Introduction

The valuable research included in this website has been provided entirely by Colin Chaldecott whom I have been unable to contact of late.

All credit must go to him for the effort and endless hours of work that have gone into researching the information included in these pages. I have changed nothing from the original and the wording is exactly as produced by Colin.

In later pages I have done my best to scrounge around for more recent family trees and encourage family members from around the world to contribute information so that the family traditions can continue.

The purpose of producing this brief account of the families history , is to share with others, the information I have collected, over the past twenty five years or so, in it I  hope to provide a fairly short readable guide, to the antecedence of our family.  In this account I have where possible given references, to the  documents or transcripts, from where I personally, was able to obtain the information  needed, to compile this work, using the comparatively new medium of the Internet, with the hope that it will have a fairly wide distribution, with a view to readers, taking their own hard copy  for other interested. Parties.  I have personally inspected any documents mentioned or their transcripts.  Where there is no reference indicated, it doesn’t mean  that I haven’t seen the document, upon which the item is based, it is merely that in my chaotic way of  handling bits of paper and that over the years, some of my original notes of  reference, page number, or exact volume title, also in this account,  I hope that I have done my best, to sort fact from fiction .

 

I had always been interested in the families history, and from time to time carried out some research, but it was not until 1976 that I started in earnest, to take a more detailed systematic look into this very complex  and interesting subject.

 

It began in my local library where I was looking through a book entitled the general armoury,  when I discovered  a reference to the families Arms, after seeing this. I decided that if they were entitled to arms, they must have been a family of some importance, and therefore there was scope for some more detailed research .

 

A number of years previous to this, my cousin Peter,  had given me a  copy of  a family tree which related to our branch of the family, he had produced this from a list of births deaths and marriages connected with  the Dorset village church at Mappowder, these lists started from 1714 and ended in1888. I had from time to time tried, to trace these back further, but without much success, at that period, not  having sufficient time due to various commitments, I let the matter drop for a number of  years.

 

After having made the discovery of the family arms, I decided to pay a visit to, the Dorset County Records Office, where I was able to obtain a substantial amount of very useful information.

At about this time I was working in  London adjacent to both the Guildhall library and the Central Records Office. It was from both these sources, that I was able to study both transcripts of state papers and original documents.  By 1978  I was able to assemble a rough  tree for my own branch of the family, and I had sufficient information to assemble a fairly good account of  the families history.  I put all of  this material away in a box file, with the object of looking through it, at a future date, probably when I retired,  with a view to producing a short history,  for distribution  to my own family members, and  depositing a copy with the Dorset Records Office:

 

After this I didn’t do much more research for a number of years, until about ten years ago, when I retired started occasionally to visit the Berkshire county Records Office, with the object of gathering sufficient information to compile a more rounded account of Walters life in  Berkshire.  This I found to have been a very worthwhile task thus enabling me to complete my task.

 

Colin Chaldecott 26-6-2001