In a message dated 04/08/2007 06:44:28 GMT Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: Hi Everyone. How are you. I was wondering if anyone can help me please. I have a Edward Seymour-Seamer that was born in 1660 at Whickham, Durham, England. I can not find his parents. >From Annette. Annette: Your first line of attack should, of course, be via the parish registers. In the case of Whickham they go back to 1576, some three generations further back then you have got. The baptisms and marriages are on the IGI which, for all its faults, should be your first place to look, before you then try to confirm the entries against the original records or good facsimiles of them. If that fails it may be because you have forgotten - or not realised - that Whickham is in Co Durham but on the Tyne, and just over that river there was the City and County of Newcastle upon Tyne which, for most genealogical purposes can be taken as effectively part of the County of Northumberland. Perhaps the Northumberland IGI would help you. Failing the parish registers you could look at other records that might help with a 17th-century family. These include: Hearth Tax Returns (TNA but microfilm copies in DRO), Records of the Committee for Compounding with Delinquent Royalists (TNA but published for Co Durham and Northumberland by the Surtees Society), The Protestation Returns of c1641 (also published by the Surtees Society) and the Parliamentary Survey of the Diocese of Durham, taken in 1647 (it included all Manors of which the Bishop of Durham was Lord of the Manor, and that included Whickham, and has been published in two volumes by the Surtees Society). Of course, a lot depends on where your ancestors came in society. If they were coal miners or keelmen then there will be less to find about them than if they were businessmen or farmers. Given their Scottish-sounding surname of Seymour, it is quite possible that they were keelmen, since the early keelmen are supposed to have come from Edinburgh. Many keelmen lived at Swalwell, in Whickham parish (also at Stella in Ryton parish, Lemington in Newburn parish and Sandgate in Newcastle All Saints parish). Up to the 17th century the mines often worked seasonally, closing during the harsh winter weather, and the keelmen then all went back to Edinburgh for the winter. They were so Scottish that when the collectors of the first Hearth Tax in the early 1660s went into Sandgate they were met with a flat refusal and a riot. The keelmen said that, being Scottish, they should not be expected to pay English taxes (nice try!). If your family were at a level where they might have something worth leaving when they dies, then you could always look for a Will. I regard Wills as one of the best sources for family history - you can see precisely who were the testator's relatives, what he was worth and, if you are lucky, go on a conducted tour of his house, room by room following the inventory takers. Geoff Nicholson