Distant Research

Long Distance Research
Francis PAYNE from New Zealand is rather stating the obvious when he says that he finds it rather difficult to carry out research prior to the 1841 census and the 1837 cut-off point for registration of BMD from a position 12,000 miles away.
WROOT is well known to the people of Lincolnshire being a place name in the Epworth area.  It is rather a nice touch that the family story is that it came over with the Dutch and drainage and I must admit it does look rather Dutch in nature but the answer is much earlier than this.  The name originates by the village being in the marshes and the Dutch did carry out a lot of work in this area.  The Old English word wrot was a trunk or resembling a pig’s snout and was a spit of land, a headland in the marsh.
A second placename in the family is that of WADSLEY.  This is a parish in the West Riding of Yorkshire.  The -LEY in this instance is a clearing in the woods belonging to Wadda.
A member of the WROOT families in Long Sutton married a BETTINSON from Flintham, Notts but the BETTINSON name originates much further south.  In Essex around 1285 could be found an entry in the Feet of Fines of Adam le fit BETUN.  It might have been this Adam the son of BETUN that regularised the name to BETUNSON which eventually became BETTINSON.
The FamilyTreeDNA site asks “Are all TOYNBEES related?” This site is using DNA to find the origins of families.  This rare surname originated in the county of Lincolnshire,  but many TOYNBEES emigrated from the 18th century onward and there are now TOYNBEES all over the world. The most famous of this family is the historian Arnold J. TOYNBEE (1889-1975).  The variations of the name also turn up as TOINBY and TENBY and there might even be a link in to TUMBY.  This is most likely a place name from the same area as one of the TOYNTON parishes.  The parishes get their name from the fact that the TUN belonged to someone with a name that became TOYN and no doubt it was the same forename that owned the homestead in TOYN-BY.
Last but not least is VERDEN.  Another continental sounding name and another placename.  The English Channel, is also known as La Manche and the district in France with this name is the home of the parish of Verdun.  The surname can be found in Buckinghamshire soon after the Norman Conquest with Bertrannus de VERDUNO being listed as owning land.
Bits and Bobs
While looking for a bit for Bits & Bobs for this week I found the site www.victorianweb.org and if you are interested in how some of your ancestors lived then take a look. It may be American spelling but it’s well researched for all that. The Speenhamland allowance scale enacted in 1795 effectively set a floor on the income of laborers according to the price of bread. When the gallon loaf cost 1s, the laborer was to have a weekly income of 3s for himself. The per pound cost of bread at 1s/gallon is 12d / 8.6875 pounds. Weekly wages of 3s are equal to 36p / 7 days or 5.14 /day. Dividing wages by the cost of bread gives 5.14 /day / 1.38 d/pound = 3.72 pounds of bread per day for a single laborer. This is the Speenhamland allowance. As a pound of bread provides about 1100 calories, the allowance gave the laborer a total of 4100 calories per day. An agricultural laborer doing 8-10 hours of vigorous work can easily require 3000 calories/day. It is evident that the Speenhamland allowance provided just above the bare means of subsistence. The Speenhamland scale also provided an allowance for family members. For a laborer, his wife, and two children, the weekly allowance was set at 7s 6d. Performing the above calculation for the family gives 90d/week / 7 days/week / 1.38 d/pound / 4 persons = 2.33 pounds of bread per day per person for the family of four.