Newsletter of the Shard*low Study Group

by Gerry Langford

September 2010

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Comment
Just when I thought I had seen all possible misspelling of Shardelow I find three more, SHANTLOW, SHANLOW and SKARDELOW.

All of these are taken from a publication with a long and rambling title which starts... Ancient Funerall (sic) Monuments within the United Kingdom... (Note from John: Although under a slightly revised name, this book is online and searchable.) The first two of these come from tombs in Bury St. Edmunds and Woodbridge respectively, the last is from monument in the Chantrie founded by John and Thomas Shardelow in Thompson and is, I think, due to deterioration of the stone rather than spelling.

The inscription for Shantlow was preceeded by the word Elis. which I have come across once or twice before used as a first name, I now find it was an abbreviation for the name Elizabeth.

New contacts
Thom Shardlow from Burton-on-Trent asked for help in tracing his family back beyond his grandfather but at first owing to a misunderstanding I was unable to help. When we got that sorted out it turned out to be a family in Derby which will be of interest to Tony, one of the first members of the group.

Candis Shardelow writing from South Africa to John wondered about the origin of her name. We are waiting to hear more from both of them.

Not yet a contact
Tony Shardlow sent me details of a site he had found, I suspect on Facebook. It featured a young comedian, Etienne Shardlow who is having some success on television in South Africa. I would really like to hear more about him.

At last
One of the unproven gaps in the Shardelow Tree has been resolved.

It was the the identity of the parents of John Shardelow who married Mary Smyth on 1 Jan 1715. It was the spelling of her surname which caused the problem, subsequent generations used the more common form of Smith. This John was the son of another John and his wife Sarah, was born at Salhouse and here we hit another snag. Although the Parish Registers were in the Record Office you had to get the permission of the Vicar of Salhouse to see them . All this had been recorded by the late Gordon Keys but he failed to make the connection with the Smyth family although they were already linked with the Shardelow’s in an earlier generation. This combined with the jumbled notes in the Campling Papers led to the Will of Samuel Smith in which he left £20 to “John Shardelow my youngest Sister’s sone. (sic) This was the John who married Mary Smyth. To make this completely clear the Smith/Smyth pedigree is as follows:

Update
Two sections of the pedigree published with the last issue of this Newsletter were unproven so I have concentrated on trying to improve these items. (1) The son of Idodea Shardelow taking his mothers name instead of his fathers. I have been informed by eminent authority on the Medieval period that this was not unusual if the mother was of higher status than the father or an  heiress. (2) This item has been dealt with above. (Note from John: The pedigree/family tree can be found on Flickr here.)

Alterations to Shardelow Pedigree
I have often written about the difficulties created by the forbidding of all church activities during the period 1649 and 1660. This included the keeping of Church Registers although there was no objection to this provided it was not done in the church and not in the same book. Alternative books were not provided so the result was that some were kept on loose bits of paper which were ultimately lost and in many cases none were kept at all. Added to this the additional complication that some of the parishes on the border between Norfolk and Suffolk although for Civil administration were in Suffolk were in the Ecclesiastical area of the Bishop of Norwich, Norfolk. What records were kept in this period tend to be split between the two and in some cases duplicated so it is very difficult to get a clear picture who married who and which were their children. The only really reliable evidence is from wills but not everybody made one and those that did varied in the amount of genealogical information they contained.

I have managed to construct pedigree for the section between John, the Vicar of Ilketshall St. Andrew and later nearby Beccles both in the County of Suffolk (See Shards 15 & 16). He married Ann Crampton 21 July 1637, I can only find the birth of two sons, Samuel in 1647 and Thomas in 1648, who married Mary Augur in 1674. Both these sons were Cordwainers (Boot Makers), Thomas and Mary had three children John, Thomas and Martha. The eldest of these, John and his wife Sarah had five children but only one of these survived childhood, this was John born in 1692 who married Mary Smyth/Smifh.