Alice through the wardrobe
Alice Chaucer was a remarkable woman, thrice married, who lived through turbulent medieval times.
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14 Sep 2020
Workers, widows, wives and wanderers: the women of Tudor Newbury
Women are often left out of recorded history, but their lives lie hidden in records, from where Joan Dils pieced together the lives of five Newbury women in Tudor times.
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14 Jul 2020
The Colin Spickett Experiment
Reading Branch meeting 25th June 2020, conducted on Zoom Speaker: Mark Bowman This presentation was a display of how much can be achieved for free in a short space of time. Mark showed that starting only with a name (albeit an unusual one) and a rough date of birth, you can, using free, online resources, construct a pedigree going back 250 years, all in a few hours. As usual, Mark’s talk was engaging and generated quite a discussion afterwards.
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25 Jun 2020
Jane Austen and the Thames Valley Connection
Reading Branch meeting 28th May 2020, conducted on Zoom Speaker: Joy Pibworth Joy outlined the family background of Jane’s life and the places where those people lived. She painted a picture of her parent’s lives and those of her close relatives. They involved places as far away as America, Russia as well as Oxford, Tonbridge and Bristol in the U.K. There were stories of Fishing Fleet (female passage to India to seek marriage) and the scandal of trials for stealing lace which resulted in acquittal. One of her ancestors, Sir Thomas White, who was born in Reading in 1492 was a clothier and educated at Reading School, he served an apprenticeship to a wool merchant and went on to found St John ’s Baptists College. Jane’s father George was raised by his uncle Francis, and her mother Cassandra (nee Leigh) was the daughter of a Rector. They were married in 1764 in Bath and raised eight children including Jane who was the second…
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28 May 2020
Berkshire and South Oxfordshire churches: hidden gems and stories
Where can you visit a private library within a church? Or see rare examples of the macabre funerary art which swept Europe after the Black Death? Or find graffiti recalling the incarceration of Levellers in 1649? Catherine Sampson reveals all.
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16 May 2020
Wokingham’s Leading Families – talk by Peter Must
Three Wokingham Families by Peter Must reported by Bryan Pledger. The talk started with a photograph of the blue plaque on Montague House in Broad Street stating the house was named after Henry Montague, a schoolmaster in 1654. The Winkfield records of the Mountagues from 1538 in the Berkshire Record Office has the Will of Thomas Mountague 1628. There is a plaque to him in Winkfield Parish Church. He died on 31st March 1630. His Will divided his estate between Henry and his sons Henry and Zacheus, and his brother Jonas and his son Thomas. From the Book of Clerics, Henry c1573 -1632 was in 1610 a schoolmaster in Oakingham. William Whitlock, Lord of the Manor of Beches, Wokingham’s mother -in-law in her Will appointed her friend Henry Mountague to be an overseer. Henry married and had children including Henry, Thomas and Zacheus. He died in 1634 and in his Will, signed Henry Mountague, listed a house in Wokingham that included a School…
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28 Feb 2020
A Caribbean Journey: experiences of researching Barbadian ancestors from the UK
Reading Branch meeting 27th February 2020 Speaker: Guy Grannum Guy gave an interesting talk on how he came to research his Barbadian roots and the types of documents that can aid with Barbadian ancestry. Guys started researching for his parents 25th wedding anniversary, and discovered an international family covering South Africa, Gibraltar and Majorca. Unfortunately, early civil registration records gave no clue to the origins of the family name, as there were only a handful of entries. Most entries date from 1955 onwards. Through his work at The National Archive (previously the Public Record Office), Guy discovered his grandfather and great-uncles listed in Colonial Office Lists, stating that they were all born in Barbados. As Barbados was a British colony, and now an independent state within the Commonwealth, many of their records have a British base. The hardest thing is to work out where the records are held and what the access is to them. Some are available through subscriptions sites as well…
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27 Feb 2020
