or in the 17th with the baptism or will of a possible several x great grandfather. Use plenty of imagination in the search but be sure to weigh up the cold hard facts before you finally place an 18th century generation on your family tree.