In the middle of a 2 week trip to London for work a while back, I spent the better part of Saturday in the car driving north to the Midlands to visit the ancestral home of the first Buswells to come to America. I had 2 stops: first to the county records office for Leicestershire, and then to the tiny village of Husbands Bosworth.
At the Records Office
After leaving London just before 7 on a Saturday (yes - that is how I chose to spend a free Saturday in London... I am hopeless) I got to the records office just before they opened at 9:15. They are only open for 3 hours on Saturdays so I wanted to make the most of it. I had done some research and planning ahead of time so I'd be well prepared. After some emails back and forth with them I had learned the following:- Like I said, the hours are very limited on Saturday (and they're closed entirely on Sunday & Friday.) Their hours, address, and other info can be found on their website.
- They are located on Long Street in Wigston, which is essentially a southern suburb of Leicester. They're in an unassuming brick building behind the bus stop. You can spy on them on Google Street View.
- It is free to go in and view the records but to get a ticket you must have an ID with your home address. (WARNING to foreigners - don't just come with your passport or you will leave empty handed!)
- You can take photos of you pay a 5 pound fee and fill out a little form indicating what you took pictures of.
- They have many original records for the area there, but most of them are on microfilm. If records are on microfilm, they are reluctant to grant access to originals in the interest of keeping them protected.
- If you do get access to originals, they actually prefer if you don't use gloves - they believe they do more harm than good.
There were a handful of other researchers waiting to get in when they opened and for the 3 hours I was there probably about 30 others were in and out. They had a room with microfiche and microfilm readers with bookshelves all around and several files containing fiche and film. On the other side of that was a room with several long tables and more books covering the walls. This is the room where they will bring original documents out for you to view.
I asked one of the staff there about viewing the original parish register for Husbands Bosworth. I explained that I had viewed the microfilm for these records at the Family History Centre and that the quality was poor so I wanted to see the originals. He said, "show me." So I found the records there on microfiche and pulled the pages I was interested in and only after I could show him several examples of where there was text or dates I couldn't read in the images did I concede to go get the originals. As annoyed as the greedy genealogist in me was, the historian in me was pleased that they take their role as stewards of these documents very seriously. I was still thrilled with the prospect of getting to see the actual, original, 400-year old documents with my ancestors names handwritten in them.
The book that came out to me a few moments later was long, thin, browned, and worn by the passing of time. It was also surprisingly stiff. They have clearly applied a preservative coating to the pages, but it is really in great shape considering the documented records begin in 1567. I was thrilled to be interacting so directly with history. With the clock ticking, I set to work to capture as many high quality images as I could.
I'm not a professional (or even an amateur!) photographer, but I had come armed with my sister's high-end digital SLR camera and a rudimentary understanding of what all the settings were for. I had plenty of trouble keeping the book open and flat for photographing, and the lighting was pretty poor for what I was trying to do. It was a struggle to hold the book, hold the camera still, and get everything at the right angle so there wasn't a glare or shadow on the pages. Someday, I'm sure Google will have a device that can do this all very efficiently and they'll have a small army of volunteers digitizing records like this all over the planet... Until then, despite my troubles, I am very pleased with the results - they are significantly better than the microfilm images - and I attempted to capture every page for the period I was researching so I could make all of them available for other researchers. I am still going through them all and cropping / cleaning up for public consumption. Watch for a future post with links to all of the original images. Here's a preview of the difference in quality from the microfilm image vs the real thing...
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| Baptism for Samuel Buswell - from microfilm |
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| Baptism for Samuel Buswell - original document |
After 2-plus hours of shooting baptism, marriage, and death records from this book, I spent my last hour looking through wills and probate records for Buswells. I found a few records that I photographed, but unfortunately (or fortunately depending on whether I am the genealogist or historian!) I was relegated to looking at microfiche. I tried to take some photos of these, but they didn't come out very well. Better than nothing though, I think. Most notably, I found the will of my 12th great-grandfather, Roger Buswell (father of Isaac and grandfather of Samuel) who stayed in England and died there. There were a few others too that I still need to process.
That's the end of part 1 of this post. In part 2, I'll share some stories, info, and photos from the town and church where these ancestors of mine lived all those years ago. I hope some other Buswell and/or Husbands Bosworth researchers stumble upon this and find it interesting!
Cheers!!
