More granny hunting

Certainly can’t complain about the weather. It’s been another hot day. How many good days in a row is that?

Hmm, let me see. I think it must be a record breaking NINE days. Wow, how long can his go on?

A whole lot longer please.

The Man worked again today so it was a day at the computer for me as well as a tiny bit of shopping. I know, I did that yesterday too, but yesterdays was at a mostly frozen food store called Iceland Today’s shop was for fresh produce, veg, yogurt and the like.

That was after I had spent several hours chatting on Skype and Facebook to the kids back home in NZ. Weather there is pretty awful, but not as bad as last month. Though the family in Taranaki were without power for a while.

So, I know you will be waiting to hear how I got on with the images I had from yesterday’s visit to a genealogy library. Well, I hope some of you will be.

I found the parish register entry for my maternal three times great grandparents.

See for yourself.

 

It raises other questions too. OK what piece of granny hunting doesn’t?

The comments about their status reads, ‘spinster and sojourner’

Now spinster is easy enough to understand, simply means unmarried female.

Sojourner has a romantic ring to it doesn’t it?

I think there a much more basic meaning to it as it is also written other entries on the same page,

The term "Sojourner" was applied to anyone who was not a 'permanent resident' of the parish in question.

They might have been baptised there but that was not always known by the cleric performing the marriage ceremony.
If the person was not known to him as a resident and the person concerned did not declare their home parish, the description "Sojourner" was entered in the records.

Well that is no help to at all.

Not only that, he was a widow. So now I will have to find the first Mrs Hall. Two times great granddad William was baptised in 1805, so he was probably their son. I say probably because it was not unusual for baptisms to occur sometime, even years after the actual birthdate.

Next time I go to the SOG library I’ll have a look at the film previous to the one I viewed yesterday. Yesterday’s film covered the period after 1830