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"The Shards" — Newsletter of the Shard*low Study Group |
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Issue #34
Comment
While trying to put together reliable pedigrees for some of the very early Shardelows I was struck by the number who were
involved in administering the law and the number who took Holy Orders. The Law seems to have been the main profession but it
is also one that is more likely to appear in the records of the time. In 1246 Robert de Shardelawe was sent to Ireland on the
King’s behalf and in 1326 John de Shardelawe was appointed Chief Justice of the Common Bench in Ireland and later held a similar position in England.
I have numerous references in the 14th Century to a John Shardelow, a son of the above John, being sent to settle disputes in England. In 1370 Thomas de Shardelow was paid £5 “as the kings attorney”. A descendant, Anthony Shardelow, was practicing law in London in 1600.
Returning to my opening remarks I have records of the following being ordained as priests having progressed through the ranks of Sub-deacon and Deacon.
| Rodger Shardelow | 1318 |
| Robert Shardelow | 1329 |
| Laurence Shardelow | 1342 |
| Henry Shardelow | 1367 |
| Richard Shardelow | 1384 |
| Geoffrey Shardelow | 1395 |
| James Shardelow | 1497 |
When disposing of his property, shortly before he died in1344, John the Chief Justice refered to his brother Edmund “parson of Heryngswell” and in more recent times John who, in 1626, became Rector of Beccles, Suffolk.
More Mt. Shardelow
Doug Brown who originally helped me connect it with the soldier it commemorates has pointed out that I was wrong in locating it
in the Rocky Mountains. It is in the Valkyr Range of the Selkirk Mountains which are a division of the Columbia Mountains. For
anyone intending to visit, the precise location supplied by the BC Ministry of Environment is Latitude 49-46’00” Longitude117-57’00”.
Decline of one branch
Anyone interested in the branch who spelled their name with “A” or “E” in the middle will know there has been a decline, in the UK
, in the number spelling it in this way. From looking at individual families I got the impression this was partly due to the number of
female children born and therefore not perpetuating the name. As the “A/Es” in the UK have remained geographically separated
from the Shardlows, (there are only two cases of the latter in East Anglia and both of these have proven to be spelling errors) I
thought it would be interesting to look at the number of each sex registered. Between the start of Civil Registration (1837) and
1950, 35 were registered with the “A” spelling, 28 with “E” and 2 which could not be determined. As some families changed the
spelling during this period and some may have been wrongly recorded it was decided to treat both groups as one. This gave a
division 36 female to 29 male, a bias in favour of the girls which I believe is rather larger than that in the population as a whole.
It should be remembered that in the early stages a significant number of births were not registered although there is nothing to think this was more common amongst Sharda/elows than the population as a whole. Since doing this calculation I have been reading a book on the origin of surnames which suggests that in the 14th Century many surnames died out due to failure to produce a male heir so it would seem this is not peculiar to Shard*lows.
Family History on TV
The series “Who Do You Think You Are?“ resulted in a big increase in enquiries to all organizations connected with the subject,
how many of these will continue with further research remains to be seen. My reaction was that the programme made it look too
easy, obviously a lot of preliminary work had been done which was not shown in the programme and some people will be
discouraged when trying to repeat this for their own families. Anyone not able to get the TV programmes may like to know these are available on the web site www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/familyhistory/bbc. A second series of six programmes has been commissioned but no date has been announced for broadcasting these.
The BBC also has a site at www.bbc.co.uk/history/familyhistory. The last time I looked at this it seemed to be very regionalised and not of particular interest to our study.
New Contact
Lisa Cummins contacted me, her grandmother was Lillian Shardlow who married Walter Hancock. Lillian’s father was killed in
WWI while serving in the Sherwood Foresters (Nottingham & Derby) Regiment. I have details of two soldiers this might be,
Corporal E. Shardlow and Private G. Shardlow, unusually the CWGC does not give the parents or wives of these soldiers so I
have not yet been able to connect them with a particular family. If anyone can add to this I would be grateful for their help.
Useful Web Sites
In earlier Newsletters I have written about Shard*low*s who lost their lives in two World Wars, I have recently visited nominal-rolls.dva.gov.au which lists Australians who served in WWII. This lists 14 names including two in the RAAF and one
Merchant Navy. In SHARDS #32 I wrote about Thomas Shardlow , born in Kingston on Soar, Nottinghamshire who was
transported to Australia and changed his name to Shadlow. I ran a check on this name and found that no less than 25 had
served in the Australian forces, I think it is safe to say that all of these will be descendants of Thomas. If we knew all those who have come through the female line I wonder what the total would be?
| Owner of original | Originally created by Gerry Langford (d. 2017) |
| File name | shard/myfolio_01/34_issue.html |
| File Size | 7.07 KB |
| Media ID | 1201 |
| Dimensions | n/a |
| Folio version | v13.0.0.22 (28 Mar 2021) |
| Linked to | Albert George SHARDALOW |
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