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Among the numerous resources and hyperlinks provided by Helen Barrell's extensive Essex & Suffolk Surnames website are lists of the principal names featured in Joseph James Muskett's Suffolk Manorial Families, being the County Visitations and other Pedigrees. His first two volumes were assessed by the editor of East Anglian Miscellany in 1919 (no 5,383) as the most trustworthy and reliable of all Suffolk genealogical works. The preface to Volume 1 reveals the effort expended to earn such high esteem:

The leading idea of the present work is to give the pedigrees, carefully elaborated from contemporary documents, of every notable family seated in Suffolk before the era of the Georges, together with abstracts of some, at any rate, of the wills and other evidences upon which these pedigrees are based. It is not pretended that these genealogies are exhaustive or absolutely free from error, but they have been put together, with infinite pains, after years of preliminary research. For, before a line of them had been printed, some twenty thousand of the Suffolk wills at Bury, Ipswich, Norwich, Lambeth, and Somerset House had been noted in abstract and elaborately indexed; the Suffolk pedigrees in the Heralds' Visitations, and the Harleian and other Manuscripts had been copied and collated; the leading features of vast numbers of Suffolk Chancery Proceedings, chiefly of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had been jotted down in the form of brief summaries; whilst the gossiping collections of local antiquaries of the Stuart period, such as Ryece, D'Ewes, Candler, and Blois, had been studied and in part transcribed for future use. It need scarcely be added that the folios of Davy and the Jermyn MSS. in the British Museum have been largely drawn upon in the compilation of the present Volume.

A full description of the various Manuscripts and Records bearing upon Suffolk Family History will be found in a paper by the Editor of this work in the East Anglian, New Series, Vol. IV, p. 17.

That paper was published a few years before the first instalment of Suffolk Manorial Families appeared in 1894, by which time enough subscribers had come forward to make it financially viable. Nine more parts followed from 1894 to 1900, when Volume 1 was completed and indexed. The ten constituent parts of Volume 2 were issued between 1902 and 1908. Only one part of Volume 3 was ready by 1910, when Muskett sadly died, leaving his friend Frederic Johnson (1864-1930), a professional genealogist, to produce two more. Part 2 was issued in 1914, three years after Part 3, for which "the matter was in a more forward state" as early as 1911. But not until 2021 did David Sherlock compile his index to Volume 3 for the Suffolk Records Society.

The attached obituary and photograph of J. J. Muskett came from Google's page 80 at the front of Part 3 of Volume 3. A similar copy obscures page 5 in Part 1 of Volume 3 at the Internet Archive.

David Gobbitt

W. George Arnott noted the monumental inscriptions in St John's churchyard, Woodbridge, before the end of 1930. The attached transcript, with numerous corrections and supplementary details, refers to these families:

Alexander Amos Amys Baker Balls** Batchelor Baxter Berrett Bradbrook Branch Brightwell Brinkley Brook Calver Capon Carr Carter Churcher Clarke Cook Cooper Crosby Crowe Cuckow Culham Cully Daniels Day Debney Dowsing Drake Edwards Ellis Fisher Frott Fryett Fuller Gammage Garnham Garrard Gibbs Gobbitt Golding Goodall Gooderham Goodwyn Grayston Gurdon Gurney Hill Hillen Hitchcock Horkins Horn Houghton Jeffries** Jessup Keeble Kemp Kindred King Larrett Last Leech Levett Lincoln Marsh Martin Mathews Mayhew Meadows Mills Moore Morgan Morris Newson Nunn Oldring Orsborn Osborne Owles Pasifull Patrick Playford Pleasance Pulham Purkiss Read Reason Robertson Rose Scarnell Shelcott Shipp Silver Smith Smyth Spall Sparkes Sparrow Stananought Stanford Stannard Stanton Thompson** Thorpe Thurkettle** Tills Towler Trott Turner Violet Wade Ward Waspe Welton* Whayman Whisstock Wigg Wilkinson Woods Worth

* Photographed last year in the south-western part of the churchyard, the horizontal headstone of churchwarden Cornelius Welton (c.1801-1872), a former Wickham Market farmer, shows how far his fame has fallen. He was the first secretary of the East Suffolk Agricultural Association and a governor of the Albert Memorial Middle-Class College (now Framlingham College), both of which he had helped to establish. When he was planting trees few days before his death, he reportedly quoted the words "Plant as though you lived for ever, but live as though you died to-morrow" (Suffolk Chronicle 16 Nov. 1872 p. 8).

** Nearby are monuments to Isaac Thurkettle (1875) and Edward Jeffries (1877). North of the path, to the west of the church, a Seal of Solomon distinguishes the gravestone of George Thompson (1862) and his wife Elizabeth (1856) while Edward Balls (1875) is commemorated closer to the entrance.

David Gobbitt

In 1927 Charles Partridge of Stowmarket (1872-1955) noted inscriptions in the churchyard and tower of St Mary's, Woodbridge, dating back to 1693 and possibly earlier. The attached transcript of his manuscript incorporates information recorded by the Revd J. W. Darby in 1826 and additional data from parish registers and elsewhere.

Details of many other indoor memorials were published in A Record of Woodbridge Parish Church by John Dallenger (1875).

Some of the monuments can now be seen on websites such as Find a Grave, the Gravestone Photographic Resource (GPR) and Flickr.

Regular interments at St Mary's ceased in July 1856, although the town's public cemetery is not thought to have come into use until 1863. Later churchyard burials required special permission from the Home Secretary. This was granted in just a few cases: in 1864 for Thomas Sheming (inscription number 217); in 1866 for Mary Turner (49), Ann Gissing (307) and Rosetta Grimwood (216); and in 1880 and 1910 for Charles Barnes and his son (207).

The following surnames (including those used as Christian names) are indexed:

Abbott Abell Ablitt Adams Aldous Aldred Alexander Alkins Alldis Allen Alstone Amos Amys Ansell Ashford Asker Ayton Backet Bacon Baldrey Barnard Barnes Barns Bass Bays Berry Bidbank Biggen Bird Black Blackman Blair Boast Bolton Booth Branch Brassey Brewer Brinkley Brook Buckingham Bull Burgin Burrows Butcher Button Buttrum Byles Calver Campling Capon Carr Carsey Carter Carthew Caton Chambers Chappell Christopher Churchman Clark Clarke Clarkson Cockle Coe Collins Commins Conyngham Cook Cork Cotton Couperthwaite Crouch Crane Crow Cummins Delf Devereux Dickson Dorling Dowsing Drake Draper Duffield Duncon Dunnett Durrant Durrell Easter Easto Edwards Ellis Elvis Evered Feddiman Fenn Field Finch Fisher Fisk Flaxman Flory Folkard Fosdike Fox Freeman Fuller Furnish Gall Gant Gardner Garrard Garrett Gibbs Gibson Gilbert Gillingham Girling Gissing Godbould Goddard Golding Gooch Goodwyn Gosling Grayston Green Grimwood Gross Grove Hafen Hall Halls Hamblin Hamill Hammond Hanton Harmer Harris* Hart Harwood Hawkins Hayward Heffer Helsham Hinsbey Hodder Holder Horrabin Houghton Howlett Hurren Hutchison Jacob Jarry Jeffree Jeffries Johnson Julian Keeble Kell Kett Keyes King Knight Lambert Langley Larter Laurance Leamon Ledbrook Lee Leek Leggatt Leggett Leman Lever Lincoln Linsted Loder Loft Lucas Lynch Lynn Macrow Mallett Manby Mann Markham Marsh Mathew Mayhew Meadows Mendham Mickleburgh Miles Miller Mills Mitchell Moncrieff Moor Moore More Munn Murrill Myers Neeve Nelthorpe Newby Newson Nicholson Nunn Orford Orsborn Owles Page Pattisson Pearce Philpott Pickfatt Pipe Pitt Pollard Pooley Porter Powell Prencep Pulham Rand Randall Read Reeve Revett Rice Richardson Riches Roberson Robinson Rogers Roper Rout Row Runnacles Russell Rust Sallows Savage Scarnell Scott Scrutton Searles Sergeant Sewell Sharman Shelcott Sheming Siggers Silver Simson Sizer Skinner Smith Smyth Spalding Sparks Spearman Spencer Squir(e) Stanford Stanton Stark Stebbing Stow Strahan Studd Sutton Swaine Sweeten Syrett Talbot Talbott Taylor Temple Thompson Tippell Trott Turner Turtle Upson Vesey Vicars Vicary Vickers Wade Walden Walford Ward Warren Watson Watty Webb Wells Whimper Whisstock White Whymper Wild Wilkinson Williams Wilson Winson Wood Woodhouse Woodroff Woods Woollerd Worthington Wyatt

* A Harris family gravestone (inscription 44) is in the foreground of local photographer Henry Welton's postcard, issued c.1906.

Images of all the gravestones are now accessible at Flickr.