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How our ancestors decorated their homes for Christmas

Decking the halls

Ruth A Symes explored how our ancestors decorated for Christmas, from mistletoe to paper chains in an archived article from Discover Your Ancestors

Greenery and fruit, sparkle and snow, colourfully dressed tables and walls inscribed with Yuletide mottos – Christmases past were decorated using much the same general combination of ideas as Christmases today. But the specifics of the way our ancestors decorated their homes at any given time in the past depended not only on tradition, but also on what was currently most novel and up-to-date.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, domestic and church decorations at Christmas tended to be simple and worked on the principle of bringing something of the outside world indoors. Our ancestors would decorate their lamps, candles and tables, very shortly before Christmas Day, with material such as holly, ivy, mistletoe and berries collected from hedges and winter gardens. The candles (attached to the greenery with wax or pins) would be lit only on Christmas Eve to minimise the danger of fire hazard. The Rev James Woodforde, who kept a diary from the mid-18th century onwards, recorded that he filled his house with holly and lit a great wax candle especially for Christmas. Fruit and vegetables, imported from overseas, or newly-grown in British hothouses, were considered decorations in and of themselves. The Market Post of December 25th 1848 noted that in Covent Garden that Xmas season, the supply of pineapples, apples, pears, hothouse grapes, foreign grapes, walnuts, lemons and oranges was "seasonally good and sold readily".

A typical home at Christmas in the mid-Victorian period, would have been decorated to draw the eye towards the fireplace, which would have been ablaze with colour and sparkle. The popular installation of a Christmas tree in the domestic environment was widely attributed to a widely publicised etching of the Royal family at Christmas, complete with a tree (decorated with tinsel made from real shavings of silver) in the London Illustrated News of 1848. Mottoes or biblical quotations, with the individual letters cut out from paper and decorated with coloured rice or cotton wadding to imitate snow were often strung across the walls.

Trees were decorated with ornaments made from lace, paper, scraps of newspaper and magazine illustrations. Spurred on by the royal endorsement of Christmas, our Victorian ancestors proceeded to go decoration-crazy as the century progressed. As the Supplement to the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent of Saturday 24 December 24 1881 commented, "[Christmas decorations] are no longer hung around a room haphazard – as pineapples, apples, holly bough here, a bunch of berries there, a trail of ivy elsewhere. They are carefully planned and artistically constructed."

--- Reproduced with kind permission of Discover Your Ancestors Online Periodical ---

Read the entire article for free on the Discover Your Ancestors site 

Or take a look at the latest issue, books and subscriptions: https://discoveryourancestors.co.uk/

 

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How to research your ancestors in Welsh Parish Records

How to search for your ancestors in the Welsh Parish Church Registers




Cefu Llys Church, Llandrindod Wells

 

If your ancestors came from Wales then one of the most important record sets that you are going to want to use is those of the Parish Churches. Don’t be confused that they are Church of England churches until the second decade of the 20th century, as the Anglican churches in Wales were a part of the Established Church until 1920. You may also think that because your ancestors worshiped in the Chapels of some of the other Christian denominations that Parish Church registers are not relevant for you. Most often this is certainly not the case! 

 

Welsh Anglican Parish Records were created by the parish church for each area of the country. In their pages can be found recorded the details of millions of people at the time of their baptism, marriage or burial and they will often include ancestors who may have worshiped at a nonconformist chapel. While you may know that your past family were Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians or Unitarians they may still have come to the Parish Church for a christening, wedding or a funeral service for reasons that we will look at later. These Parish Church records can reveal information about your family members that will enable you to find names, get back a generation or more and build your family tree.



An arm of the state

Thomas Cromwell chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1532 to 1540

 

Before 1837, and the introduction of civil registration of births, marriages and deaths, the records made by the local Anglican Parish Church are where you will find the vital events of your ancestors recorded. The keeping of these records began in Henry VIII’s time when his Lord Privy Seal and Vicegerent, Thomas Cromwell, instructed the clergy in England and Wales that they were to record the baptisms, marriages and burials that they performed in their churches. While records were started in 1538 some parishes didn’t begin recording these ceremonies until 1598 and very few of the early records survive.

 

At the time of the Reformation, and the break from Rome, the ancient Catholic parish churches In Wales became a part of the Church of England and the Established Church. Similar to the parish churches in England, they acted as an arm of the state in carrying out the process of recording details of their parishioners. It was only in 1920 that the Church in Wales was disestablished and today it is fully independent of both the state and the Church of England while still being, however, an independent member of the Anglican Communion.

 


How can they help my research?

The church registers that the Welsh parish churches kept for generations can be fascinating for the researcher to use. They can reveal to you the names of an ancestor’s parents in a baptism entry and so allow you to get back another generation when previously you were in the dark as to who the parents had been. Likewise, the marriage of an ancestor listed in the page of a parish register can introduce you to the name of the person that they married. This is especially exciting if this is the first time you have found their name! 

 

Early registers were composite – that is they contained all three records in the same volume. Sometimes the records were separated into different sections and in other cases they were chronological and written on the same page. In 1754, however, this changed when a new law required that marriages had to be recorded in a separate book and banns of marriages – public proclamations of a couple’s intent to marry – were now to be recorded in yet another volume.

 

A composite parish register for Llanthewy Rytherch with baptisms, marriages and burials all on the same page

 

The next significant change happened in 1812 when pre-printed registers were introduced for baptisms, marriages, and burials, and separate registers were then kept by the church for all three. Pre-printed registers are useful for family historians as they define what information was required to appear in a record and so the vicar was guided to enter the details that often were missed in the earlier examples of parish registers.

 

In the later printed form registers there are extra details to be had such as whether the parties had been married before, if they were both from the parish or, if not, the name of the other person’s parish. Researchers are also able to note whether the bride and groom could write or whether they had signed the register with their mark, such as a simple cross. The names of witnesses, who were sometimes close relatives and so could be useful in researching the family, may also be found in these documents.

 

Marriages from 1813 in parish of Llanycil, Merionethshire found online at TheGenealogist [1]

 

Example of 1906 Marriage Register from Gabalfa, Cardif, Glamorgan found online at TheGenealogist [1]

 

What if my ancestor was a nonconformist?

Not all ancestors will have worshiped regularly at the Anglican Parish Church for their area as nonconformist denominations were particularly strong in Wales. Nonconformist churches are those that do not conform to the doctrines of the Anglican church, that is they dissent from the once established Church of England in Wales and its successor the Church in Wales. Examples of Protestant nonconformist churches include the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Unitarian denominations, and the Quakers (or the Society of Friends). 

 

You can search for nonconformist ancestors in the records that were collected by the General Register Office in 1837, when civil registration began, and again in 1857. Many of these are now kept at The National Archives and are filed under catalogue series codes RG 4, RG 5, RG 6, and RG 8, all available to search on the official partner of TNA for these records.[2]   Other registers could have been deposited at the National Library of Wales (Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru) [3] or in County Record Offices. Sadly, however, many have simply not survived the years and are lost to us. 

 

Birth and baptism registers make up the majority of records in these nonconformist collections. Though there are a number of burial registers also included amongst them, in RG 4, RG 6 and RG 8, The reason for this is that even if your ancestor was from one of the other denominations, before the 1850s, the vast majority of burials were in the churchyard of the local Parish Church and so they are recorded in the parish registers of the Church of England in Wales. Very few dissenters had their own burial grounds and so this explains the lack of burials in these series. 

 

Another reason to search for your ancestor in the Anglican Parish Records is that there were only a small number of marriage registers amongst the nonconformist collections. The reason for this was that between 1754 and 1837 only Church of England marriages were considered legal by the state. An exception to this was that Quakers and Jews were exempt from this law and RG 6 contains exclusively Quaker records.

 

How to find your Welsh ancestors in the church records

As an example, we are going to search for the much admired Elizabeth 'Betsi' Cadwaladr who was famous for working as a nurse in the Crimean War alongside Florence Nightingale, but having her differences with the great nursing pioneer. Betsi was from a working class family who lived in the small village of Llanycil in Gwynedd, the county that was known as Merionethshire at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betsi_Cadwaladr

 

We can search Welsh Parish Records for Elizabeth Cadwaladr using the information that is known about her. If you are looking for your own ancestor it is likely that you already have some details to go on. Perhaps you know the name of the village, town or city that they came from? Maybe you know their date of birth, having already found them in the census collection? Stories about their lives can often give the researcher a starting point, but it is important to realise that family tales can get exaggerated or embellished over time. They are best used as a basis for further research where you aim to prove or disprove them.

 

In Betsi’s case we know from stories about her that her birth had been around 1799 and that she called Llanycil, a village near Bala in Wales her home. For our search we are going to use the online Welsh Parish Records at TheGenealogist [1] rather than going physically to an archive.

 

Using the Master Search on this site we enter Elizabeth as a forename and Cadwaladr as the surname while ignoring her nickname, Betsi. In this case we know her birth was around 1799 and so we could choose a search two years either side of this date (We can adjust the leeway on this from the +/- dropdown on the Master Search). We could enter the place name, or any other details that will appear on the records such as the father’s and/or mother’s forename, into the Keywords box before hitting Search.

 

Use TheGenealogist [1] online Master Search to look for All records from Birth & Baptisms

 

This returns us a number of results and, by referring to her family story that she had been born in Llanycil in Merionethshire, we are able to see that one of the results we have is for a baptism in that particular community. 

 

A click on the link icon to View the Original Image provides us with the register page on which we can see, written by hand in May 1789, Elizabeth of David Cadwaladr and Judeth his wife. There follows the number 26 for the 26th day of the month. 

 

Image of the original page in the Parish Register of Llanycil 1789

 

Welsh or English spelling?

Betsi’s father was better known by the Welsh spelling of his name as Dafydd but here the vicar, or parish clerk, has used the anglicised version of his name. By the time of Betsi’s father’s death in 1834 the church registers were now kept in seperate printed books (first introduced by an Act of Parliament in 1812) where Baptisms, Marriages and Burials were in separate volumes, but Dafydd is still recorded as David. 

 

1834 Parish Register for Llanycil

 

My nonconformist ancestor is in the Anglican Parish Register!

These entries in the Anglican Parish Church Register highlight an interesting point that researchers should try to keep in mind. We have seen above that burials of nonconformist ancestors were common in Parish Churchyards, because the other denominations were less likely to have their own burial grounds near to their chapels. Everyone, however, had the right to be buried in the local parish Churchyard under the law, though it was only in 1880 that disenter ministers could carry out the burial service and so it would have been the Church of England vicar or curate who carried out most of our ancestors’ services. 

 

For a period between 1754 and 1837 only Church of England marriages, or those of Quakers and Jews, were considered legal by the state and so we would expect to find our nonconformist ancestors also being married in the Anglican registers. But, as in the example of the Cadwaladr family, you may also find that they baptised their child in the Anglican church as well.

 

Now here is a surprise!

 

What is unusual about this story is that Betsi’s father, Dafydd Cadwaladr (1752–1834)[4] was actually a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist preacher! This is a great example of why you should still look in the Established Church records even when you know that your ancestors were nonconformists. Dafydd Cadwaladr had been a farm worker until about 1771 when he took up a position as a servant working for the Methodist preacher William Evans. Dafydd knew his bible by heart, and about 1780 he began preaching himself, but he was not a minister. The fact is that until 1811 the Calvinistic Methodists had no ministers ordained by themselves.

 

The Welsh Parish Records are unlikely to still be with the incumbent of the actual church and are deposited with the archives for that county. They are, however, now easily searchable online with images of the actual register pages. TheGenealogist.co.uk has worked with the input of Welsh records experts from all the Welsh archives, to painstakingly check and improve all the place names in this record set. Chapels of ease are recorded, as are the parent parishes of modern parishes and variant spellings in the English and Welsh languages are included in this collection online. This should mean that searches for your ancestor in the parish records, which previously might have turned up no results, will now have a much greater chance of being found. With TheGenealogist’s keyword search this has made it surprisingly easy to find the records that have been used in this article.




Links

[1] https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/welsh-parish-records

[2] https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/non-conformist-records/

[3] https://www.library.wales/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafydd_Cadwaladr

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Liz Carr's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? was fascinating

The Who Do You Think You Are? episode on BBC One this week was a fascinating programme.

Silent Witness actor Liz Carr, who is best known for her role in the crime drama as the forensic scientist Clarissa Mullery explored an ancestor involved in an assault. This made her smile as she admits that she loves crime!

The only thing that Liz knew about her paternal side of the family is that they had come from Ireland. On her maternal line Liz knew that her mother's father died when her mum was just seven or eight. This means that she has no sense of who her grandfather was. Liz feels that she has "a bit of the wanderlust" and so she was hoping to find out if there were adventurers amongst her ancestors. And as Liz is an activist she wondered if any of her forebears had the same passion to fight injustice. The Who Do You Think You Are? TV series was, therefore, an ideal way for Liz to explore her past family.

 

For a precis of Liz Carr's episode you can read one on TheGenealogist's site where they have found some of the records relating to her ancestors.

But just be warned, if you are thinking of watching the programme on Catchup this article contains spoliers!

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2020/who-do-you-think-you-are/liz-carr-1344/

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The Family History Show, Online returns 26th September 2020

 

The Family History Show, Online, run by Discover Your Ancestors, returns on Saturday 26th September 2020 in place of the London Family History Show for this year. Building on the huge success of the first online Family History Show in June, where over a thousand attendees enjoyed a great day, the next one is on track to be even better!

 

Online access means that we are all able to safely enjoy many of the usual features of the physical show from wherever we are in the world, as well as making it possible for those that have disabilities to easily attend.

  

 

The Family History Show, Online will, mirroring the format of the very successful live shows, feature an online lecture theatre, the popular ‘Ask the expert’ area – where you can put questions forward to their specialists – as well as over 100 stalls where you can ask for advice as well as buy genealogical products.

 

Q&A Expert Session

Attendees are invited to submit questions via the website and a selection will be put forward to the panel in a multiuser Zoom session that is streamed on a linked video channel for the show.

 

Visit stalls and chat

 

To make this online experience as useful to family historians as attending the physical show would have been, you can “visit” a stall in the virtual exhibition hall. With over 100 present there will be a wide variety of societies and companies. 

 

Built into the website is the ability to talk to some of the stallholders by text, audio or video from the comfort of your own home. With this facility, you can ask them for advice regarding their family history society or discuss their organisation and also purchase from their online stall various downloadable and physical products to help you with your research.

 

Lectures

 

 

In the virtual lecture theatre there will be the chance to watch new talks from the same expert lecturers who would have been at the physical event and are on the ‘Ask the Expert’ panel. These presentations will cover a wide variety of family history topics from DNA to how to find family information in military records. All of these videos are subtitled.

 

Feedback from the last Family History Show, Online:

 

“The Exhibitor Hall, with the video chat and Question Feed, and details and links to their products, etc. Your show is a very close, and in some ways better, reproduction of the live event, and I’m looking forward to attending next year’s event.” Scott Barker

 

“I know the actual shows are great, but for us not able to get there, these online days are ideal. I put aside time to listen and it felt like a 'day away'  from the usual routine.  Well done and thank you.” Ruth Owen

 

“I understand there must have been a lot of planning for the event under such tricky circumstances and it was absolutely superb in the end. Thank you very much for a really good day, your experts were helpful and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing their advice and information.” Sue Farley

 

Thank you so much for a great show. Learnt a lot and the experts were very interesting to listen to. Special thanks to Amelia Bennett. Looking forward to September. Keep safe”  Irene Baldock

 

Tickets to attend the next online Family History Show on 26th September 2020 are available now for just £6.00 each (£8.00 on the day). All ticket holders will also receive a digital Goody Bag worth over £10 on the day.

 

To find out more about The Family History Show, Online and buy your ticket visit https://thefamilyhistoryshow.com/online/

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Tracing Your House History

Many people would like to find out more about the history of their house and if this sounds like you then there is a great book that is both compact and filled with practical information.  The book is equally of interest to those who live in a manor house or a small cottage cottage, a tied house, a two up and two down Victorian terrace, a twentieth-century council house or even a converted warehouse

In Tracing Your House History the author, Gill Blanchard, shows the reader how to trace the history of their home be it a house or a flat. All this is done in a series of concise, information-filled chapters that will help you understand the lives of the people who lived in your home before you as well as understanding how to fit what you discover into the wider history of your city, town or village.

Gill Blanchard explores what can be found in a wealth of historical evidence that is available to researchers in libraries, archives and record offices as well as in books and in online resources. The book looks at these resources in detail and explains their significance before pointing the researcher towards finding the most relevant, and revealing, aspects of them. Gill has made the research process understandable, accessible and fun in this book, and she manages to demystify the sometimes obscure language and layout of the documents that people doing their house history will come up against.


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The National Archive announces free access to its digital records

 

The National Archives (TNA) have announced that they are making digital records available on their website free of charge for as long as their Kew site is closed to visitors because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Registered users of the TNA's website will be able to order and download up to ten items at a time, to a maximum of 50 items over 30 days. The limits are there to try and help manage the demand for content and ensure the availability of TNA's digital services for everyone.

To access the service and download for free, users will be required to:

  • Register/sign in to their Discovery account before adding items to their basket (maximum ten items per basket)
  • Abide by the terms of TNA's fair use policy
  • Complete the order process to receive a download link, which will remain active for 30 days. (The link will also be saved in ‘Your orders’ in your account for 30 days)

The National Archive's usual terms of use still apply – digital copies can be downloaded for non-commercial private use and educational purposes only, and bulk downloads and web crawlers are not permitted.

For more information take a look at this on their website:

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/digital-downloads/

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Discover Your Ancestors with issue 9 of the bookazine available now!

For anyone who is looking for a good read then you could do no better than picking up a copy of the new Discover Your Ancestors Issue 9 which has just come off the press and is available now! With articles on tracing your house history, the family history of the cast and the castle of Downton Abbey and items covering criminal gangs to criminal lunatics, it’s a magazine that’s hard to put down.

This is a high quality glossy bookazine with 196-pages of new in-depth articles, research advice, social and general history, ‘how to’ features, case studies, places in focus, and much more! It is ideal for both experienced researchers and those just starting out.

In this volume you will find features on:

  • Downton Abbey: the historic location, stars and their family histories 
  • Charles Dickens 150th Anniversary
  • Celebrity Genealogies: Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Rowan Atkinson
  • Peaky Blinders & The Krays: the real history of organised crime gangs
  • DNA and how it can pinpoint ancestors’ locations
    and much more!

Also included are over £170 of FREE resources! Including a free online research subscription and a voucher for a free subscription to the monthly online magazine, Discover Your Ancestors Periodical.

Pick up this new release from WHSmiths or go online to S&N Genealogy Supplies where you can also find Discover Your Ancestors Back Issues so you can complete your collection, Periodical Compendiums so you can get up to date with the monthly online magazine, as well as many Books and other new releases from Discover Your Ancestors, including the popular Seven Generation Log Book, 10 Generation Relationship Chart and Birth Year from Census Date Calculator.

https://genealogysupplies.com/

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The Find a Will website dropped its price to £1.50

The Find a Will service, provided on the official government website, is now providing each copy of a probate record for  England and Wales at £1.50 each.

You can use their service to:

  • search for a probate record in England and Wales
  • check if probate has been issued
  • check the type of probate issued
  • order a copy of a probate record (including a will, if there is one)

 Order online costs £1.50 at: https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#wills

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GRO update their website

The General Register Office (GRO) has updated it website so that they now have added to thier online indexes for deaths registered between 1984 to 2019.

The General Register Office holds a central copy of all birth, adoption, marriage, civil partnership and death registrations for England and Wales. Their website service allows you to search their historical birth and death indexes and order copies of registrations in a variety of formats including certificates, PDFs and Multilingual Standard Forms via them at the official government website.

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/

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The Family History Show - London Saturday 22nd September THIS WEEKEND

The Family History Show, London is attracting exhibitors and family history societies from all over the UK.

THIS SATURDAY!   22 August 2019 Sandown Park Racecourse, Esher


You don't have to have London Ancestors to come to this fair - they can be from anywhere in the country! Everyone is very welcome and there will be lots to see. There is plenty of parking and refreshments are available all day.

Tickets will be £8.00 at the door.

Buy your tickets in advance online and save! Get Two Tickets for £10!

You will also get a FREE goody bag on entry worth over £8!

https://thefamilyhistoryshow.com/london/tickets/


There will also be free talks running throughout the day.

https://thefamilyhistoryshow.com/london/

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