No one has been rash enough to make off with our clothing overnight, which is a relief. All week the forecasters have suggested that this would be our rainy day, so we had earmarked it as the one to be spent in the Priaulx Library researching my children’s Channel Island ancestry. I had done as much as possible in advance and wanted to verify entries that were sent to me decades ago by a local researcher. I knew that, at £2.50 a time, I wouldn’t be able to afford print outs of the 40 odd parish register entries for direct ancestors that I had identified (which is what I would normally do) but at least I felt that I could satisfy myself by seeing the entries. A new archive is always a challenge, no matter how experienced a researcher you are. The added hoop to jump through here was that the civil registration and parish register systems are slightly different. Most of what I wanted was pre civil registration so it was on to the parish registers.

Transcribers had been hard at work, which was just as well as I had great difficulty seeing the microfilm entries. I began with the families from Castel parish. The library keeps files of all the work that their researchers have done for enquirers and these too were a great help. I managed to confirm what I had and make a few additions. My only regret is that I don’t know anything about these individuals beyond their vital events. If you’ve never researched on the Channel Islands there are all sorts of bonuses. Marriages, even early marriages, often give fathers’ names, burials usually give the names of parents or spouses and women seem to be buried under their maiden names. Baptisms give godparents, who are often relatives. Sometimes it even tells you they are relatives. For example, I have a couple where the godparent is identified as the grandmother.

I then turned to the Town Church (St. Peter Port) families. I knew I had people buried at Town Church. Town Church’s graveyard is conspicuous by its absence. I had thought it a bit odd that the lady at the archives on Monday seemed vague when I asked where the burial ground is. It turns out it disappeared during a road widening/development scheme and reburials were made in other cemeteries. These are unmarked. Maybe the archivist thought I might be over sensitive and didn’t like to tell me they’d been reburied! Although the Town Church records have been indexed, unlike other parishes, they haven’t been fully transcribed, which made life a bit more difficult but here the work of the official researchers came into its own as a guide. Several of their files contained transcriptions of all entries for a particular surname. On extending the Jamouneau line another two generations I was very excited to discover that they were born in Poitou, France and were described in the register when their children were baptised as Protestant refugees. I always wanted to find a Huguenot connection. Now I want to pursue this but I have to come back to the apartment to the job we must not mention instead. I just hope I can make sense of my hurriedly scribbled notes when I do have time to get back to this, like in about 2025.