St Mary Bourne One-Place Study

The history of a Hampshire parish

About

Welcome to the St Mary Bourne One-Place Study. My name is Julie Muirhead and here is a little bit about me and why I have chosen to do this.

Who am I?

Julie “Julia” Muirhead (nee Bevis)

I’m from Andover, Hampshire just a few miles from St Mary Bourne and have been interested in Family History since my maternal grandfather gave me a copy of the family tree he did for his mother in 1978 when I was just 8 years old. In the early 90s when I first got the internet at home (oh how slow those 14.4k modems were) I remember finding the U.S. Social Security Death Index online and confirming a couple of things on this old tree.

But it wasn’t until the early 2000s that I started researching seriously, and it is then that I discovered my connection to St Mary Bourne my Great Great Grandmother Adelaide Goodyear.

Adelaide Bevis (nee Goodyear)

What I didn’t know when I discovered Adelaide was the journey I needed to embark on to discover the roots of her family.

Endogamy – The custom of marrying only within the limits of a clan or tribe.

Oxford English Dictionary [online at https://www.oed.com/]

10 years it took to connect all the dots in the village for the Goodyear family, thanks to endogamy and common first names. More about this can be found on my JulzGenealogy blog The GOODYEAR family of St Mary Bourne (Part 1).

Since then I have continued to work on my tree and I am currently going through everything I have discovered online and in archives. I’m then adding the data to Roots Magic ensuring everything is fully sourced. Part of the tree is then being shared to my own website using The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG). You can view the tree here.

I’m a student on the Correspondence Course in Genealogy run by the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies. I’m now in the last third of the course and hoping to complete it in the first half of 2025 before taking the Higher Certificate in Genealogy to gain my first qualification in Genealogy.

I’m a member of various societies:-

Belonging to various societies has proved very useful especially since COVID as online zoom meetings are now an option I find these meetings very helpful and allow me to learn more about different subjects.

Why have I decided to set up this study?

Over the years I have gathered a lot of data on the village and at times developed a particular interest in a family or event. As for families there are the Goodyear’s (already mentioned), Pages, Sims and many others that connect in my tree and in the village tree. When it comes to the labouring families in St Mary Bourne in the 18th and 19th centuries you cannot research one alone as they are all connected!

When it comes to events the biggest event in the village that grabbed my attention was the Swing Riot’s in 1830. Back in 2014 on an old website I published some data on the riots for the village and a few years back did a talk on the subject in the village. I have been looking at the research recently and the first couple of articles I re-published on my JulzGenealogy blog, see ‘Accounts of the St Mary Bourne Swing Riots‘. It is this research that I am currently going through and expanding for a couple of assignments I need to write for the IHGS. Since the initial research in 2014 (which I undertook purely online and with books as I was not living at home in Andover) more is available online and I will be heading off to the archives in Winchester to look for stuff that isn’t.

A zoom meeting that I attended a couple of weeks ago from Kos whilst I was on holiday was on the Swing Riots and it made me think about the run up to the riots and what was happening in the village. The overseers accounts were mentioned and I remembered from research into the early Goodyear’s some years ago St Mary Bourne has a near complete set of records for these. I visited the Hampshire Archives and Local Studies on Saturday to gather some information on the Hampshire Friendly Society for an IHGS lecture I have just completed. Whilst there I had time to get copies of the Overseers Accounts for 1830 through to Lady Day in 1831. From the brief look at the records I could see some of the Swing Rioter’s in the records and their families after they were transported. These records now need to be transcribed and studied.

It is my intention for the initial part of this study to gather more of the Overseers Accounts before and after the riots to see what they can tell me. The parish records will also be included along with the 1841 census and Tithe Return. The aim will be to build up a picture of what was happening and who lived in the village at the time. No doubt there will be other useful datasets identified that will be added as and when found.

Key things that I have already considered and want to understand are :

  • Was there an increase in the number of people claiming poor relief in the years preceding the Swing Riots in 1830
  • Did it cost the village more in poor relief for the families of those transported than it did before the riots?
  • Did the mortality rate increase?
  • Movement – did people leave the village or move to the village?

No doubt more things will come to mind as I work through the data!

As I work through the data I will update this site and over the coming weeks add extra information about the village along with some useful sources such as books and websites.

It won’t be quick and it won’t be easy but is definitely something worth doing and I will be running this alongside my other projects and coursework.

That’s all from me for now, if you have any questions please do get in touch.

Published: 17 October 2023, Last updated: 5 July 2024