Can I add to this that the overseers of the poor accounts also exist for Brayton near Selby formerly in the WRY. I'm afraid when I read them I was not as generous as Colin so was only looking for my family. There was one particular family I remember who were supported by the community for a number of years. I also found on the newspaper records that one of my ancestors in Bishop Monkton, an overseer of the poor, sued the Bishop of Ripon for non payment of his poor rate. So I would endorse Colin's comment that these overseers records are a useful resource. Chris ________________________________ From: Colin B. Withers <Colin.Withers@eumetsat.int> To: "YORKSGEN@rootsweb.com" <YORKSGEN@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, 23 September 2012, 11:02 Subject: [YORKSGEN] Overseers of the Poor Accounts Today I uploaded several transcribed scans of the Overseers of the Poor Account Book, 1801-1829, for the parish of Ellerton in the East Riding. As there has not been many Overseers of the Poor account books published, I thought I would draw the attention of listers to this invaluable resource (where they survive). The detail is amazing, and can sometimes throw up births that are not in the parish registers, the fact that many widows in a parish earned extra money by nursing the sick in the parish, the details of the hunt for deliquent fathers, and much more besides. The Poor Rate Assessment (often called in the records as the 'sess') was a levy on every householder in the parish, so can form yearly mini censuses of heads of households in the years preceding 1841. Why not take a look at what they can contain, then see if any survive for parishes you are interested in. http://www.ellerton.info/people/church-records/overseers-accounts.html Good luck Colin ..... Ancestors in Yorkshire? http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/index.html; www.ryedalefamilyhistory.org; www.wharfedalefhg.org.uk; www.yorkshireparishregisters.com; www.yorkshireroots.org.uk; ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to YORKSGEN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message