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"The Shards" — Newsletter of the Shard*low Study Group |
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Issue #37
Comment
Some of our more mature members will equate the expressions “coming of age” and “Key of the door” with their 21st Birthday
although for some time now the official age of being considered adult has been 18. A few years ago I was confused by
references in a 17th century will to people as infants when I had previously recorded them as born 15-20 years earlier, further
investigation revealed that legally they were regarded in this way until they were 21. More recently, in a will dated 1593, I found
a bequest to be paid to children when they reached the age of 18 so it seems that what was considered the age of maturity has varied over the years.
More Mount Shardelow
I have just been sent an extract from a book called “Home Front Battle Front” published in Canada. It is subtitled “Nelson BC in
World War II” and contains an account of the battle in which Edward George Shardelow lost his life. Edward was the soldier
commemorated by the mountain of this name. The book does not say much about Edward himself but does give a description of the fighting which was some of the most ferocious in the war.
Apprenticeship
In the last SHARDS #36 I wrote about Daniel Shardelow being apprenticed to a tailor and suggested he might be
descended from another Daniel. I have now got a copy of the Thelveton Parish Registers and it now seems more likely that he
was the son of Thomas and Ann who was baptized at Thelverton in August 1704. My impression is that the earliest entries were
the younger children of the family at Shimpling and therefore did not inherit that estate and money but were set up in smaller
farms instead. It is also difficult to construct families from Parish Registers for two reasons, like many early baptismal records
only the father’s name is given and there are surprisingly few Shardelow marriages recorded. To some extent this can be put
down to the custom of marriages taking place in the bride’s parish but there was no shortage of Shardelow girls yet only one
marriage, that of Grace Shardelow to Robert Crow on 21 January1617 has been found. My guess is that, although this branch
had undoubtedly come down in social standing they still looked outside the village population for marriage partners.
Name Variant
Some early wills from the South Derbyshire area make it clear that Shardley was an accepted variation of Shardlow in that area
and where that family spread into North Leicestershire. I am now treating this as an official variant although it does seem to be confined to this one branch.
I have just completed extracting all the Births, Deaths and Marriages (1837-1950) from the GRO Indexes but (as the use of this name was well before the start of Civil Registration) I do not intend going back over these looking for Shardley’s.
Attorneys General
The branch who spelled their name with a central ‘E’ were known to be prominent in the Law but I have just seen that a Thomas
de Shardelow held this post on two occasions. It seems to have been roughly an annual appointment although not changing at
the same time each year. Thomas’s terms were 9 November 1366 to 20 May, 1367 and 1378-1381. This Thomas is thought to
have been a son of Sir. John de Shardelow who was Judge of the Common Plea and Great grandson of Robert Shardelow who became Chief Justice of Ireland after holding several judicial posts in England.
New Contact
A lady who simply signs herself “Jo” has asked for information and seems to be from the Shardlow family who lived on the
Derbys/Leicestershire border. Jo tells me an ancestor was a “boatman” which means he worked on the canals. There seems to be a close connection with the family mentioned in SHARDS #32 one of whom was transported to Australia and, after dropping the `R’ from his surname, went on to found a well respected family there.
Just for Fun
Sometimes it is good to have a rest from looking at names and having just completed extracting all the Shard*low* deaths from the
GRO Index I decided to have a look at ages at which they had died. Recording the age of death started in 1866 between then
and 1950 a total of 728 deaths were recorded of which 331 were female, it is not known how many of these were only
Shard*low* by marriage. 71 were said to be aged 80 or more (6 of these were 90+) but it should be remembered that age of
death is not always accurate particularly if there are no close relatives to confirm this. Infant mortality is often thought to
account for gaps in ‘Family Trees’ so I had a look at the number stated to have been 5 or under -- 185 the majority of which were
recorded as 0 (zero). It is not known if this refers to live births who died before their first birthday or if it includes those born dead.
These figures are not thought to have any genealogical significance.
| Owner of original | Originally created by Gerry Langford (d. 2017) |
| File name | shard/myfolio_01/37_issue.html |
| File Size | 5.88 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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