Notes for 1803 Therfield Rector's List of Inhabitants

The Therfield Rector's Lists of Inhabitants, 1803-1807

Transcribed from photocopies of the bound index to the Rector's 'census' of 1803-7, located at Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS), County Hall, Hertford (doc. ref: DP/107/29/9). HALS is the custodian of the original volumes on behalf of the Diocese of St Albans. Go to Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies for opening hours, services, etc.

General Notes

Conducted by Charles Moss, rector from 1802-1812, the lists are an unusual and potentially useful asset for Therfield researchers. The 'inhabitants' actually consist only of householders, but some details of their families are also recorded.
Persons are not in strict alphabetical order, but merely lumped together as As, Bs, etc. One anomaly... Impletons are listed under J.
Some data is plainly in the wrong column, but no attempt has been made to correct such 'errors'.
Question marks before or after text indicate a degree of uncertainty, although this may only be small.
There are several unexplained blank spaces, e.g. missing forenames in the 'Persons Names' column. These are indicated with an underscore, i.e. "_____".
An underscore plus question mark (before or after) e.g. "?_____", indicates the presence of indecipherable text.
Although the original has strong vertical lines separating columns, in many cases the columns are too narrow, and the Rector has written across the lines. For example, long wordy entries in the 'No. of Children' column are written right across the 'at Sunday School' column, and into the margin beyond it. It is impractical to try to replicate this, so all such text appears in the column in which it begins (the 'No. of Children' column in this example).

1803 Notes

There are some contradictions here. Only one has been investigated... Joseph Anderson, 'Wife & no Children', who has '1 Inft.' in the margin. The addition in the margin is probably explained by the 23 Aug 1803 Therfield baptism of Benjamin Anderson, son of Joseph & Mary. That such 'updates' occurred is borne out by the 1807 List, which says, "Taken Novr. 20th 1807 - Corrected Jany. 6th 1808."
"Elisha Groom's two Chidren" is written across the first 2 columns. These must be children of Elisha & Ann Groom, who baptised 5 children from 1786-1793, but they may have been orphans. The National Burial Index (which includes Therfield 1800-1851), has an Ann Groom, died 1801 aged 31, who was probably Elisha's wife/widow. No sign of Elisha, but he may have died before 1800, or maybe migrated elsewhere, leaving his children behind.

1805 Notes

There are 3 instances of what looks like 'Mmas 1805'..... which might be an abbreviation for Michaelmas (29 Sep) 1805... like Xmas for Christmas...?

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