Chapter1: INTRODUCTION

RESEARCHING THE SEVIOUR FAMILY HISTORY

This family history has been prepared by Peter and Carolyn Hancocks for Marie Jane Davies née Seviour.

The aim has been to produce a written family history rather than a genealogy. Researching and presenting the latter often results in little more than lists of names or prepared family trees that say little if anything about the people featured in them. This family history looks at how and why Marie Jane’s ancestors and relatives came to be where and what they were, and considers the local, national and international events that moulded the physical and political environments in which they lived.

Other ancestral lines in addition to the direct Seviour line have been studied. Taken to its obvious conclusions, the affect of this approach is to effectively double the number of surnames being studied with each success ancestral generation.

There is a natural desire to trace family lines as far back in time as possible, but the mid-sixteenth century is the effective limit of most ancestral research. In this work attempts have been made to trace forwards and backwards as many related family lines as possible. These lines are often only related through marriage to a sibling of one of the Seviour ancestors. As such they do not contribute to the Seviour genetic ancestry. The results of this research often do not show on the family trees presented with each family history write-up, but are often described in the text.

INFORMATION SOURCES

The main sources of information have been family memories and stories, church registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, the International Genealogical Index (IGI), census returns and information published on the Internet.

Records are held in local or county record offices, national repositories and local, family history society and Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormon) libraries. Records or indexes to them are often published and are available in book, microfiche or electronic data form.

Family Memories and Stories

The starting point in any family history or genealogical research project is the recording of any family memories and stories. Marie Jane Davies has been the source of many family stories and recollections. Family memories and stories must however always be treated with caution. Relatives are sometimes only known by pet or nick names rather than their given names, members of different families can be confused with each other, dates may be vague and, with retelling over the years, family stories easily become mixed-up or exaggerated.

When information is discovered from independent sources memories can often be jogged and confirm the information and then elaborate on it.

Parish Registers

Since 1558 every incumbent has been obliged to keep bound written copies (registers) of all baptisms, marriages and burials performed in his church. Originally different types of entries were mixed together on chronological order. Early entries were often written with inferior inks in close spaced Latinised script; hence reading these today can often be very difficult. Most original registers are now safely resident in county record offices, away from the damp, mice and insects that were often an endemic feature of parish chests.

Only rarely does one actually handle original registers these days. Examining microfilm or microfiche copies using special viewing equipment is now the norm. Written or typed transcriptions and indexes of at least some local parish registers are held in book form and on microfilm and microfiche at most record offices.

Entries in parish registers are often subject to the vagaries of spelling employed by the incumbent or barely literate parish clerk. As registers were initially only required to be brought up to date on a weekly basis entries can be erroneous.

Despite their draw back parish registers are the primary source for most genealogically related family history information.

International Genealogical Index (IGI)

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), commonly known as Mormons, believe that it is possible and essential to baptise and remarry their ancestors 'post-mortems'. To this end members of the church are charged with drawing up their genealogy. The church assists it members in this task by making microfilm and microfiche copies of parish registers available to its members and any other interested parties.

The LDS has extracted the baptism and marriage entries from many registers and placed them in a massive database known as the International Genealogical Index (IGI). This index is available to study on mircofiche and CD-ROM. The authors of this work have a microfiche copy of the UK versions, which contains over 30 million names on over 3700 fiche sheets. All this information is now also available on the Internet.

Although there are gaps in the coverage of the IGI it is often possible to locate missing ancestors or relatives, or construct whole family groups from information it contains.

Census Returns

A summary of every households response to the census that we all have to complete every ten years, is made available to the public after 100 hundred years. Thus, since the first complete census conducted in 1841, returns are available for every tenth year up to and including 1891. The national returns are held in London and local returns are held at most local record offices and/or libraries. They give personal details for the inhabitants of every address, namely full name, age, marital status, relationship to head of household, occupation and place of birth, and are thus an invaluable tool for the family historian.

On a local scale, various family and history societies, private individuals, and research and educational institutions have published indexes to some census returns. The LDS has published an index and full transcript of the 1881 census on microfiche and CD-ROM. Copies of the l851 (covers three counties) and 1881 (national coverage) census on CD-ROM has been purchased by the authors.

The Internet

As each week passes the Internet becomes more useful as a source of genealogical and family history information. Individuals, including the authors, often establish 'homepages' or 'web sites' where they publish their genealogies and family histories, organisations and individuals publish indexes of census returns and trades directories, education establishments and local authorities publish past and current location details, and companies publish details of their activities, past and present.

Other Sources

Old photographs, if they are correctly identified and labelled, can be a useful source of information, particularly when they are being discussed with elderly family members.

Local newspapers often give lists of attendees at weddings and funerals. It is then left to the researcher to sort out the family from the friends; not always an easy job.

Telephone directories, in book form and on CD-ROM, are sources of names and addresses of latter day bearers of the family name.

DATA HANDLING AND ANALYSIS

Information from printed indexes and sources is transcribed by hand. All transcriptions are kept in family specific files, tagged together in subdivisions that reflect the nature of the information e.g. census, wills, parish registers. Increasingly information and data is being gathered from the Internet or CD-ROM. Often in these cases only digital versions of the information is held, so backing up of computer files becomes of prime importance.

The information is then input into a family history program. From here it can be manipulated, updated and altered as necessary, referred to, printed out or analysed.

WRITE-UPS

The written family history presented here represents an interpretation of known facts, events and dates.

Within this family history discrete or convenient family sub-trees have been identified and a chapter prepared for each of these. Each history follows forward through time the male line family name. Details of the female lines joining the principal line are covered in the text or where necessary are allocated separate chapters.

Many chapters include diagrams, drawings, etchings or photographs. Many of these illustrations are copyright of the respective copyright holders; the authors have received, and do not seek, any material advantage by reproducing them in this family history. These images or copies of them must not be sold on to third parties.

Key to abbreviations used in family trees at the end of each chapter

b. = born

c. = christened

m. = married

d. = died

- = no information available or known

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

Studying family histories gives one a much better understanding of history. The agricultural and industrial revolutions cease to be long distant assemblages of dates, facts and inventors names. One can see how they influenced the lives, and deaths, of our forebears. One can appreciate why agricultural labourers exchanged their country existence for life in small towns then industrial cities and how, given luck, opportunity and hard work, families could eventually move out of the cities to the leafy suburbs and beyond.

Studying family history reveals that the 'good old days' were not without their problems.

The eighteenth century rural idyll of farm labourers gathering the harvest and working with magnificent horses often hid a story of unremitting poverty, near serfdom and the threat of starvation in years of lean harvest or livestock plagues and epidemics. Education was largely unknown. Complete subservience to the will of the lord of the manor was the norm.

In the nineteenth century living conditions in the newly industrialised towns and cities were worse than in the countryside. Overcrowding, poor diet and none existent sanitation resulted in epidemics of cholera and typhoid, and soaring infant death rates. Pollution from industrial furnaces and domestic hearths would often darken the daytime sky. People became mere appendages of the noisy, dirty and dangerous manufacturing machines they operated.

The twentieth century saw vastly improved living and working conditions. It also heralded the age of mechanised warfare. The First World War saw the effective elimination of a generation of young men throughout Britain and Europe. The 1920s witnessed the great depression and the collapse of many industries. During the Second World War relatively fewer combatants died, but many civilians lost their lives when industrial centres and family homes became the target for enemy bombs.