PAGE family of Middlesex 18th/19th centuries (completed)

[Valda]

Hi Ian

sorry I was thinking when you said you had a list of Charles Robert's children, it was a definite list of the children of the man mentioned in The Times extract and not from the trees I gave the link for, so no proof that this is the same man as in The Times article, especially since none of the trees gives this man any brothers called Henry, Richard and Thomas, just two siblings James and Hannah.

Regards

Valda

[yelkcub]

Hello Valda -
No, unless I find another, more detailed reference to the 1861 Chancery case, it will be a case of waiting until I can get to a law library, hoping that some book in their collection has details of the Page suit. It would be good to find some promising matches for Thomas , too, though it's all too possible that hedied before the 1841 census was taken. Finding Richard is less urgent, as the Times report states that he had no children.

I like this Charles for more reasons than one. I admit that having a male sibling with a name other than Richard, Thomas, Henry may pose a difficulty ... but perhaps this James did not survive into adulthood. One reason I like the look of this Charles is that some of his sons were early migrants to Australia - which is also the case in Henry's family. One of Henry's daughters turns up in that part of Kent in the late 1840s when she and her children, deserted by her husband, were admitted 'in distress' to the Dartford Union, some distance from all her previous known addresses.

The search goes on ... and I really appreciate your interest and expertise.
Ian

[Valda]

http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/AUS-Tasmania/2002-10/1035373829

http://gravesoftas.dynup.net/graves%20of%20tasmania/Murderers/Free%20Settlers/thomas_page.htm

Regards

Valda

[yelkcub]

Good morning Valda -
How amazing that no fewer than five sons from the same family should have migrated to Tasmania together in 1841. Surely in those days the parents' expectation must have been that they would never see their children again.

I'm going to post the look-up request we discussed in the forum you suggested. Fingers crossed - it is a rather cheeky request
Ian

[Valda]

Ian

for the benfit of others searching for Chancery cases this is the advice I gave you about searching for Chancery cases when you asked me about searching in Law libraries.


Besides the growing index to Chancery cases on The National Archives website, the only other index I know for Chancery is Bernau's index which is an C18th index.

Law libraries from my experience are not interested in indexing every single case that occurs in English civil (or criminal law). There sole purpose is as a reference for judges and lawyers to search for precedents - since English law is based on laws passed by parliament and precedents set by previous interpretations of that law in actual court cases, and/or judges interpretation of what is fair (equity/equitable), it is therefore important that such cases are kept for them to refer back to.

Records of cases which took place in Crown courts are kept at The National Archives (one of the reasons they have over 50 miles of shelved records - Chancery cases taking up a substantial mileage of the shelving). Law libraries would have no interest in the vast majority of these cases and modern law libraries (as held in universities for instance) would have little or no interest in increasingly historic cases in a court that ceased to exist in 1873, when most laws of the period and judgements on what is equitable and have long since been superceded by more modern laws passed in parliament and modern C20th judgements by judges.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_Chancery

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/guide/cha.shtml

Difficult to know where you should put such a request (on a general board like England - there isn't a board specifically for The National Archives - it isn't the sort of place to do look ups as researching records there can be quite time consuming) because really you need to employ a professional researcher who knows their way around Chancery to research for you at The National Archives or wait until TNA has indexed all its Chancery cases - a mamoth task considering the court records stretch back to the late C14th.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/RdLeaflet.asp?sLeafletID=165

Regards

Valda

[yelkcub]

Hello Valda,
Thanks for this posting, which offers valuable advice to those looking to use Chancery and other court records to further their family research. I take your point that the majority of Chancery suits and their judgments have little relevance to modern legal practice. However, with respect, they are still of great value to those seeking to research the history of English law. The person I spoke to at the Law Society library told me that all Chancery suits were written up, the reports collected in digests of court proceedings. Whether any of these digests can be found in university law libraries, as a resource for legal historians, remains to be seen. I am pursuing this because, at the moment, I can’t see another way of moving forward with my attempt to solve the puzzle of this family.

Regarding the Courts of Chancery, I came across this quotation in a website: “Persons who have had Chancery suits describe them as rather unpleasant, being as difficult to get out of as a pair of wet leather breeches.” (Punch, 1842)
Best wishes
Ian

[yelkcub]

I ought to add that in my previous posting I was not referring to official court papers, but to commercially produced accounts.
There are a number of English digests, but the most useful and comprehensive is The Digest (called The English and Empire Digest until 1981), which covers cases from the Yearbooks to the present. Cases are arranged in classified order under broad subject headings and then chronologically within each topic. Each case is assigned a number that can be used to trace the later treatment of that case (thereby allowing The Digest to be used as a citator). Each volume has its own index and there is a two-volume general index of subjects and of words and phrases. In some instances an older case may not be in the current digest. You may find it by checking one of the older editions.

The English and Empire Digest: Being a complete digest of every English case from early times to present day, Vols. 1-48  London, 1919-1930

[Valda]

Ian

Have you checked the Law Society online catalogue?

http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/productsandservices/libraryservices.law

The Law Society answer enquiries and for a fee will produce information from their books if (because it is a members only service) you are enquiring for historical materials.

'We may be able to assist those requiring access to rare books and historical materials in our collections that you have not been able to find elsewhere. '


Or the Bodleain, British Library or Guildhall Library are the sort of libraries you are likely to find copies of such historic books.
e.g.

http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/E83562F1-D24B-4F16-8E71-1128E1A58353/0/LawcollectionsatGuildhallLibraryKRBMay08.pdf


However the easiest method for a university library would appear to access the online database.

Halsbury Laws Direct: legal information online

e.g.
http://www.darlington.gov.uk/Education/Library/Reference+Library/On-line+Databases.htm


From my memory of casebook volumes like this at university. I did most of my work in the law library section with law students though I personally wasn't studying law, the case write ups were short and succinct with the bare outlines of the case, the legal arguments and the outcome. They were not the sort of accounts that named names or needed to for the purpose they were written for.


Regards

Valda

[yelkcub]

Thanks Valda - I will investigate! The Law Society sounds like a good bet.
Ian