Adding Colour at the British Library

The British Library, London

Do you ever come across familiar names, ones from your family's past that catch your eye no matter the context? That happened to me this week in a transcription exercise for an NIGS (National Institute for Genealogical Studies) course that I'm taking. The letter to be transcribed was written by Thomas Ridout. I have a Thomas Rideout in my direct family line. Of course, my Thomas wasn't in Canada like the letter writer but spent his life in England.

My Thomas lived in the village of Ashmore in Dorset. I have never visited the village as I was unable to get to it without a car when I was in England but the literature about the village described it as being defined by the pond at its centre. The village was actually named after the pond, originally known as Ashmere. This fact and many more came from the book Ashmore, Co Dorset: A History of the Parish with Index to the Registers 1651 to 1820 by E.W. Watson, M.A., which I found at the British Library.

The research I had done in the past showed that Thomas Rideout was that staple of the English countryside, an ag lab (agricultural labourer). The census returns showed many more ag labs in the village. There was also a sprinkling of other occupations like that of his father Joseph, who was a woodsman. But, according to the Watson book, deer in the area were protected until 1830 necessitating a deer fence around cultivated land. The hunting for the privileged classes must have been good; at one point there were more that 500 deer in the area. That information added more colour to my ancestor's lives and made me wonder if they were among the poachers to which the law turned a blind eye.

My visit to the British Library added more context to the story of my Rideout family but, unfortunately, it didn't clear up any of the mystery surrounding Mary, Thomas Rideout's wife. She was born Mary Maidment and, according to census information, she was born somewhere in Gloucester. A hard to find birth is a typical brick wall problem but that is not the only mystery about Mary. Her husband Thomas died in 1842 but her last child, John Rideout, was born in 1845. Who was John's father and what was Mary's life like after giving birth to this latest Rideout child, three years after her husband's death? It must have been an open secret as John lived with the rest of the family in Ashmore. It makes me wonder how villages like Ashmore dealt with those kinds of issues. Looks like the subject for another library search.