Family History Newsletter #3

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West Sussex Libraries Family History Newsletter

Family Tree

July - September 2017


Welcome to the latest Family History Newsletter! In this issue we report back on the recent and very successful Family History Fun Day at Worthing, there's another article about unusual professions included in the census, advice on how to find out where your relative is buried, and much more!

This is what we have for you :

  • Family History Fun Day - a report on the Worthing event
  • Abecedarians - teachers of the alphabet
  • Bombs fall on East Grinstead
  • Looking for a burial plot?
  • The Butcher the Baker the Candlestick maker
  • What's on in West Sussex Libraries

Family History Fun Day

Fam Hist Fun Day

The first Family History Fun Day was held at Worthing Library on Saturday 13 May 2017.

A variety of external organisations were on hand to provide help and information including Sussex Family History Group, West Sussex Record Office, Guild of One Name Studies, Canadian Roots and of course our own Library Information Team.  Three talks on various aspects of Family History also took place and were well attended.

Lots of children came to the specially themed family story time and took part in related activities.

Over 150 people attended the event and many commented on how it had inspired them to start their family history research and what an excellent day it was.

We will be holding another Family History Fun Day in Horsham Library on Saturday 21 October. For this and other forthcoming events information can also be found on the What's on in Libraries page.


Abecedarians - teachers of the alphabet

ABCs

This obscure old occupational term appears only in the 1851 census where a 26yr old man named Magnus Jamieson, from Lerwick in the Shetland Isles, has entered his occupation as ‘Abecedarian’.  The Oxford English Dictionary and other Oxford reference material found on the einformation pages reveal that although this is an early historical term relating to anything written or pertaining to an alphabetical arrangement it was also…’Someone who teaches or is learning the alphabet.’

Until the Elementary Education Act of 1880, which made it compulsory for all 5 – 10 year olds to attend school, many children received little or no tuition for reading and writing. The fortunate ones who did went to various types of schools or received education from those individuals who taught them only the basics.  It was not a well-paid profession and if we follow Magnus through later census they show that he married and quickly moved on to other occupations, moving to the mainland of Scotland.

The 1851 census also lists an 11yr old girl, Eliza Findlay, who gives her occupation as ‘teacher of the alphabet’. The census does not elaborate any further as to why an 11yr old child, living in Balornack Farm near Glasgow, was working at such a young age teaching others their alphabet. Eliza, listed as a visitor, was the youngest occupant of the ten people at the farmhouse on the night of the census. The head of the house was a 23yr old farmer along with his mother, sister and an assortment of servants and farm workers.

Another interesting fact is that the 1911 census includes a ‘bakery engineer’ living in Buckinghamshire whose name was ‘Alphabet Ayres’. His father was named Theophilius Ayres, a ‘Bricklayer’ who chose to give his eighth child this name – reason unknown.


Bombs fall on East Grinstead

Whitehall cinema

Information Librarians deal with many questions on a daily basis, often discovering interesting stories as they carry out their searches. The following tale emerged when a customer asked for help researching an address in East Grinstead, and in particular to discover who the occupants were at the beginning of the war years.  A search was made using, among other sources, the 1939 Register, available on findmypast.   The address in East Grinstead was registered as the home of a special constable named Bernard Prodger. Bernard lived in the house with his wife Gladys and their 9 year old daughter, Evelyn.  Another child is also listed - a 12 year old named Mary K Fuller who may have been an evacuee as she had a different surname.

To find the continuing history of the home, and to see how long the family had lived there, the search moved to other documentation, including death records and obituaries found on Ancestry. The records revealed that Bernard’s daughter Evelyn had died in 1943, aged 13. According to the Roll of Honour website she was killed when a bomb fell on the Whitehall Cinema in East Grinstead on July 9th 1943. Further research revealed that the cinema was showing ‘Hopalong Cassidy’ on the night in question when a German bomb smashed through the roof and exploded killing over 100 people.  The same website gives further personal details outlining how Bernard ‘was on duty all night following the bombing despite his daughter’s death.’  In the face of such tragic news he continued to serve his community as did many during the war years.

The above photograph, from the West Sussex Past Pictures website, shows the inside of the cinema some years before it was bombed.