How bad was the Great Fire?

Question

My surname, Trueblood, is distinctive.  It is subject to misspelling but generally it  is possible to trace it through time even in Tudor and Stuart times.  There are many Truebloods in America, all descended from a single 1680-2 Quaker immigrant to the Carolinas.  I have documented his ancestors back as far as the Tudor times in Lincolnshire which is where records end.  All Truebloods in Lincolnshire (and the Americas) can be traced back to a single individual and I am happily mapping the entire tribe in the county up to the Civil War.  And yet...

In the late 1660s and thereafter there is a family with the name in London.  John, the son of a deceased baker, William Trueblood of Cripplegate, is apprenticed in 1669 as a cook.  There is also an inheritance dispute around William's estate.  William did not come down from Lincolnshire, there is no one there with that name in the right time frame.

But if there is another branch of the family (or an entirely separate  family with the same name) in London surely I would expect to find parish records back to Tudor times.  Unless of course the Great Fire of 1666 wipes the slate clean as far as London records are concerned.  Cripplegate is within the area destroyed by fire.

Has anyone looked into this?  Were hundreds of years of records incinerated in the four day conflagration?

Answer 1

According to the FamilySearch website, only about 30% of London parish records pre-date 1620, but many of them will have been lost for other reasons than the Great Fire.

I don't think you can be sure that William Trueblood, baker of London, was from an established London family solely on the basis of there being no matching entry in the Lincolnshire records. Pre-1660 records for all of England are very incomplete.

I've only skim-read the will of William Trueblood of St Giles Cripplegate of 1665, but it refers to a wife, Anna nee Harding, several children (who seem to be under-age) including John, and a sister Olive. There is an Olive Trueblod daughter of John baptised in 1627 in Barnby in the Willows, Nottinghamshire, which is close to the Lincolnshire boundary. Do those names or places feature elsewhere in your tree?

Comments

I think you are right, Suzanne, and thank you for crystalizing my thinking. The evidence can be stacked up as follows:

• There are no records of Truebloods in London prior to the Commonwealth versus plentiful records in Lincolnshire
• Four of William's children's names: John, William, Mary and Elizabeth are all known and commonly used Trueblood family names at that time
• His sister Olive's name is not common, not now or then.  And John is Olive's father and is in the tree..
• Barnby is the next village over from Beckingham which is 'Trueblood Central'.  In fact in various documents Barnby is referred to as being in Lincolnshire.  The two villages are less than a mile apart.  In later years a considerable number of Quaker Truebloods are buried in Barnby.
• John is buried in Barnby.

Based on this I am going to put William in as John's son with the caveat that I cannot prove it at this stage.

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Suzanne,

I have now completed my biography for [[Trueblood-316| William Trueblood]] and acknowledged your role in spotting the link.

Thanks again, Stephen

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Thanks Stephen for the acknowledgment. Glad I could help.

Answer 2

A lot of the records exist back to Elizabeth I.

The records are held at London Metropolitan Archives. e.g.

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F137582

Many of the City of London church registers are also now available on Ancestry.

A number were transcribed and published by the Harleian Society.

As there were so many churches in close proximity a wide trawl is required when searching.

Comments

May be of interest

Sir William Armyne appoints Thomas Trooblood. 1600. Lincolnshire Archives.

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/55d8e5e8-222e-4c45-9152-748716c0bbaf

Will of William Trueblood of Saint Giles without Cripplegate, City of London. 02 Oct 1665

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D841584

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But would I be right in guessing that an enormous amount of parish records went up in the flames?  I am trying to understand why there are no records for people who should have records and why records suddenly reappear after the fire.

Quakers sent their records annually to the centre for collation.  I assume there was no such requirement for parishes?

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The Act of 1598 required Church ministers to make copies of their parish registers and send the copies to their Bishop each month. These are the 'Bishop's Transcripts'.

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Okay...  Those would presumably have gone to Fulham Palace, which is well outside the range of the Great Fire.  But why then are there no records of these Truebloods before the fire?

Colour me confused...

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Many registers have missing entries during the civil war and afterwards. In 1553 the recording of births, marriages and deaths became a civil rather than religious matter. Some registers just carry on but others stop completely  during this period.Many infants were not baptised. At the restoration in 1660, registration of baptism, marriage and burial in the parish registers was reinstated ( and a baptism ceremony designed for those of 'riper years' for those who hadn't been baptised as an infant... trouble is age is not always recorded)

In London, the plague of 1665 also meant that events went unrecorded (though I've seen a couple where the poor incumbent tried to keep up with recording the daily toll of deaths.

Lastly, copies of the entries were not sent monthly to the 'Bishop'. They were supposed to send copies covering the year from the  25th March to the following 24th March. Whether it was done or not (and how well the entries were copied) depended on the efficiency of the cleric and his clerk. Whether the returns were collated and kept properly depended upon the efficiency of the office to which  they were sent

(And add to this fire, flood, mildew and vermin, plus in later times theft by genealogists and antiquarians and its a wonder many survived at all.)

What's there for the City of London is on Ancestry except for a couple of parishes which had not been  at the Metropolitan Archives at the time they were digitised. However, it's no use relying on the index because some of the transcriptions are not very accurate. (and some of the writing, condition of the register etc makes an 'accurate' transcription very hit and miss)

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Thank you, Helen, for your considered answer.  But even allowing rats, fire, the occasional theft and the odd lazy priest, if there was an established separate branch of the family in the capital then I would expect some records of them to have survived.  I'm thinking they must have come down from Lincolnshire as in my reply to Suzanne above...

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Dear Steve,  Thank you for the spot of the Sir William Armyne documents.  I ordered them from Lincolnshire Archives and have loaded them up to Thomas Trueblood's page.  They're badly decayed but there is even a drawing of Sir William's swan mark.  Another little piece in the jigsaw.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Trueblood-289

Answer 3

If you look up Great Fire of London at Wikipedia, it shows a map of the extent of the fire as well as painting and other illustrations.

Answer 4

I found the following baptisms: Mary Trueblond 1651 (?), Sarah Truebloud 1653, John Truebloud 1655, Elizabeth Truebloud 1657, William Truebloud 1658 and Sara Trubloud 1660 all to father William and mother, where specified, Anna or Hanna.

They were baptised in St Giles-without-Cripplegate so you can forget the Great Fire which stopped at the City walls here. London was greatly expanding during this period and these extra-mural areas were where most newcomers settled. The absence of earlier London Truebloods makes it quite likely that William was an economic migrant.

Comments

Thank you!  I will add in the baptisms when I get to the 1650s.  I am still working my way in the late 1620s Truebloods.  But it is very satisfying to have tied down William's parentage with some confidence.  Whether he is an economic migrant or is fleeing family religious conflict due to his brother and father becoming Quakers is not clear.  Maybe it's both.  What is interesting is that in the late 1670s there are two John Truebloods in London, first cousins and both named after their grandfather.  One is a citizen of London and a member of the Worshipful Company of Cooks and is a member of the established church.  His cousin is a Quaker and is about to emigrate to the Carolinas.  99.95% of all modern Truebloods are descended from the Quaker line, the few dozen Truebloods who never left England are now a tiny minority.

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I see you're in London so you could examine the St Giles Parish Registers for the period at the London Metropolitan Archives. There's a registration process to go through but it's not too onerous.

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That's the plan!  I'm thinking I'll work up to the Civil War/Commonwealth period and get all the Truebloods up to then into the system.  Then I can head down to the LMA and see what flesh I can put on the skeleton.  Meanwhile I've ordered up some documents from Lincolnshire Archives to start adding a little colour.  I rather like the slow and deliberate pace Wikitree forces you to work at.