Author Topic: Help needed deciphering priest's handwriting on Burial Registry entry  (Read 2309 times)

Offline Norm33

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Re: Help needed deciphering priest's handwriting on Burial Registry entry
« Reply #9 on: Sunday 21 January 18 00:11 GMT (UK) »
A belated, I'm sorry, answer to your question, Girl Guide.

Yes, it is the same Stephen Butler thank you.

And to complete the documentary evidence, so to speak, this is a copy of his Death Certificate:



Thanks again,
Norm33
Butler, Somner, Greetham, Campbell, Jago, Nibbs, Clay, McLeod

Offline Maiden Stone

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Re: Help needed deciphering priest's handwriting on Burial Registry entry
« Reply #10 on: Sunday 21 January 18 07:24 GMT (UK) »
Nice picture of the church:
www.devonportonline.co.uk/historic_devonport/buildings_historic/st-michael-st-joseph/st-michael.aspx
This website also has transcripts from 19thC local directories.

The burial took place a few years after boroughs were allowed to have cemeteries to relieve problems with town churchyards. Plymouth may not have got round to it. Perhaps a member of your ancestor's family already had a grave in the Anglican churchyard.
It was also not long after the restoration of Catholic Hierarchy in England in 1850. Before then there had been no Catholic dioceses or parishes since the Reformation. England was a mission country and was organized in mission areas which were very large. Hence the priest's title of Apostolic Missionary. He may have looked after more than 1 congregation. At the same time a cousin of my 2xGGF was a clergyman in Southwark Diocese which stretched to Portsmouth and beyond to islands, before it was split in 2. He seemed to have travelled a bit, saying Mass in houses if there was no church, then if a congregation increased, buying a plot of land to build a church.
Cowban