Suffolk
Family History Society

News Update

Posted by Sheila Piper on Thu, 29th Oct 2015

For our latest newsletter. Download the file at the bottom of this page.

Technology in the Cemetery

Posted by Sheila Piper on Sat, 24th Oct 2015

I happened to be walking past Clare cemetery one evening recently heading to a local nature reserve with the Clare Horticultural Society. Chatting about my efforts with the Monumental Inscriptions group I was fascinated to be told by the gentleman leading the walk that it is fairly common now for people to request micro-chips to be inserted in new headstones so that with a compatible smart phone you can “zap” on and then retrieve the information placed there which usually provides an obituary, family heritage information, life story, photographs etc. I have googled this and it’s true. Well I never……

Barbara Stewart

Do You Need Help?

Posted by Helen Richardson on Sat, 24th Oct 2015

If you need help with your Family History research please talk to any of the committee members.

We don’t always have access to our research material (some parish records on fiche & many books) which we store here but if you would like to look at anything in particular let us know and we will try and get it out or have it ready for the next meeting.

Some Grave Humour....

Posted by Sheila Piper on Sat, 24th Oct 2015

I have just seen a book by John Timpson entitled Timpson’s Towns of England and Wales (1989) in which there is a chapter on church memorials of various kinds. There are some very curious (and, with hindsight, amusing) ones indeed. For example, the parish church of Macclesfield, Ches., has a brass plaque recording how the Legh family was pardoned by Pope Gregory in 1506 for 26,000 years and 26 days. (Who’s counting? What happens when time’s up?)

A little nearer here in Coggleshall parish church it is stated that Mary Honywood had 367 living descendants when she died aged 93 in 1620! She achieved this by having 16 children herself. They, in turn, produced for her 114 grandchildren who had 228 greatgrandchildren. They had nine great-great grandchildren. (She must have spent a fortune on birthday cards.)

In Maldon, Essex, in 1750 they had problems when local man Edward Bright popped his clogs. Weighing in at 44 stone, a crane was used to lift him into his grave. Pity the poor gravediggers… (Obesity is not confined to 21st century!)

In Corsham, Wilts, Sarah Jarvis lived to the ripe old age of 107 before dying in 1753. Pretty good for the time but, it is noted on her gravestone, that ‘some time before her death she had fresh teeth’.

Robert Philips wrote his own slightly sour yet triumphal epitaph in Kingsbridge, Devon:

Here I lie at the chancel door

Here I lie because I’m poor.

The further in the more you’ll pay,

Here lie I as warm as they.

The words of 21-year-old Sarah Smith’s epitaph of 1763 in St Margaret’s church, Newcastle-under-Lyme, indicate that her parents had a pretty good idea as to who had been responsible for poor Sarah’s demise:

It was C-S B-W that brought me to my end,

Dear parents mourn not for me

For God will stand my Friend.

With half a pint of Poyson

He came to visit me.

Write this on my grave

That all that read it may see.

So who was C-S B-W? And what if he hadn’t done her in after all? Did he sue for libel?

This looks to be an interesting website: http://beneaththyfeet.blogspot.co.uk/ (Found it while trying to discover who C-S B-W was… I just had to try but no luck!)

Anne Grimshaw

Monumental Inscriptions

Posted by K Pulford on Sat, 24th Oct 2015

Work continues at Bures and Sudbury Cemetery, come and join us.

The Fallen Heroes of Normandy

Posted by Matt Ball on Sat, 24th Oct 2015

www.fallenheroesofnormandy.org is a free online archive providing photographs, records and information about those, of all nationalities, who lost their lives in Normandy during the Second World War. If you can provide any photographs or information about any individual buried or commemorated in Normandy please email: fallenheroeswebsite@gmail.com