Coming Your Way

The Lincolnshire Family History Society has set up a series of workshops that start from the very beginning of your research. These workshops have a limited number of places so I suggest that you get in quickly if you would like to attend. All the events will be held at the society research room at Unit 6 Monks Way, Monks Road. For those that attend all five sessions there will be a very large reduction in the price. The Beginners’ Workshop on Sept 22nd lasts from 9.45 ‘til 3.15 and will tell you all you need to know to get started. Giving you enough time to digest all that you learnt here - the next session is on Oct 21st from 9.45 – 1.00 when you can get you hands onto the Internet side of things. The next sessions will build on this by looking at the National Archives and the Lincolnshire Family History Society website and more on-line on Nov 17th at the same times as the previous session. The Internet workshops may be repeated in the New Year if the demand is high enough. There will also be further workshops that will include Poor Law and the Workhouses. I will put out more details in November on this.

Jan from New Zealand put a query onto the internet and it was one of his family surnames that caught my eye especially after the recent column on the names to be found in Charles DICKENS books. The message was fairly plain with Jan saying “my relative Ethel May PACEY married George Arnold in New Zealand. She was born in Hemswell, Lincs in about 1880”. Ethel can be found in the 1881 census along with the rest of the family living in Hemswell. Several of the people living in the house were born in Osbournby. I wonder if any of these had been familiar with the gentleman mention below in Bits and Bobs? But I digress as one does. However the name that had caught my eye was the GRINDROD family name. The family is thought to have emigrated to New Zealand from the Louth or Sleaford areas. The reason for this though seems to be that each member of the PACEY family married in New Zealand the person they married came from families they seemed to have a connection with in UK. The main concentration of the GRINDROD surname is on the west of the country in the area of Lancashire with a small outpost in both Suffolk and Cornwall. The index for 1881 backs this up with most of the names being linked to Lancashire so it seems that if they did go to New Zealand from Lincolnshire they may have only been passing through on their way to somewhere else. The PACEY origin is from the Pacy-sur-Eure in Normandy and no doubt we have William the Conqueror to thank for the arrival. GRINDROD is thought to be a locational name that is in the locality of Rochdale and started out as GRENEROADE. A plainer version of this is the surname GREENROAD and it would have been near this green road that the person lived.

Bits and Bobs
LRSM 13 December 1850
Grantham County Petty Sessions 6 December
Chas. TOWNSHEND, of Osbournby, was brought up on a charge of not contributing towards the maintenance of the illegitimate child of Ann MUSSON, of Pickworth. The parties stated they had agreed to settle the dispute by getting married: the case was adjourned for a month, to see if Townshend fulfilled his promise.
No sign of a marriage in FreeBMD but in the 1881 census there is a Charles Townsend of around the right age and born in Sewstern, Leicestershire who is married to Hester from Exton and all of the places mentioned are in the same general area. Could this be he? Let me know if you know different.