Every time I look on a map for all the little Dorset places that are mentioned in my searches, I feel like I've zoomed in on the Hundred Acre Wood, or to a
Wind in the Willows riverbank: there are dozens of copses or coppices- each with their own individual names, as though the groupings of trees had been there since the beginning of recorded time - surrounding every little hamlet and village I've looked for. This is charming in the extreme, though it tends to contribute to the irrational fantasy of this being a landscape unsullied by the modern world, and therefore even more appealing than it already is. It is probably the case that most people involved in geneaological research have to fight this glorification of the past at times, and for my part, I easliy slip into turning the countryside into Storybook England on a daily basis. Therein lies the pleasure of the enterprise though.
So, in my zigzaggity approach to this family history business, I have found myself firmly back on the Dorset mainland, leaving Portland for the future again for now. Metaphorically tramping across chalk downs (passing copse after copse), and into old churches and ferreting out little bits of information here and there is so enjoyable, and more and more things are connecting as I go.
Yesterday, I had a foray across Salisbury Plain to investigate another promising lead in the Unsolved Case of Elizabeth Somebody. While looking for something completely different, I discovered a record of marriage for a George Adams (father of the groom listed as Thomas Adams) to an Elizabeth Polkinghorne at the church of St.Thomas in Salisbury, in April, 1874. The Wiltshire Online Parish Clerks have not got around to the transcibing of the marriage records for that year yet, so I could not check the information from the LDS family search site against a primary source. In other words, there is still no confirmation of this. There didn't appear to be any other Polkinghornes around in those records, and it is a Cornish name, so who knows.
Photo credits:
All rights reserved by http://www.flickr.com/photos/52430002@N02/ 
No comments:
Post a Comment