Introduction
The
purpose of producing this brief account of the families history , is to share
with others, the information I have collected, over the past twenty five years
or so, in it I hope to provide a fairly
short readable guide, to the antecedence of our family. In this account I have where possible given
references, to the documents or
transcripts, from where I personally, was able to obtain the information needed, to compile this work, using the
comparatively new medium of the Internet, with the hope that it will have a
fairly wide distribution, with a view to readers, taking their own hard
copy for other interested.
Parties. I have personally inspected
any documents mentioned or their transcripts.
Where there is no reference indicated, it doesn't mean that I haven't seen the document, upon which
the item is based, it is merely that in my chaotic way of handling bits of paper and that over the
years, some of my original notes of
reference, page number, or exact volume title, also in this
account, I hope that I have done my
best, to sort fact from fiction .
I had always been interested in the families
history, and from time to time carried out some research, but it was not until 1976
that I started in earnest, to take a more detailed systematic look into this
very complex and interesting
subject.
It began in my local library where I was
looking through a book entitled the general armoury, when I discovered a
reference to the families Arms, after seeing this. I decided that if they were
entitled to arms, they must have been a family of some importance, and
therefore there was scope for some more detailed research .
A number of years previous to this, my cousin
Peter, had given me a copy of
a family tree which related to our branch of the family, he had produced
this from a list of births deaths and marriages connected with the Dorset village church at Mappowder,
these lists started from 1714 and ended in1888. I had from time to time tried,
to trace these back further, but without much success, at that period, not having sufficient time due to various
commitments, I let the matter drop for a number of years.
After having made the discovery of the
family arms, I decided to pay a visit to, the Dorset County Records Office,
where I was able to obtain a substantial amount of very useful information.
At about this time I was working in London adjacent to both the Guildhall
library and the Central Records Office. It was from both these sources, that I
was able to study both transcripts of state papers and original documents. By 1978
I was able to assemble a rough
tree for my own branch of the family, and I had sufficient information
to assemble a fairly good account of
the families history. I put all
of this material away in a box file,
with the object of looking through it, at a future date, probably when I
retired, with a view to producing a
short history, for distribution to my own family members, and depositing a copy with the Dorset Records
Office:
After this I didn't do much more research
for a number of years, until about ten years ago, when I retired started
occasionally to visit the Berkshire county Records Office, with the object of
gathering sufficient information to compile a more rounded account of Walters
life in Berkshire. This I found to have been a very worthwhile
task thus enabling me to complete my task.
Colin
Chaldecott 26-6-2001