Searching for Christopher's living in England

[chrstdvd]

I am new to this site, just joined today.  My cousin who lives in England gave me the site address and said this was a good place to search for my Ancestors who MAY have come from England. My name is David M Christopher and in the past year, I have pretty well exhausted the work I can do on my family Surname here. 

There are 8 of us who have been YDNA tested and can trace our line to a Nicholas Christopher b. about 1683 someplace in England, we think.  The 8 of us in the US are all within a Genetic Distance of 6 or less from each other.  We have a YDNA match within 9 Genetic Distance who lives in Australia and he can trace his line back to Somerset and Wiltshire Counties in the 15Th and 16Th centuries. 

I would guess the southern part of England would be a good place to start.  I read most of the Beginner topics before posting and practiced searching in counties for my Ancestor Nicholas Christopher at Family Search as suggested by one of the posts.  The problem with searching, is you give a date range of 5 years for birth and get results that are outside that range. 

Well, at least I think it is a problem. If I am looking for someone born in England in 1680 to 1685 I do not want to see a person with same name born in 1702. 

Without joining Ancestry.com International, until I know what I am doing, I would like for someone who lives in England and is experienced to teach me how to search English records. Since the ships manifests for entry over here in Virginia from the 1650 through 1710 (for example) no longer exist, lost or destroyed is there a way I could look for ships manifests from ports in England that might list my ancestor? 

For example our family lore is that Nicholas was a run away or a stow away, but he was to high in society over here to be considered a regular pauper.  I think his first Master, John Burkett,  who went to Shoreditch England, I now know is in London, and married a Jane Abbott in 1690.  I think when they came back to the States in 1690 through 1692 they may have brought Nicholas with them and afforded him an education and or Apprenticeship.  He was reported as a runaway from his indenture in 1701 in court records and was given another year of Indenture.  Yet he comes back to court in November 1704 and admits to running away and cuts a deal with his new Master, Peter Evans, to serve until the next Oct 31, in exchange of being acquitted of the extra time and that he receive a set of gentlemanly clothing and shoes, socks and hat.   That is not your typical Indentured servant circumstance.
 
Everything I could find out about him here is documented in this Word Document you can download
from my Google Drive. 
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5j3DySAuDrHLUdneGcxTkNLdlE

Thank you for listening
David M Christopher

[cazza59]

Hi David

Welcome to Rootschat. 

Probably no help to you, but my Great Grandmother was a Christopher from Dorset. I've traced her line, mainly using Ancestry UK and Find My Past back to 1752.  I've also visited the Dorchester Records Office which you can contact and for a fee they will research specific areas for you.  By the way, each county in the UK has it's own archive records office. 

The records office for Dorset is:

https://www.dorsetforyou.gov.uk/article/386613/Dorset-History-Centre

The one for Somerset is:

http://www.swheritage.org.uk/somerset-archives

I also found the Dorset Online Parish Records site very helpful which is free to use:

http://www.opcdorset.org

There is a similar free site for Somerset records.

You can try here as well:

http://www.dustydocs.com.au/county/33/somerset.html?country_id=1


I would not discount the Family Search site as a great deal of the records used by Ancestry have been acquired from Family Search and other free sites like FreeBMD.

There are a considerable amount of records transcribed for Dorset and Somerset that are available for free, but probably the first thing to do is obviously check that the records (i.e. passenger lists) actually exist.  The UK National Archives website tells you what is available and where the records are located (some records are at the National Archives itself located in Kew (not too far from London), others are kept at the individual county records offices as mentioned above, and other various locations around the country such as the British Library.

Again, if the records are not digitally available, you can pay for an archivist to research for you.

This is the link to the National Archives Maritime archives:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/crew-lists-agreements-log-books-merchant-ships-1747-1860/

and from the same site, this shows you where other records are held i.e. Liverpool Records Office (most ships sailed to and from Liverpool).

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/maritime-history-records-held-by-other-archives/

Some shipping companies (e.g. P&O), have their own archives as well that you could try.

Also, don't forget to post any queries on the specific County discussion boards on Rootschat.  Many people will go out of their way to help you and even visit the records office for you.  You will find Rootschat members very knowledgeable and very willing to help.

Anyway, I'm in Brisbane, Australia but have managed to get quite an extensive list of Christophers (on both sides, I have two sets of Christopher cousins marrying, which caused no end of confusion!)

Let me know if I can help you in anyway.  Happy searching.

Kind regards
Caroline

[chrstdvd]

OK, that gives me several starting points. Thanks so much.
Dave