Read on to find out the answers to last issue’s Family Tree Academy challenges. Our Academy tutor David Annal explains all

David Annal

TAKE YOUR RESEARCH TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Your transcription challenge:

The answers

We asked you to have a go at transcribing some entries from an 1871 crew list. Compare your results with the details as transcribed by the Family Tree Academy tutor, David Annal. We’ve transcribed the details into the table above.

Old-handwriting tip!

Note that the names are actually the signatures of the crew members (apart from the three who made their mark). It’s rarely possible to achieve 100 per cent accuracy – sometimes it really is guesswork as to what the original text is meant to say.

Your document challenge:

The answers

Last issue we published some documents relating to the Poor Law and set you some challenges.

Settlement Examination

Settlement Examination of Thomas Cartwright

I. Where does Thomas claim to have been born?

Twyning in Gloucestershire.

II. Can you find a record of his baptism?

Thomas, son of Thomas and Ann Cartwright, was baptized at Twyning on 21 May 1741. The original parish register is held by Gloucestershire Archives and has been digitised and indexed by Ancestry as part of its Gloucestershire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1813 database.

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III. Thomas was apprenticed to his uncle. How could you find out more about this?

For over 100 years, from 1708 until 1811, records were kept by the Commissioners of Stamps recording the payment of a tax (Stamp Duty) on indentures of apprenticeship. Not all apprenticeships were covered; if the apprenticeship fee was less than one shilling, for example, no duty was payable and there was widespread avoidance of the tax. Close relatives (for example a nephew apprenticed to his uncle) could easily have avoided the tax by foregoing the fee and this is presumably what happened here as there is no record of Thomas or his uncle Francis in the Stamp Duty registers (held by The National Archives). Francis appears in the registers as a Master Carver on four occasions; 1736, 1741/42, 1749 and 1756. Thomas appears to have been apprenticed to his uncle sometime in the mid-1750s and it seems that it was an informal arrangement. Francis left a will, dated 28 November 1756, in which he mentions ‘Thomas Cartwright my now apprentice’.