Thomasin
21-11-2008, 3:56 PM
I was looking through a microfilm this morning, and came upon the following note:
N.B. The Register having been very imperfectly kept & for many years wholly neglected, during the time when Mr Farquhar was Rector of this parish, Mr Fawkes who succeeded him in April 1774, endeavoured to procure an account of such baptisms and burials as had been omitted, & left behind him, on his decease in August 1777, two papers fairly written, the one containing those births or baptisms which he had obtain'd authentic information of from the year 1758, the other containing the burials, only from the year 1772, together with all those which had occurr'd in his own time, & evidently intended to have transcribed them into this Register. I have therefore copied them exactly from his papers into this book, & have begun a new book from the time of my own induction in October 1777.
John Till Rector
Rector Fawkes' pages were decidedly scrappy and incomplete, while Mr Till's were a joy to behold. He had formulated a system where he wrote miniature numbers beside the names, and in a note told the reader that 1 = celibate, 2 = married and 3 = widowed. Where a person had come from outside the parish, he told you where they were from, or if they were a traveller. In the deaths he would write things such as 'a nurse-child from London' or 'burnt to death by her clothes catching fire' (a 6 year old in 1807), or, in 1802 'The four children buried this year all died of the scarlet fever'.
One couple had pulled the wool over his eyes, and after baptising some of their children he wrote under each of the entries 'It has since been discovered that Thomas P.... and Mary Br..... were not married.' |scold| (Can't remember the surnames - I think she was Brittle or Brattle.)
All these entries were so different from the ones that followed. By this time pre-printed books were used and, the rector or the clerk finding the boxes were not wide enough, he took to turning the book round so that the writing was vertical.
All in all, for consideration towards the modern researcher, Mr Till gets 10 out of 10! |angel|
Thomasin
N.B. The Register having been very imperfectly kept & for many years wholly neglected, during the time when Mr Farquhar was Rector of this parish, Mr Fawkes who succeeded him in April 1774, endeavoured to procure an account of such baptisms and burials as had been omitted, & left behind him, on his decease in August 1777, two papers fairly written, the one containing those births or baptisms which he had obtain'd authentic information of from the year 1758, the other containing the burials, only from the year 1772, together with all those which had occurr'd in his own time, & evidently intended to have transcribed them into this Register. I have therefore copied them exactly from his papers into this book, & have begun a new book from the time of my own induction in October 1777.
John Till Rector
Rector Fawkes' pages were decidedly scrappy and incomplete, while Mr Till's were a joy to behold. He had formulated a system where he wrote miniature numbers beside the names, and in a note told the reader that 1 = celibate, 2 = married and 3 = widowed. Where a person had come from outside the parish, he told you where they were from, or if they were a traveller. In the deaths he would write things such as 'a nurse-child from London' or 'burnt to death by her clothes catching fire' (a 6 year old in 1807), or, in 1802 'The four children buried this year all died of the scarlet fever'.
One couple had pulled the wool over his eyes, and after baptising some of their children he wrote under each of the entries 'It has since been discovered that Thomas P.... and Mary Br..... were not married.' |scold| (Can't remember the surnames - I think she was Brittle or Brattle.)
All these entries were so different from the ones that followed. By this time pre-printed books were used and, the rector or the clerk finding the boxes were not wide enough, he took to turning the book round so that the writing was vertical.
All in all, for consideration towards the modern researcher, Mr Till gets 10 out of 10! |angel|
Thomasin