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

The National Archives ... what's not to like?

1. It's free!
Could you ever imagine a private enterprise that would give you all these fabulous resources absolutely free? For the minor hassle of getting a reader's card the whole of the nation's history is there before you...

2. A fab building
For a modern building, TNA is just the biz. Climate controlled, Nuclear Bomb proof (so the guide said) great surrounding gardens (including a pond with a heron) and free wi-fi so you can look things up as you go along.

3. The collection.
From the Domesday book to the medal records of soldiers in WW1, there's millions of documents that you can look at. Sometimes with a sodding great seal attached.

4. The search engine.
The TNA website has a great website - go to the site (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk), put in your search topic (it could be a name or a place) and then see how many matches you get. Without this I would have never found the litigious Fitzhenry family of Rock...

5. The staff
Normal people. They're great. Especially the bloke who helped me roll up one of those bloody great rolls of Chancery parchments who confessed to me that he'd like to see the whole lot go up in smoke.

6. The off-site storage
The stuff that isn't looked at very often is kept in an old salt mine in Cheshire. This is naturally a good place to keep paper and parchment in. My chancery rolls are kept there. I can image that they had been down there for a long long time. To see what a fab place this is, look at www.deepstore.co.uk

7. Parking and transport links
Remarkably easy to park right next to TNA. A 5 minute walk from Kew Gardens tube station.

8. Kew itself
TNA is in the wonderful West London Suburb of Kew. Home to the botanical gardens, near Chiswick , the home of the wonderful Fuller's Brewery (brewers of my favourite pint London Pride) and close to all points in the West of London.

9. Kew Landladies
If you're doing the archives, you need a place to stay. There's all sorts of accommodation for all types. Take your pick off this list www.kewaccommodation.com
My favourites are Mrs Cellan-Jones and Mrs Hearn. The places are diverse (Mrs C-J's is fantastically anarchic - my room had a stuffed fox in it - and Mrs. H is clean modern lines with power shower in an Edwardian villa).

10. Local pubs
The Greyhound for choice of beer and the Botanist for guest beer and food.

A tad more about Andrew Fitzhenry ..was he a doctor?

After doing yesterday's post , I was reading through some notes that I made at the most excellent Wellcome Library near Euston Station in London in 2005. At that time I was making notes on all the medically qualified Fitzhenrys as they appeared on either the list of Members of the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) of the Medical Directory.
An Andrew Fitzhenry is there flittting in and out of the yearly register of the RCS from 1805 (the earliest volume) until 1825. All I know is that he lived more than 7 miles outside London - the Medical Directory was very parochial, either you were fashionably in London or you weren't.

Until the late 1800s, there are only another 2 Fitzhenrys listed. Edward FH had dual qualifications - an MD from Glasgow in 1851 and a Licence in Midwifery from Dublin also in 1851. He practiced both in Liverpool and in County Wexford Ireland.

George FH obtained the Membership of the RCS in 1844 (10 years before the introduction of anaesthesia), was in Blackheath London in 1845 and then had a practice in Brynmaur near Abergavenny in Brecon Wales.

However they are all Fitzhenrys without the hyphen and unlikely to be related to my branch of Fitz-Henrys

The Fitzhenrys of Rock, Worcester Part 2

Firstly note that I've dropped the hyphen in Fitzhenry - the family didn't seem to use it when they were signing their legal documents (see picture). The other thing is to note that Ann signed the document for herself. She was the daughter of a wealthy clergy man, so unlike many women of her time she was literate. I've got so many birth marriage and death certificates where the woman's mark is just a cross.
Anyhow, a distillation of the rest of the Chancery papers. It seems that Thomas Bradley Paget and Elizabeth Paget got the declaration from the Court that they wanted and got at least some of the money they felt they were entitled to. But their victory was short lived - Charles Watkins (Elizabeth's brother and the Heir to Richard Watkins' Estate) died in 1813 and this left his two sisters disputing what remained of the father's estate with Charles' widow. Elizabeth died in November 1815 aged 27, leaving Thomas with 3 young children. Ann Fitzhenry died in 1825 (so that's all the Watkins siblings now dead) and Andrew Fitzhenry died in February 1830. Each time one of the Defendants died (or another child was born), a new Bill had to be submitted to the Court of Chancery which summarised all which had gone before and listing who the new Defendants were. The last of the Bills of Chancery that I've seen is 1831 when Andrew Richard Fitzhenry takes over the reins from his father. I have an image of Thomas Bradley Paget becoming a bitter and twisted man as the case trundled in over the decades. I know that Andrew Richard FH died in 1844 and Thomas Bradley Paget in 1846 so perhaps the matter died with them then.