Adventures in Family History
This page shows information about some of the references used in my articles. I will be updating all existing references to point at this page, which may take a while.
[RHC] Robert Henry Codrington.
Robert Henry Codrington wrote two extremely useful documents about the Codrington family.
These were published by the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society and are included in the references below.
Without these documents the Codrington side of the family would have been a complete mystery.
[1] Bristol Cathedral Heraldry
by F. Were
1902, Vol. 25, 102-132
http://www2.glos.ac.uk/bgas/tbgas/v025/bg025102.pdf
[2] Memoir of the Family of Codrington of Codrington, Didmarton,Frampton-On-Severn, and Dodington
by R. H. Codrington
1898, Vol. 21, 301-345
http://www2.glos.ac.uk/bgas/tbgas/v021/bg021301.pdf
There are two significant errors in this document, both of them related to incorrect records from Oxford University. The matriculation date of John Codrington is 10 years too early, forcing RHC to change his birth record and the marriage of his parents. The second is the allocation of Robert Codrington as the son of Robert [and brother of John just mentioned] rather than the son of Richard Codrington of Dodington.
[3] A Family Connection of the Codrington Family in the 17th Century
by H. R. Codrington [RH on inside cover]
1893-94, Vol. 18, 134-141
http://www2.glos.ac.uk/bgas/tbgas/v018/bg018134.pdf
by I. M. Roper
1903, Vol. 26, 215-287
http://www2.glos.ac.uk/bgas/tbgas/v026/bg026215.pdf
The work of Neil Maw has been important in identifying the owners and history of the Watchfield Manor and his on-line book about Watchfield is available at the address below.
http://www.neil-maw.co.uk/watchfield.chronicle
[6] The history of the island of Antigua, one of the Leeward Caribbees in the West Indies, from the first settlement in 1635 to the present time.
By Vere Langford Oliver
The History of Antigua is documented in three volumes.
Volumes 2 and 3 hold mostly personal information about the families who lived on the island, including the Codringtons, while the first volume is the history of the island itself based largely on documentation and correspondence.
Most information about the Codrington family is in Volume II including pedigrees, transcriptions of wills and court cases, letters and parish records – both in Antigua and England.
These links are to the Internet Archive, a non-profit library which has provided a lot of useful information.
You can view, search and download these documents in various formats – only 150 copies were published.
[7] MISCELLANEA GENEALOGICA ET HERALDICA.
As it says in the title this is a miscellaneous collection of Genealogical information, mostly pedigrees but also transcriptions of other documents such as wills and court cases.
Published in several volumes, it has provided most useful information from Volume IV, this is available as an e-book [or text] and can also be downloaded from the Internet Archive.
Project Gutenberg offers over 49,000 free e-books, some old and some more recent self-publications – download them or read them on-line.
An example of the documents that can be found:
The Dates of Variously-shaped Shields With Coincident Dates and Examples
The History of Parliament shows biographies for all members of the British Parliament from 1386 to 1832.
The biographies are written by various authors and cover all members, whether they served for only a few months or for years. Some can – understandably – be a little light on detail and, occasionally, incorrect.
As an example the information about John Harington of Stepney is quite comprehensive.
Some records can also be found as a e-book
The National Archives at Kew holds millions of documents, many of them never read other than when they were catalogued, and I have downloaded many of these in my research.
Documents can be viewed for free at Kew or downloaded for a small fee, if already scanned, and you can also find references to documents from 2500 other collections, such as libraries and universities. About 9 million records are currently available to download.
Note that some wills are also available in PCC collections within sites such as Ancestry. I have also found that some of the wills from the National Archives are not necessarily high quality scans, perhaps photographed some years ago.
It is free to request a quote for any interesting documents to be scanned if they are held in the collection. A single A4 page will typically be about £3-50 and the price increases by page size and number of pages.
If necessary I can recommend the services of Linda at Transcription Services
[11] National Portrait Gallery
The National Portrait Gallery contains over 200,000 portraits dating from the 16th century.
You can download good quality images for many of the paintings in the National Portrait Gallery, subject to copyright restrictions, using the Academic or Creative Commons licensing options.
Look for the “Use this image” option as in this example.
Your Paintings is a website which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real. It is made up of paintings from thousands of museums and other public institutions around the country – currently 212,790.
This site allows you to view, read about and [subject to copyright] download many paintings, about 2500 of these are portraits.
Images and data associated with the works may be reproduced for non-commercial research and private study purposes.
These are from various collections around the country.
Chris Sidney 2015
Gene Surfing 
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