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Norton History


Nathan J. Staniforth

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For the past few weeks now I have been searching and searching for history on Norton and specifically the Herdings area. I made a post a while back regarding a particular person, my 12x grandfather Henry Staniforth (Recorded as Henrici Stannyforthe on records) who was described as being a husbandsman of 'Heardynges'. I have discovered the court rolls for Norton disappeared sometime in the early 1800s and have not been seen since so it seems its difficult to find anything on Norton pre 1600s.

Now I have been in close contact with Geoff White, the rector at St. James Church as Henry was buried there in 1575, and also his son William who went on to marry Elizabeth Thorpe, daughter of Christopher Thorpe of Smelter, Norton was baptized there in 1560, and the church records actually begin that same year so I was lucky to get that one.

There are other Staniforths around there at the time including a Matthew who has a few children baptized there at St. James, also a Nicholas who appears to be from another parish but he marries there. Also on one of my Eckington branches (Distant cousin line) a George marries Esther daughter of Thomas Staniforth and Mary Mullington, baptized at Norton also.

I've contacted Derbyshire Archives at Matlock, the Sheffield archives and also the National Archives but nobody seems to have anything for Norton Parish. Does anyone else have any ideas?

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There were no standard records till Queen Elisabeth brought them in. So unless they are in court records of some sort there is not going to be much. Norton Manor Records are missing. There are some mentions of people from Norton re Nottingham and Derbyshire Court Rolls which are stored at Nottingham archives but they are online. There is Feet of Fines which mentions people who rent or buy lands. Some mentions of disputes re Beauchief Abbey and locals in Abbey records. Also Hearth Tax. Wills of course (Litchfield) if they were reasonably wealthy or chancery records if they died without a will and there was a dispute about inheritance. If family was related to someone who held a coat of arms there are the visitation records (whereby people had to show their family tree to keep their coat of arms).  

     

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43 minutes ago, duckweed said:

There were no standard records till Queen Elisabeth brought them in. So unless they are in court records of some sort there is not going to be much. Norton Manor Records are missing. There are some mentions of people from Norton re Nottingham and Derbyshire Court Rolls which are stored at Nottingham archives but they are online. There is Feet of Fines which mentions people who rent or buy lands. Some mentions of disputes re Beauchief Abbey and locals in Abbey records. Also Hearth Tax. Wills of course (Litchfield) if they were reasonably wealthy or chancery records if they died without a will and there was a dispute about inheritance. If family was related to someone who held a coat of arms there are the visitation records (whereby people had to show their family tree to keep their coat of arms).  

     

Very interesting information here, I have of course tried Litchfield for a potential will, and while I have had luck finding roughly 30 wills for distant Staniforths from Eckington, I found nothing for Henry. I did get a hold of the Eckington Court Rolls from the 1500s which are VERY hard to come by, but I happened to find someone that had copies from decades back but no mention of Henry in Eckington. The first Staniforth on there in Eckington is 1521.

Now that's interesting you mentioned Nottingham archives, I'm sure someone else has brought that up to me before so that will have to be my next port of call. Norton Hearth Tax isn't something I've been able to find either so maybe that would be worth looking into

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There isn't much of a Norton History Group these days due to not enough members. I am in touch with one if you want to DM me I can put you in touch but really Rev Geoffrey White is as good. He is part of Sheffield Indexers and his knowledge of Norton is unbeatable. 

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On ‎6‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 17:05, duckweed said:

There isn't much of a Norton History Group these days due to not enough members. I am in touch with one if you want to DM me I can put you in touch but really Rev Geoffrey White is as good. He is part of Sheffield Indexers and his knowledge of Norton is unbeatable. 

I'm very good friends with Geoff White, in fact he is who I got the original copy of William Stannyforthe's baptism. Other than the burial of Henry there and the name on his sons baptism he has no other record of Henry Stannyforthe as the records only begin in 1559, having said that, there's every chance Henry was born in another parish. I have checked to see if he left a will but there's no record of his name at Litchfield.

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