Reviews for Friedrichstal Church Records, 1698-1812

The average rating for Friedrichstal Church Records, 1698-1812 based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-07-14 00:00:00 Harrison Pirtle This is the last in a three-volume series of all the surviving documentation of a series of 14th century English poll taxes. Why do I buy these? Because they provide the sort of extensive (though not exhaustive) random sampling of personal names of ordinary people for which there is no substitute when doing broad comparative studies. What you have is long lists of names, accompanied by the amount of tax paid, organized by the place of residence. There is a certain amount of variation in what/who gets recorded. Some documents include the names of wives even when they paid no separate tax -- but almost invariably listed as "X his wife", making it difficult to tell what she would be called/named in isolation; others only include women who are taxed separately. In some cases, only a summary document has survived, providing amounts and the names of the jurors who administered the tax (invariably men). So the data on women's names is less rich and complete than that of men's -- but still quite extensive. What might I use this material for? What I'd love to (have the time to) do is do a statistical comparison of the names in use in various regions: what names were common to all? which were geographically limited? were there regional differences in popularity of universal names? how large and variable were the name pools? And that's only for the given names. This sort of study would be much easier if I had an electronic copy of the text, of course. And it takes second place to my similar Welsh studies. But still, if I ever find myself at loose ends, I have the source material.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-01-05 00:00:00 John Zientara A compact ready-reference source which connects surnames with British titles (barons and above), and vice versa, up to the present. The Howard family, for instance, has been connected with more than thirty titles, while seven different families have held the earldom of Sussex. A natural for your ready-reference shelf.