On 18 Feb 2010 at 20:36, Angela Cox wrote: > I have a removal certificate for John Paternoster and family from > Hitchin dated 28/02/1781 and his settlement certificate for Hexton > dated 18/09/1781. Is it usual for the parish of settlement to be the > birth parish of the head of the family or are there other > considerations? > Under the Poor Law Act of 1601 a person was recognised as being legally a settled inhabitant of a parish after a month's abode. However, a later Act of 1662 laid the basis of the system for the next 200 years. Anyone entering a township and occupying a tenement worth less than £10 per annum could be removed within 40 days by the Overseers of the Poor unless he/she could provide an indemnity against becoming a charge on the parish. But if he/she managed to stay for 40 days that person obtained a settlement in his/her new abode. A child's settlement was the same as the father's unless apprenticed, which could happen from the age of 7 onwards. Then the place of apprenticeship would become the parish of settlement. Unmarried persons not apprenticed could obtain a settlement after service in a parish for one year. At marriage a woman took on the same settlement as her husband. This is a basic summary and there were other aspects, which you can probably find with a spot of Googling. -- Roy Stockdill Genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE

Hello Angela and Roy, Just to add a little to Roy's message - according to J S Burn in his Justice of tne Peace and Parish Officer 1827, the 1603/4 Statute required the poor "to be sent to the place of their dwelling, if they had any: if not to the place where they last dwelt by the space of one year; if that could not be known,then to the place of their birth." This one year settlement requirement had been preceded throughout the 16th c by a three year period. Burn goes on to say that this continued to the time of statutes in 1672/3 and 1673/4 when, after a recital explaining the problems then being encountered , it was enacted that "upon complaint made by the churchwardens or overseers of the poor of any parish to any Justice of the Peace,within 40 days of any such person or persons coming so to settle..........in any tenement under the yearly value of ten pounds, where any person or persons that are likely to become chargeable to the parish shall come to inhabit, for any two justices of the peace ..... ....by their warrant ro remove and convey such person or persons to such parish where they were last legally settled for the space of 40 days at the least, unless they give sufficient discharge of the said parish..... Other statutes affecting settleernt followed in the reigns of William 3rd and George 3rd with the 40 day rule still in place, but lawyers were enjoying themselves as lawyers do, questioning amongst other things, what constituted a tenement, what was the valiue of the tenement and how it was ascertained.so yet another Act was passed in July 1819 attempting to add precision to the law and, unsuccessfully no doubt, to take some bread out of lawyers' mouths. So, as ever, no matter how statute law stands, there have always been and no doubt always will be sufficient holes in the drafting for lawyers to question it and make what appears to be black and white to be an amazing array of greys. Burn himself takes all of 575 pages of small print to deal with all the shades of grey in those three ordinary words "Settlement and Removal" !! Sid