Do you think your surname is native to Bedfordshire - again

The post about surnames has produced an almost instant reply from Richard, who says:



I wonder whether the website which I manage might be of help in the study of surname distribution?  It is the website of the National Archive of Memorial Inscriptions, NAOMI for short.  The address is: www.memorialinscriptions.org.uk.

There are at present 29,263 people from 108 burial grounds named on the site .  To read the inscriptions on their memorials searchers have to pay (£4), but searching is free of charge.  If you enter first the county's name on the home page and the name you are interested in, pressing 'Search' will bring up a list of all the names at present included in the database from Bedfordshire, together with their first names, dates of death, age at death and the place of their burial. 

Then you can use the search facilities to help you find spelling variants of the names. The two most useful ways of doing this are by employing in your search box the signs? (question mark) and * (asterisk). The ? works like a wild card – it can represent any letter. So, for example, the surname ‘Grey' can be spelled 'Gray'. To search for both, enter 'Gr?y.

The * works in a similar way, but it can bring up any number of letters. Try ‘Gr*y’.Other names are found in a wider variety of spellings. An example is 'Sewell'. The only common factor in the various versions is that they begin with an 'S' and end with an 'l'. Enter ‘S*l and you will get all the examples that are available which begin with ‘S’ and end with ‘l’. As you can see, this is a powerful tool from which a surname distribution map could be drawn, taking account of migration and of variant spellings.

Richard Smart

And Richard has supplied a photograph from NAOMI.  It is of the much loved and mourned daughter Florence Jane (known as Edris) of Edward and Charlotte Bousfield.  Charlotte's diary was published by BHRS and has recently been reprinted in paperback at £14.95.

Bousfield Diaries reprinted!

BHRS's 2007 volume, The Bousfield Diaries, sold out several months ago and has now been reprinted in paperback at £14.99.  Available from the publisher, Boydell & Brewer, or good bookshops - see the list on the right for local Bedfordshire bookshops.

A recent review in The Local Historian praised the "exemplary introduction" and calls the diary "a valuable addition to local history and many other fields of nineteenth-century studies".

Southend Church Bedford and the Bousfields

By coincidence, within two months of BHRS's launch of the Bousfield Diaries, the church which was the centre of the Bousfields' religious life celebrated its one hundred and thirty fourth anniversary.

In November 1873, a new Methodist church was founded in the district of Bedford known as Southend. One of the founders, Charlotte Bousfield, kept a diary of her life, in which her ‘little chapel’, as she called it, played an important part. The church was founded as a memorial to Charlotte’s last child, a daughter always known as ‘Edris’, who died in 1872 at the age of three. She lies in Bedford Cemetery, and a photograph of the gravestone, which had been hidden for many years under a large tree just by the main entrance to the Chapel there, appears in the Diaries.

Last Sunday (18 November) the anniversary of the foundation was celebrated by the Minister and congregation as it has been every year since 1873. The editor of the Diaries, Richard Smart, attended the service and presented a copy to the Minister, Revd Rachel Larkinson and congregation.

The Bousfield Diaries - BHRS’s 2007 volume

The Society’s latest book was launched on 8 September. Appropriately sub-titled A middle-class family in late Victorian Bedford, it contains the diaries for 1878 to 1896 of Charlotte Bousfield, the wife of the manager of the Britannia Ironworks in Bedford. She tells us a little about her husband, Edward’s, work, especially his experiments with electricity and with new designs for automated reaping and harvesting equipment. She records her children’s successes: one son became a QC and Tory MP as well as sharing his father’s interest in inventions; another became a doctor and member of the Queckett Microscopical Club; the third was a patent agent; and one daughter was an accomplished artist.
The family were staunch Methodists and teetotallers and Charlotte, helped by her two daughters, was very active in spreading the good word of both causes, although her use of the description of her work as ‘a toiler in the vineyard’ is rather incongruous given the teetotal nature of her views. The diaries describe meetings of national temperance organisations in London and journeyings around the country – all spreading the good word. She was also involved in running a home for inebriated middle class women in London.
All these activities saw her travelling around the country but always returning to Bedford and Aspley Heath. Nearer home, there was a succession of Mother’s Meetings, Blue Ribbon clubs and temperance meetings in and around Bedford. She was amongst the poor law guardians elected after the Bedford Workhouse scandal of 1894 and she records some of that and conditions in the workhouse.
Amidst the daily round, there are entrancing accounts of watching convicts on Dartmoor, converting a Scottish travelling salesman and imbiber on a train journey, election canvassing in London, and watching her son’s introduction as a new member of Parliament. There are glimpses of middle class domestic life, of the social round, religious commitments and of the lives of servants, the working class and the poor.

The diaries belong to Charlotte’s descendants and have been transcribed and edited by two of them, John and Hilary Hamilton. They have been edited for publication by Dr Richard Smart who has added copious notes about the people and the social and political background of Charlotte’s world.

The Bousfield Diaries: a middle-class family in late Victorian Bedford, published by Boydell and Brewer, 2007, Bedfordshire Historical Records Society volume 86. It is available from bookshops or the publisher at http://www.boydell.co.uk/

See reviews of this book at
http://www.bedsonsunday.com/bedsonsunday-leisure-books/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=242174