Gill Blanchard - Tracing Your Ancestors: Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk & Suffolk: A Guide For Family Historians

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Family Photographs

Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census

Tracing Your Ancestors Childhood

Tracing Your Ancestors Parish Records

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors 2nd Edition

Tracing Your Birmingham Ancestors

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Tracing Your Edinburgh Ancestors

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Gallipoli Campaign

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Somme

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: Ypres

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

Tracing Your Leeds Ancestors

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors: The First World War

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Tracing Your Trade and Craftsmen Ancestors

Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

A Guide for Family and Local Historians

Gill Blanchard

First published in Great Britain in 2018

PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright Gill Blanchard, 2018

ISBN 978 1 47385 999 9

eISBN 978 1 47386 001 8

Mobi ISBN 978 1 47386 000 1

The right of Gill Blanchard to be identified as Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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T his book is a guide for those researching their ancestry in the East Anglian counties of Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, and forms part of a series of regional guides, originally published under the heading East Anglia. These four counties form a natural historical division which emerged from the ancient kingdom of the same name, and which has been reinforced through politics and geography over the centuries.

Since this book was first published a phenomenal number of indexes, transcripts and digitized copies of original records have become available online. This new edition has therefore been updated to take this into account. Internet resources have made family history research much more accessible than in the past, and allowed people to make all kinds of breakthroughs they might not have done otherwise. As a result, some people rarely or never venture away from their computers when researching their family history. Nevertheless, local record offices, libraries, museums and family and local history societies are still absolutely vital for family historians. Even if it is online, a researcher needs to know what exists in the first place in order to find a resource, as well as what it might tell them about their ancestors, in order to get the most out of it. Throughout this edition I therefore point to what can be found locally and how online and offline research complement each other.

Finding out basic facts about our ancestors, such as when they were born, married and died, is usually fairly straightforward, but this is simply the start. Questions then arise about how they lived, who they worked for, what their work involved or why they moved from one area to another. This is what distinguishes the family historian from the genealogist.

It is a clich in family history to state that we try to put the flesh on the bones; nevertheless, this is what this book aims to help you to do. There are many excellent books that will tell you the basics of how to research your ancestry step-by-step, as well as guides to places to visit. I do not aim to replicate those, but to provide an insight into which records can be used to find out more about Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk family history, as well as what it was like to live and work in these four counties in the past.

The first section provides an introduction to where to find records in the region, complementary websites and some guidance on what to expect from these resources. As it would be impossible to name every source, or even all of those within certain groups of records, this is a general description of those most useful in taking that extra step to finding out more. There will be further reference to these throughout the rest of the book, along with many examples of the types of information to be found within such records. Also included are places to visit that bring to life the experiences of our ancestors.

The book begins with a general introduction to the history and geography of the region. The next section concentrates on work, trade and commerce, focusing on different themes with a local flavour. Following on from this is a focus on some of the conflicts that have shaped this region. Next come the topics of crime, the poor, migration and education. A separate section on local government is included, which describes some of the records generated through the administration of local affairs.

Associated topics are railways and the effect of urbanization on housing. A separate section covers religion, even though this cannot be easily separated from other subjects due to its permeating influence on all aspects of everyday life. The Resource Directory at the end includes contact details for the archives, websites and places of interest mentioned throughout.