Jane's Roots

One branch of my Nottingham family tree leads to my ancestor Ann Blatherwick born in 1790. I mention this only because it allows me to link to the delightful web-page for all things Blatherwick, which contains my own modest contribution concerning the Council of Trent.

The Blatherwick Families of Nottinghamshire details Mark Grace's excellent meticulous genealogical research.   We are both descended from Ann Blatherwick's father, so part of Mark's tree is also my own.

The largest group of my ancestors came from Nottinghamshire, mostly from the villages around Nottingham, near to the city itself or on the eastern side of the city.  Most of these villages were eaten up by the expansion of Nottingham in the nineteenth century and only remain as the names of suburbs, such as Radford, Arnold and Carlton.  Others have survived, including Plumtree, in the beautiful Vale of Belvoir. What little evidence survives suggests that prior to the industrial revolution my ancestors were agricultural labourers, tenant farmers, and yeomen (that is freehold farmers), and from the eighteenth century  would certainly have included a number of frame-work knitters and lace-makers.

Lucy Hutchinson (1620-1681) was the wife of Colonel John Hutchinson, who was governor of Nottingham during the civil war.  I found her memoirs fascinating, but could not like her.  She was a snob and a religious fanatic, who was happy to kill a king for her religious beliefs, but was also very particular about her social superiority. Because of her snobbery, she rarely bothers to give a name to any member of the lower classes, but she mentions more than 40 surnames of local Nottingham families of the gentry or aristocracy.  I was interested to see that not one of the surnames of my direct ancestors is mentioned by her.  Even if I look at my wider family tree only two names also appear in Lucy Hutchinson's memoirs -- Pierrepoint, and Hutchinson itself -- Lucy admits in her memoirs that there was a "less deserving" branch of her husband's family.