Buswells in the UK...

Last November I was in London for work and had to stay over a weekend. On the Saturday I was there, I thought I'd visit the National Archives where the London Family History Centre is currently making their home. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed on the whole - let down by my own lack of knowledge and proper preparation, really. In the end, all the records I saw were also accessible in the US via a microfilm loan to my local Family History Center, and all I could do to capture them was take snapshots on my phone camera off very dusty and grainy microfilm display. I expected there would be more access to local English records there in the UK, and that there would be better tools at the library for capturing the record images.

I really shouldn't complain though - it was VERY COOL to see the images of the original records of some of my immigrant ancestors. Here is the baptism record for Samuel Buswell, son of Isaac, who was born in 1628 (you can see him there toward the bottom):

Isaac came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, along with Samuel and a few others, in 1638, and 300-some years later, my mother, Beth Buswell was born in a small Wisconsin town.

I am returning to the UK for work this weekend and will be there again for 2 weeks on the weekend in between, I will be taking things one step further. Saturday morning I will get up and make a 2 hour drive to Leicester to visit the Leicestershire Records Office where they store the original copies of these records from Husbands Bosworth - the town where my Buswell ancestors were born. They told me they usually don't allow access to original records, but I have made my case that the microfilm images are quite poor (the one above is the best quality by far) and hope I get the chance to see them. I'm excited about the chance to touch a bit of history, and get some much better images in the process. The woman there also told me to search their online catalogue to identify other records I might want to see so I can make good use of my time there. A simple search for "Buswell" shows a number of other records that may turn up some clues. Here's hoping...

After my visit to the records office, I will head on over to Husbands Bosworth itself, just to see the place my family lived so many years ago. I don't expect I will find many traces of them there - even the churchyard Find-a-Grave claims has Buswell graves is supposedly devoid of all of these markers. A local contact told me they moved many graves years ago to make room for the road and the markers have been lost or destroyed, which is a real tragedy! :-(

Rest assured, I will be re-posting in a few weeks with the results of my little Midlands adventure. Stay tuned!