Sources

Parish Registers | Civil Registrations | Census Returns | International Genealogical Index | Wills | Miscellaneous

(a) Early Period

Before parish registers came into use in the early 16th century there were no systematic records of births, marriages and deaths. Scattered references to individuals can be found in such legal documents, tax lists and inventories as survive, but very few families indeed in Britain can trace a continuous line of genealogy back earlier than 1500 AD. The only records for this early period which I have consulted are those which have been copied and published and which are available in the Devon Record Office, the West Country Studies Library or the Society of Genealogists’ library.

(b) Parish Registers Parish Register Entries (PDF format)

Parish registers are immensely useful documents. They are virtually the only sources of information about working class people in earlier centuries. From 1538 onwards the law required that all baptisms, marriages and burials in a parish had to be recorded by the priest, even if the people were Nonconformists or Roman Catholics. Baptisms normally took place within a few days of birth, so the date of baptism is a good guide to the date of birth in most cases.

It was the Swimbridge parish register which first set me on the trail of the Somerwills, for that register contained scores of entries and it soon became apparent that I would only be able to discover my own line of descent by working out the relationships between them all. Had they been the only ones the work of reconstructing the family tree would have been fairly easy, but it turned out not to be so because my own ancestors did not (at first sight) appear to be there and I had to turn to other parishes. It became clear that the Somerwills had moved about—not very far, but far enough to make them difficult sometimes to trace. Many were agricultural labourers, living perhaps in a tied cottage for a year or two before moving on. Even a movement of a mile or so may be across a parish boundary. It was therefore necessary to collect information from all the parishes east from Georgeham to the Somerset border and south from Combe Martin to Chittlehampton.

In most cases I have used the copy registers rather than the originals because the copies were more readily available. The Devon and Cornwall Record Society has a fine collection of copy registers covering most of the North Devon parishes up to about 1812. All these have been consulted. Where no copy was available I have used the original register if possible or the Bishop’s Transcript (a copy of new entries made annually by the priest and sent to his bishop). There is a collection of these at the Devon Record Office in Exeter.

Parish registers, however, do have their limitations. Some have perished, in whole or in part, whilst others have been so damaged by the ravages of time that they are barely readable. The handwriting is often difficult to decipher accurately. Copies often contain errors. In certain periods some registers were not properly kept, especially during and after the Civil War in the 17th century. Many children were never baptised, some were not baptised until years after their birth, and no doubt many a couple who lived together were never married in church. Sometimes, for various reasons, people lived under assumed names. Even when an entry is found in a register it rarely gives more than the barest information. A baptism, for example, may simply read:
November 17th, 1581. Johan daughter of Thos. Somerwill was baptized.
At Swimbridge the mother’s name was not included until 1733. Marriage entries are also sparse. The ages of the couple are not usually recorded, nor their occupations and parents’ names, until the 19th century. Burial entries do not usually mention age, though they do normally give the father’s name if it was a child and sometimes the husband’s if the deceased was a married woman. All that the genealogist can do, then, is to guess at relationships, aiming to produce a solution that plausi bly accounts for all the information available. These difficulties apply mainly to the pre-Victorian period. After 1812 the entries are fuller, and from 1837 more or less the same details are given in the registers as one finds on modern registration certificates. In recent years microfiche copies of many of the 19th century registers have become available at the Devon Record Office. Many of these have been consulted.

More and more registers are being transcibed and made available on the internet. The website http://www.freereg.org.uk isvery useful.

(c) Civil Registrations Civil Registration Entries (PDF format)

In 1837 it became compulsory to register all births, marriages and deaths at a civil registry office, and a central register was maintained at Somerset House in London. This has since been moved to The Family Records Centre, 1 Myddleton St, London EC1. Copies of certificates are available either from the local office where the event was first registered or from the Family Record Centre. These were too expensive to obtain except when absolutely necessary. The indexes, however, are open to public inspection free of charge and I have been able to glean a great deal of information from them. It should be noted that in my examination of these indexes I have looked mainly for Barnstaple and South Molton registrations. I have noted some others which might have been relevant in Bath, Clifton, Swansea and other places, but not systematically and thoroughly. There are many more. I have also ignored Somerville references in the North of England, of which there are a great many, and I have not noted all Summerfields. Copies of the indexes are now available on microfilm at a number of family history centres and record offices throughout the country. The website http://www.freebmd.org.uk provides a search facility for transcripts of the indexes up to athe early 20th century.

(d) Census Returns Census Return Entries (PDF format)

The main source employed for the 19th century has been the census returns from 1841 to 1901. Censuses have been taken of the entire population every ten years since 1841. They are not released for public inspection for 100 years. Each census contains the names, ages and occupations of all members of each household and (except in the 1841 census) their relationship to the head of the household and their place of birth. Copies of the returns on microfilm can be seen at the Public Record Office in Kew, at some record offices and public libraries, and online at http://www.ancestry.co.uk. I have examined almost all the returns for the 39 parishes of the Barnstaple Poor Law Union in the six censuses, and at least one census for each parish in the South Molton Union. The 1881 and 1891 censuses are noticeably smaller than the previous ones, clearly showing the extent to which Devon was by then losing its population to the industrial cities.

The 1851 census for Devon and the 1881 for the whole of Britain have been indexed and published on CDs by the Church of Latter Day Saints. Indexes to all of the England and Wales censuses from 1851 to 1911 are also now online at http://www.findmypast.com and http://www.ancestry.co.uk. These indexes have proved invaluable.

(e) The International Genealogical Index

At the time when most of the spadework of this investigation was done the International Genealogical Index (IGI) (now known as the IGI - International Genealogical Index) was not available. When eventually I was able to consult it a few references turned up which had been overlooked, including some ‘strays’ into distant parishes. The IGI was compiled by the Church of Latter Day Saints (which has a keen interest in genealogy), mainly from the Devon & Cornwall Record Society’s copy registers. It is of limited value because it does not cover all Devon parishes, it stops short at 1812 in most cases, it does not include burials and it is known to contain a significant proportion of errors. Nevertheless, it is a useful tool for the ground which it does cover, and it was reassuring to discover that there were very few Somerwills to be found outside the region I had explored and that these were only odd references. I am therefore fairly confident that there was no signifi cant settlement of Somerwills in Devon before the 19th century which I have overlooked.

(f) Wills & Administrations Will Lists and Summaries

Indexes in the Devon & Cornwall Record Society’s collection show that a number of Somerwills over the centuries have left wills. I have been led to understand that unfortunately these all perished when the wooden building in Exeter in which they were housed was bombed in 1942. It is possible, though, that copies still exist somewhere. I have been able to find summaries of some of them from Death Duty Registers at the Family Records Centre in London and at the Devon Record Office, and I hope that the contents of others may be discovered by further research.

(g) Other Sources Miscellaneous Source Items | Updated PDF version (including wills)

I have examined the Land Tax Assessments for Marwood 1782-1832 and for Swimbridge 1780-1795 and abstracts of a number of leases and title deeds in the Devon Record Office collection. Several indexes held in the West Country Studies Library, Exeter, and by the Society of Genealogists have been useful in helping to track down individuals, including lists of marriage allegations and marriage licences issued. White’s Directory 1850 and Morris’s Directory for Devonshire 1870, both published trade directories, have confirmed the occupations and addresses of a few Somer wills. Lysons’ Magna Britannia, published in 1822, provides two Somerville references, while Chanter & Wainwright’s Reprint of the Barnstaple Records (1900) yields one. The Burnett Morris Slip Index (BMSI) in the West Country Studies Library has provided a number of references to Somervilles, particularly to those in Stoke Damarel. Finally, a little information has been gleaned from memorial inscriptions on gravestones and from Dwelly’s Parish Records.