Chasing Family Roots - It Leaves You In Awe Looking At 200-Year Old Records!

I was up and downstairs for breakfast for 8:10 as I wanted to do some on-line research for the family roots on www.ancestry.co.uk.  The information would determine whether I went to Letheringsett to find former residences, or whether I went to Norwich to look at county and parish records.  I then swung by the library to see if my book was in (no luck) and sat down at one of their computers to find direction maps of how to get to the records office in Norwich and to further search for information on my ancestry.co.uk website.  (If you want to take a look at the info, send me an e-mail off-line (family members only)).  Upon scanning through the information and doing some research on Google maps, it was off to Norwich for the day.

I left the library, walked up the street to the train station - the one that goes to Norwich - in time to see the 10:45 arriving at the station.  The station platform was full of people getting off and getting on the train. Train service in Britain is very civilized with a frequency of every 30-45 minutes even late into the evening.  I got on the train and sat down to enjoy the trip.  The guard (conductor) came along. The fare, Sheringham to Norfolk and return was only £4.15 with my Seniors Rail Card!.

I had previously picked up a book about the railway lines in the Sheringham-Cromer area which I had been reading with great enthusiasm.  As the train travelled along, I had a better understanding and appreciation for the little towns and villages that I was passing and how the railway fit into the lives and history of these communities.

I arrived promptly at 11:35 at Norwich station.  It was a 30 minute walk to the Norfolk County Archives - mostly uphill.  After getting instructions on how to find what I was looking for, by 12:30 I was sitting at a microfilm reader, cruising the microfilm at a mile-a-minute and writing the notes into my baby laptop.

Actually it was more like frame-by-frame trying to decipher the white-on-black negative that had been originally written in old vellum note books more than 200 years ago - 1676 to 1841.  On some pages the microfilming wasn’t the best quality.  It was impossible to discern the names before 1777 which is the period that I was particularly interested in.  Working forward from 1777, I was able to pick up tons of information on my great-great-great grandparents and their children, and my great-great-grandparents and their children.  Before I knew it, the clock struck 5:00 pm and it was time to leave.   I had a full two pages of notes from the microfilm.  I have to go back again next week to get photocopies of the relevant records and to take a look at other parish records.

I walked back towards the train station but, because I had an off-peak ticket, I had an hour to kill before boarding the train.  In the morning, I had seen the sign for a fishing gear store, “The Compleat Fisherman”, nestled right alongside the river that flows through the city.  So, I wandered over to take a look at how fishing was done in this neck of the woods.  Turns out the “Compleat Fisherman” is an old-fashioned pub. That required having a brew-or-two and a jacket-potato with beans while waiting for the train.

As we approached Sheringham and the North Sea coast, a fog as thick as pea soup had rolled in. I could hardly see the shores.  Perfect weather, though, for 100 fatted bunny rabbits hopping all over the common as we came into Sheringham.