Way Back Wednesday: Robert MURCH 1687

Robert MURCH, my 7th great grandfather, was born in 1687 in Ottery St Mary, Devon, UK.  In the 17^th century, the population was swept up in the incidents relating to the Civil War between the supporters of the King (Charles I) and Parliament (Oliver Cromwell).  Names of battles at Nottingham, Edge Hill, Marston Moor, and Naseby were familiar to most.  But the Civil War was not only fought in faraway counties; it was also fought in Devon.  Royalist regiments under Lord Wentworth were camped at nearby Bovey Tracey, with Parliamentary forces under General Fairfax at Crediton and Moreton, and on 9 January 1646 was the Battle of Bovey Heath.

Plagues such as the Black Death and the Great Sweat, together with bad harvests and outbreaks of cholera which had previously been the biggest killers, were as nothing compared to the up-to-10% that were killed in the Civil War battles in the country.

But in 1688, there was a revolution in England of a different kind.  This was a revolution of religions.  In 1689 the Declaration of Rights confirmed that Catholics were barred from the throne of England.  The Toleration Act allowed 'Dissenters...to hold services in licensed meeting houses and to maintain their own preachers (if they would subscribe to certain oaths) in England and Wales.' (The Victorian Web, David Cody, Associate Professor of English, Hartwick College).

Surname Saturday: Brooke

At last! a surname that has the largest concentration in the UK!  Next highest is Australia - but then, a LOT of UK individuals and families went to Australia at various times.  BROOKE is also one of the easier surnames when it comes to guessing its origins...and there are plenty of streams, small or otherwise, in England.  After all, don't they say that if you don't like the weather in England, wait half an hour, because it will have changed? LOL

I have met many visitors to this country who have marvelled at just how green everything is.  Er...that's because it is always raining...and the weather seems to take especial pleasure in raining on wedding days, Bank Holidays, and so on.

Anyway, back to BROOKE.  James BROOKE and Elizabeth NOTT (my ggg grandparents) were married on 19 Nov 1822 in Coldridge, Devon, with witnesses Hugh and Richard NOTT. James and Elizabeth proceeded to have eight children in the next thirteen years.  Coldridge itself provides some slight irritation for the genealogist - some people call it Coleridge, and the different spellings over the years in different censuses by different enumerators...

James was born about 1796 in Crediton, Devon.  He is an end-of-line ancestor, so perhaps I need to do some more research on him to get further back.  Of his children, Jane, the fourth child and third daughter, was my gg grandmother.  She married on 29 August 1847 (again, in Coldridge) - quite probably a Bank Holiday? I need to find a date calculator that tells me these things.  She had 11 children; the first four were in Coldridge, and then she and her husband Samuel FARLEY moved to just outside Millbrook in Cornwall. And a good thing, too, because then her 10th child and youngest daughter, Susan Emma, could meet and marry my great grandfather.

My father was so proud of being Cornish; it seems as though his ancestors started out in Devon, then migrated to Cornwall, while my mother's started out in Cornwall, then moved to Devon...and although I was born in London, I consider myself to be a West Country lass.