Corrections to my abstracts of the Bishop's Transcripts of St. Peter's Parish, Bengeworth, Worcestershire, England. This week I have been rereading and checking my abstracts from last week with a stronger magnifying microfilm reader, particularly those years that were difficult to read. I have a couple of corrections to post. First, the baptism of Samuel, the son of Giles Washburn, was in 1615, not 1619. Secondly, I studied the burial date of the "weddow Wasbon" in 1625 carefully, and I am still unsure of the month, but I believe it is most likely September. The first letter is the difficult one. The handwriting for each year is different, and unfortunately there were no other capital S's in the entire 1625 record. The first letter actually looks more like a backwards "B" or a Greek theta than anything else. I compared it with capital S's made in 1622, 1624, and 1626, and it was very different. The second letter definately looks like an "e", and the third letter is right at the edge of the paper; it could be any number of letters that rise up, like an l, b, f, k, or maybe a fancy p, except that very little of the letter drops below. Thirdly, under magnification, the baptism of Sara, daughter of William Washburn, was on March 26, 1626. Fourthly, I double checked the marriage of John Shortazel and Jone Washeburne in 1626. The date is still uncertain. It doesn't look like a roman numeral, instead probably a single digit. I noticed that immediately after the wedding of John Shortazel and Jone Washeburne, was that of Thomas Shorthazel and Elizabeth Pilway? on the first of August 1626. I carefully studied the early baptisms of 1631, hoping to find another child of William Washburn, but did not find any. I also carefully studied the 1637 baptism of Martha, daughter of William Washburn, and determined the date to be the 18th of December. The date was crammed together very tightly on the page, but both the preceeding and following entries were in December, and the "18" is barely readable under magnification. I also noticed in 1637 that one of the churchwardens signing for that year was Thomas Sharthasell. (This was the spelling he used.) I also picked out some entries in the year 1639: Babtisings Mary the Dater of Edward Taylor 6 March Mae the Datter of John Shartasell 16 March Marriages John Shartasell and Mary Phallps 29 of Aperoll Remember, the year started on March 25th, so the marriage of John Shartasell and Mary Phallps/Phelps? occured before the baptism of their daughter Mae the following March. Apparently Jone (Washburn) Shartasell had died, and John Shartasell remarried. I did not find any other baptisms to John Shartasell that occured in the years between 1626 and 1637, but many of these years are missing from the records, so Jone Washburn may have had children. There was also one more year after 1637 on the microfilm that was extremely difficult to read. The handwriting was so bad that even under the larger magnification I could not make out the year, and was only able to guess at maybe half of the names on it. I found one name that looked most likely like Wattson, but I found no Washburns. I again looked carefully to see if I could have missed 1629, but there was no page for 1629 when Mary, daughter of William Washburn, was supposedly baptised. One last thing. The line with the 1624 burial record of John Washburn has an extra word beginning it that I don't know the significance of, that looks like "Oto" or "Otu", so that the line actually reads: Oto Jhn Washeburne buried ye fift of August That's about all I can get out of the Bishop's Transcripts for Bengeworth. John A. Maltby Redwood City, CA [email protected]