Genealogy Chat

Can anyone push me the right direction, please? I have found that my Grandmother was a Housemaid in the house of a very well known family. I do not have a current address for this family. I would like to know if great houses kept registers of their staff and where these would be kept. Help, please !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for reading this. Rona.

I would have thought the housekeeper kept a wages book, where they would be held i don't know, sorry, if you can find her on the census or electoral roll it would give you the address sandra

The County Record Office(CRO) wherever your estate was will probably have all the relevant info that you are after. If they have not got the info they will probably know where you can get it. You can also try the Manuscripts as I have found estates in Northants have some of their records in a library in Kent. The British Library also holds some of these records so it is a question of first of all finding out where the records that you want are kept. To find the relevant info usually means digging very deep into the records at the CRO and will include looking at the parish registers, maybe marriage licences, settlement records, poor law records and any other relevant material. These records are not usually handed to you on a plate, but demands many many days of research, but as you peel back the layers in the CRO you come up against much surprising material. I have grooms, carpenters, estate managers, bailiffs, domestic servants all working on many prominent estates and I have spent so much time in the CRO digging all the info up and I still have much to uncover. You rarely get what you want by writing to the Estate. Janet

Try having a look on A2A, keying in the name of the Estate - this may at least tell you where the Estate Papers are! Good luck Marjorie