One Name study admin

Today was a tidying-up day for the One Name Study. There was the profile to write for the Guild of One Name Studies (it's very gratifying to see that 16 people have looked at it already - if you're interested, click here), some emails to answer and some more certificates to order. Also I've arranged to go to the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester to look up some records relating to a military branch of the family who were stationed in the Peninsular Barracks with the 60th Rifle Regiment.

Tasmania Fitzhenry - a lifetime of mispelling

Ages ago when I can upon the name Tasmania Fitzhenry in the GRO marriage index (1884 Q2, Newport M. 11a 240), I was struck by how glamorous the name sounded amongst all the Marys and Sarahs. However, the marriage was in Wales and I couldn't find her anywhere else in any other records (including censuses), so she went on the back burner as she didn't seem to be "one of mine".

I've only been able to solve the mystery of Tasmania when I swapped information with Joan Stafford from the Isle of Lewis. Joan had bought a marriage certificate in error, thinking it was one of her Fitzhenrys. It was the marriage in June 1882 between John Joseph Fitzhenry (aged 21, a seaman) and Tasmania Palfrey (aged 16) in Newport Monmouthshire, Wales. Her elder brother Edwin was one of the witnesses.

So Tasmania spent 2 glorious years as a Fitzhenry before she was widowed (I assume John Joseph died at sea as he isn't in the GRO death index) and the 1884 marriage was as an 18 year old widow to Christopher Hendley.

But if you are thinking of looking for Tasmania Palfrey or Tasmania Hendley in other records, you won't find her.
Her GRO birth record in 1868 is as Tesmania Palfrey.
In the 1871 census, the actual record looks like Tasmanea and is transcribed as Tennessea.
In the 1881 census it looks like her mum just put down "Minnie" to confuse us all.
In the 1891 census she's Tasmenia Hendley (still living in Newport)
In the 1901 census she's now named her third daughter after herself, but they are both still mispelt as Jasmenia and transcribed as Lasmenia (now living in Cardiff).
The only way of finding her is to look for the names of her Mum (Elizabeth) and brother (Edwin) and then her second husband (Christopher).
I've not yet found Tasmania's death record or the marriage of her daughter. If any Palfrey or Hendley researchers have any more info or indeed any photos of this much maligned woman, then I'd be very pleased to hear from you.

The Fitz-Henry/Fitzhenry family makes it onto the register of One-Name Studies

Some weeks ago I applied to the Guild of One-Name Studies (GOONS) to register the Fitz-Henry/Fitzhenry names as a one-name study. That application has now been accepted and Fitz-Henry/Fitzhenry is now an official one name study.
For brevity, for the rest of this post I'll refer to the two surnames together as Fitz(-)henry.

What does that mean for any Fitz(-)henry researchers out there?
Well, firstly let me reassure you that it doesn't mean that only I can research the name now! On the contrary, with the backing and resources that the Guild provides, this now becomes a worldwide collaboration with official backing - I'm just acting as a facilitator. If anyone has Fitz(-)henry links and wishes to share them, please drop me a line on the comments section below. Click here to find out more about the GOONS.
And yes, the fabled Fitz(-)henry website (with the gestation of an elephant) is almost ready to roll...

The boxer - Thomas Fitz-Henry, my great-grandfather

The picture is of my great-grandfather Thomas Fitz-Henry, whose older incarnation can be seen in the photo in the first post I made on this blog. It's a scan of a "tintype" photo, the original instant snap. More about tintypes can be found here at Wikipedia
I think Thomas must have been in his late teens or early twenties here (he was born in 1870), and I'm told that this would have been taken outdoors in natural light against a white background. So he was either standing outside during a competition or it might have been at a bout at a fair where traveling photographers were popular.
In February 1894 he won a silver cup at the Sydney Club Open Boxing Competition weighing in at 7 stone 10lb (108lb) or flyweight. The trophy was never engraved with his name as it was more valuable at the pawn shop unnamed (family legend) but thankfully it was safely redeemed so I now have it.
The picture may have been taken at that event as this is the only photo we have of his boxing career.

Where Mount Fitzhenry got its name from...

Once again my North American geography correspondent (Ann FH) has come up trumps with the reason behind the name (and I quote from her email):
According to the book "Gods and Goblins: A Field Guide to Place Names of Olympic National Park" by Smitty Parratt, Mount Fitzhenry was named in honor of Edward A. Fitzhenry, Clallam County Surveyor from 1892-1900. The name was assigned by parties unknown sometime between 1900 and 1910.

Mount Fitzhenry!

My geography correspondent informs me that the Fitzhenry clan has a mountain named after it in Washington state. Or probably someone called Fitzhenry claimed a mountain. But what's the story behind it?
For a map and aerial shot of our very own mountain click here and select the satellite view, or cut and past this rather long link:
http://washington.hometownlocator.com/maps/feature-map,ftc,1,fid,1519621,n,Mount%20Fitzhenry.cfm

Many thanks to Ann Fitzhenry for this information.

Patrick Fitz-Henry, slave trader, Bristol

I was in (email) conversation with Lesley Champion, my Australian correspondent, about the Bristol origins of her Fitz-Henry line in the late 1700s. There are several Fitz-Henry/Fitzhenry families mentioned, and they seem to be Irish Catholics (probably the worst combination you can have at this time from the genealogy viewpoint!).
A name that has cropped up in several references is Patrick Fitz-Henry. I first found him in the London Gazette, where he is prominent in the Bankruptcy columns. In fact he seems to have the distinction of becoming bankrupt twice in the 1790s. He is listed variously as a "Merchant and adventurer" and a "ship owner" trading out of Bristol and Newfoundland. A Google reference then more sinisterly leads to a pay-per-view article in the History in Africa journal which names him as a slave trader with his ship the Maria. He is also listed on the Merchant Network website as being a slave trader out of Bristol.
The last reference is via Google books and in George Oliver's "Collections Illustrating the Catholic Religion..."(1857), the description of the attempt to establish a Catholic Mission in Bristol told that
"the congregation could contribute but little and even that little, collected by committee, was unadvisedly placed by its members in the hands of one Fitz-Henry, an Irish merchant, and was irrevocably lost by his bankruptcy."
Any further information about Patrick Fitz-Henry most welcome.

Charlotte Fitzhenry Robling 1917-2008

I am grateful to Ann Fitzhenry for informing me of the death last week of Charlotte Fitzhenry Robling, an extraordinary woman who was amongst other things, a reporter and photographer for AP newsagency. Our sincere condolences to her family. A brief biography from the Chicago Sun Times can be read here

The London Gazette online

Sometimes you find a source of new material that makes you wonder how you had never heard about it before. This month's new source for me is the London Gazette online. The Gazette was first published in 1665 and is a newspaper published by the government that covers military promotions, searches for the beneficiaries of wills, bankruptcies and lots of other good stuff for a family history researcher. The archive online is fully searchable and its free. Have a look - it's marvelous.

How did I miss that?

Only when we get tonked 4-1 by Birmingham today do that I realise that I hadn't marked the first trophy win in 9 years last Sunday. For our overseas readers, Spurs beat Chelsea 2-1 in the League Cup. You can be assured that I probably won't be putting any more random football posts here for another 9 years unless we get a lot better...

Fitzhenrys of Rock now on Ancestry

I've now put the Fitzhenrys of Rock family tree on ancestry. If anyone sees a link to any of their relatives, please let me know.

Cricketing FitzHenrys

I'm studying for the GL6 cricket umpiring exam and looked on the cricinfo.com archive for other cricketing Fitz-Henrys or Fitzhenrys.
I found Russel Charles Fitzhenry, who played one first class cricket match for Eastern Province, South Africa in the 1991-2 season.
I knew there was a Fitzhenry branch in South Africa, but how did they get there and where did they originally come from?
If you are a Fitzhenry or Fitz-Henry from South Africa (or even Russel Fitzhenry himself!) then please get in touch through this blog, and I'd be very pleased to put your family history here if you want to share it.

Family Records Centre, Angel, London

I was back at the FRC yesterday transcribing yet more Fitzhenry and Fitz-Henry births marriages and deaths from the indexes.
It's the first time I've been there since the old book indexes were filed away (? for ever) and now all that are available are the scanned indexes on fiche, or the transcribed indexes on computer (incomplete, so for completeness every index volume has to be checked). It's a much slower process to systematically go through each year now and feels somehow like the soul has gone out of the search. The scans are not of the best quality either, so the index numbers are sometimes almost illegible. The thrill pulling the original indexes from the 1830's from the shelves and seeing your ancestor's name hand scribed on vellum was one of the things that made the connection to the past seem so real at the time. A new generation of family history researchers won't have that experience now.
Only one improvement over the old system - the fiches don't dirty your clothes like the big old leather bound indexes did, but that's small compensation.

My family tree now on Ancestry.co.uk

For anyone that's interested, my tree "Fitz-Henry, London, England" is now up on Ancestry and should be for unrestricted viewing. If it isn't, would someone let me know? Usual terms and conditions apply - if you want more information or see anyone you recognise, then please leave me a comment.

It hasn't got the non-related Fitz-Henrys on it, although I will put the litigious Fitzhenrys of Rock, Worcestershire on there when I have time to see if anyone has more information.

Spurs 5 Arsenal 1

Can't let last night's result pass without a mention. I'm sure I'll never have cause to post that scoreline again in my lifetime.

Andrew Richard FitzHenry, and Horn or Hoon Hay

Having had no success finding the whereabouts of Horn Hay through the usual Google routes, I turned to the on-line catalogue of the National Archives. The property is listed as "Horn or Hoon Hay" in Derbyshire and searching for Hoon Hay on Google maps puts it indeed as a few miles East-South-East of Derby city.
The plot thickens though, as the deeds listed in the National Archive database gives the owner as Thomas Bradley Paget, the brother-in-law of Andrew FitzHenry senior (see the entries on the Fitzhenrys of Rock). Hoon Hay had originally belonged to the Rev. Richard Watkins, so it was not a FitzHenry property, but had passed to the Pagets by marriage.
After the long and bitter Chancery court case, had the families become reconciled? Was Andrew FH a resident in, or a tenant of, his uncle's property?

Discovering Google books / more about Andrew Richard FitzHenry

I've now discovered the potential of Google books for finding random Fitzhenry references.
Here's one.
Andrew Richard Fitzhenry (the son and heir of Andrew Fitzhenry of Rock, Worcester) has his obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine of 1844. It's only two lines and says:
"DERBY - March 15. Aged 36, Andrew Richard FitzHenry Esq. Late of Horn Hay."
What's interesting is that I've got his death certificate which shows that he died at 111 Great Saffron Hill, Holborn London (of consumption) on March 17th aged 35.
Ok so the date's a bit out, but what of the place? I assume that Horn Hay is the name of his estate or village, but I haven't found it yet near Derby - there is one mention of Horn Hay, but it's in Somerset.
The other interesting thing is the capital H in FitzHenry - the family may have lost the hyphen, but they haven't quite got round to putting it all into lower case.

End of year celebrations

Two things to celebrate from yesterday
1. Tottenham beat Reading 6-4 at home yesterday. Our family have been Spurs supporters since the turn of the 1900s. Family legend (often remarkably inaccurate) has it that two of my great uncles had trials for Spurs and hence the link. However the club historian has no evidence of this that he can find. Despite this, we've had season tickets at White Hart Lane since the 1950s. My great uncle Jim had his fatal heart attack in the East stand in the epic 3-1 defeat of Manchester United in 1999 just after Stephen Carr had scored the third goal.

2. This blog is now findable by the search engines and I've had a comment left by Ann Fitzhenry from the USA.

Brilliant.

Article about Nesta of Pembroke in the Guardian 21.12.07

The link below gets you to an article published in the Guardian newspaper yesterday. Simon Jenkins argues that the Welsh princess Nest (or Nesta) of Pembroke has been sadly overlooked in the history of the British Isles. She has been described as the British Helen of Troy and had liasons with at least four different members of the conquering Norman nobility including Henry the First.
How is this relevant to this blog?
Nest is commonly recognised to be the mother of all Fitz-Henrys/Fitzhenrys because she bore the illigitimate son of Henry 1, Henry Fitzhenry. However, Henry 1 is said to have had 20 illigitimate children so maybe there were other separate starting points for other Fitzhenry lines, Fitzhenry meaning "the bastard son of Henry".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2230948,00.html

New website for my Dad...

Time for me to shamelessly plug a website that I've built for my dad, Tom Fitz-Henry and uploaded this evening. He's an osteopath in Barking, Essex (that's Essex England for all our transatlantic viewers) and wanted an online presence as all his mates have one. This gave me my first crack at building a website from scratch to a customer's requirements (!).
The great Fitz-Henry family tree website is still work in progress but I hope to have the initial pages up by the end of the year. In the meantime here's my dad's site www.tomfitz-henry.com