This will be, I presume, the final installment of my transcriptions of the St. Peter's Parish Register of Bengeworth, Worcestershire, England, although I foresee the possibility of future corrections being posted as they are uncovered. The registers end with the year 1622, and do not pick up again until roughly 1665, although there are a few entries for the years between interspersed in between other records and out of order. Specifically, I found one baptism each for the years 1641, 1644 and 1646, all on one page with the same father, a record for each of 1629 and 1635, and a few records for 1652, 1653, 1654, 1662, and 1664, all of unrelated families. The records then become amazingly organized and neat for a few years in the late 1660s into the 1670s, gradually becoming less neat as time goes on. However, since this time frame is beyond the scope of this search, I did not spend time reading these registers. I did have time to discuss the registers with a local expert on English research, John Gleed. He indicated that in 1599 Queen Elizabeth required that all parish registers be consolidated into a single book for each parish, with a copy sent to the diocese level. For many parishes, this was the beginning of the "Bishop's Transcripts" of records. This was both in an effort to organize the records, and to gain necessary information about each parish in order to be able to levy taxes. Needless to say, when ever taxes become involved, people find a way to avoid them if at all possible, which resulted in many parishes experiencing a steep decline in the number of baptisms, marriages, and burials performed. I suspect that since a parish collected money for each marriage, the diocese could easily levy a tax on each parish in preportion to the number of marriages performed the prior year. Mr. Gleed also informed me that a break in the records might indicate that the Rector had died, and hadn't been replaced right away. Often the Rector of a nearby parish filled in temporarily, and any baptisms, weddings or burials performed by him might be recorded in his own parish, rather than the one they were actually held in. He suggested checking the parish records in Evesham for some of the missing years, for instance 1577 is missing. Picking up where I left off from Part III, the handwriting for the years 1612 through 1622 was extremely difficult to decipher. It was as if the clerk was using a dull marking pen that was practically dried up for several years. The latter half of 1622 was especially bad. Many entries couldn't be read at all. The number of entries in some years were very small, indicating that they were obviously incomplete. (See my comment in a previous paragraph about taxation affecting the number of marriages performed.) Baptisms, 1612 - 1622: Anno Dm 1614 Elizabeth the Daughter of John Moore? bapt. September 2_th? day (I'm not sure about the date.) Anno dm 1615 Baptisms Samuell the Sonne of Giles Waseborne bapt. feb. iiiith Anno Domi 1616 Cassandra the daughter of William Nicols May the vth Anno Doni 1617 Samuel the Sonne of William Nichols the same day (The previous entry appears to be October xth, but I'm not sure about the date.) Anno Dmi 1619 (Baptisms) Mary the daughter of John Washburne the vith? of October _______ the daughter of Wm Nicholls the xxviiith of March (The name is in a smear; the first letter may be a C, but the name is too short for Catherine.) Anno Dm 1620 John the Son of John Washburne the xxvith of November Elizabeth the daughter of Giles Washeburn february the xviith? Anno Dm 1621 John the Sonn of Wm Nickolls Novembr the xivth Anno DM 1622 Philip the Sonne of John Washeburne June ________ (Very faded and hard to read. I can't make out the date at all.) Burials, 1599 - 1622: Anno DM 1599 Impris John More inkeep was buried the xxxth Daie of Mar. There were very few burials for 1607 and 1608, no burials at all in 1609 or 1610, and only 2 burials in 1611. (They must have taxed burials too!) After the few 1613 burials was left most of a blank page, in the center of which, in very large script, were two very clear signatures of a John Washborne, obviously in a very different hand than the surrounding records. I don't know the meaning of these two signatures, slightly different from each other is style: John Washborne 19. 1660 John Washborne The dot after the "19" is a small blob. Between the two signatures is a heart, made at the tail end of the "W" of the second signature. Following the two signatures are the 1614 burials, in the same hand as those of 1613. Anno Dmni 1614 Ellina Nickolls the xxith of August No other Washburn, Whitehead, Moore, or Nichols burials were found from 1615 through 1622. Weddings, 1599 - 1622: Anno Dm 1606 Nahaniah Moore e Margaret Ordway were married (No dates were given for any of the 1606 marriages) The 1618 marriage record for John Washburn and Margery Moore is key to this research, but the 1618 marriage records were in such bad shape, that I could not verify the record from the microfilm. In addition, 1620, 1621, and 1622 marriage records were wholly unreadable. If the marriage record for William Washburn was in these years, I could not tell. 1618 (Weddings) J___ Washab___ _____________ Moore the xx___ of November? That is as much of the record as I could make out, despite enlarging it. Another record that was searched for was that of the christening of Alice Phelps, the wife of William Nichols, who were married in 1597. I searched backwards from 1580, and finally found an Alyce Phelps christened in 1574: 1574 Chrystenings Item the xxiiith Daie Alyce Phelps, Roger harwood? godfather Alyce Ranlins e Alyce Rnshell?/Knshell? godmothers Unfortunately, the name of her father was not recorded in this record. There were other Phelps christenings during this period, but I could not guess who her father might be. I searched again for a third marriage for John Washburne (2nd) around 1578, but did not find one. As I mentioned earlier, 1577 is missing from the records. Finally, another researcher sent me a burial date for Jone Washburn, second wife of John Washburn (2nd), as 23 Apr. 1567 in Bengeworth. I sought to verify this, since it appeared I had overlooked it. The 1567 burials were blurry, apparently not the fault of the scribe, but that of the microfilm photographer. I found what appears to be the entry for Jone Wasburne, indeed in April 1567, but could not read the date because of the filming. I tried to enlarge it and photocopy it from the microfilm, but it still came out unreadable: Buryals eodem ano (1567) Item the ____ Apryll? Jone Wasborne was? ____ Lastly, I am having reservations about the 1 April 1567 christening of John Wasborne. In enlarging and photocopying this record, I'm not positive that the child being baptised was John Wasborne. The child's name was John, but the John Wasborne may have been the first godfather, not the child's name. Since I have a relatively good copy, I'm going to have others look at this entry. According to Ada C. Haight in "The Richard Washburn Family Genealogy," 1937, the christening of John Washburn (3rd) should have been on 1 Aug. 1566, not in 1567. I looked, but did not find a 1566 Washburn christening. In the enlarged photocopy the record appears to read: Item the first daie of Aprill John Bat? John Wasborne John norton godfathers and margarett ordway g___ I have also heard from another researcher that three daughters of William Washburn were baptised in Bengeworth: Sarah in 1626, Martha in 1627, and Mary in 1629, but their baptisms were clearly not in the St. Peter's Parish Register. I also failed to find a Margery Washburn of the appropriate age to have been the wife of Isaac Nichols, although if she had been baptised after 1622 it may have been in another parish. I welcome comments, particularly on those of you who have done additional research on Francis Nichols' or Daniel Whitehead's English ancestry and possible connections with the Washburns. John A. Maltby Redwood City, CA [email protected]