Pauline Eagle writes: Hello Chris. Congratulations on a wonderful and exciting website. The links are 'out of this world'.

I have traced my Boddy/Body family in Buntingford back to circa 1650 when William Boddy first worked the newly-built Watermill at Aspenden.   His descendants remained there until the early 1990's.  Although the Mill had ceased working in the 1890's it was a and still is a private residence.

I cannot find a birth for this William although there is a family of Boddy/Body's in the Parish of Barkway going back to 1550 but no actual link to our William.   Any ideas where next to look?

I have much information on this family and would be pleased to hear from anyone to exchange information as my research is nowhere near complete.  .

There are often real problems in bridging the period of the Commonwealth as a number of the old registers have been lost and even where they have survived there may be few if any entries in the years before the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The number of other records which survive are also low.

I have no personal experience of the surviving non-register documents from this part of Hertfordshire - so I am afraid I cannot be very specific. If you have not already done so a visit to HALS and a thorough search through their indexes may reveal some surviving material which could mention your ancestors. You never know, you may even be lucky enough to find a will! Manorial Rolls (which may well be in medieval Latin) may have survived for some manors in the area. Such searches can be very time consuming, and need skills in reading the old documents, and success is not guaranteed. On the other hand you may be lucky - a few years ago I nearly gave up on a John Smith but a single day in the relevant records office showed that the relevant Smith family had been associated with the same farmhouse for some 300 years!

All I can really do is to wish you all the best.

November 2002

See also BODDY/BODY, Buntingford  (website)

If you can add to the information given above tell me.

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