When I started this project, I knew my husband’s ancestor was Thomas [Maw] of Wainfleet, Lincolnshire, that his wife’s name was Elizabeth, and there were two or three Johns in between Thomas and the John Maw (1841-1920) who emigrated to Ontario, Canada. There were just enough clues to convince us to go to the Lincolnshire Archives: first me alone, then with my husband. In this post I’ll share what it’s like to visit the Lincolnshire Archives – my first British archive – in real life. This is the third in a series. If you’d like to read them in order, see the first post here.
Getting there and things to know
I was not ready for this trip. Don’t be me. Do book a research table, and do be sure to request items before you arrive from the Lincolnshire Archives catalogue online.
Logistics:
As I’ve written, I wasn’t prepared for genealogy and did everything on my iPhone: arranging travel, booking tickets, researching, digitizing images, and writing emails.
- Getting there by train: As soon as you know when you will be visiting, book your train tickets – the further ahead the better. Like airlines, the prices rise and the options dwindle the closer to departure. I used the Trainline app (and I’m not being paid to endorse anything in this post). It is a one-stop platform that collates the best options for the journey, including advance purchase, off peak, day returns, and journeys involving more than one rail service (for example, we used East Midlands Rail (EMR), London Northeast Rail (LNER), and ScotRail). There is a fee per transaction but as a visitor I felt the service and convenience were worth the money. The tickets were held by in the app. When the inspector came through the car, he scanned our e-tickets on my phone.
- It is a nine-minute walk from Lincoln Central train station (LCN) to the archives (0.4 miles). The route involves uneven ground and some cobblestones. If walking is not an option, an Uber responds within minutes.
- If you are not travelling by train, the tourist board has created this helpful page of information about getting to Lincoln.
- If you are driving, there is a car park across the street from the archives.
- If you have a suitcase and your accommodation will not hold your luggage for you, you can leave luggage at the Premier Inn, next door to the archives, using the Stasher app. We paid abt. £20 (CAD$38) for three bags for four hours. Pricing is per piece per hr so a large piece is the same as a small one.
At the Lincolnshire Archives:
Map of the Lincolnshire Archives, St Rumbold’s St, Lincoln LN2 5AB, UK.
- Address: St Rumbold’s St, Lincoln LN2 5AB, UK
- Website: https://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/history-heritage/lincolnshire-archives.
- Telephone: 01522 782040
- Email: lincolnshire.archives@lincolnshire.gov.uk
- Online catalogue: https://www.lincolnshirearchives.org.uk/.
- The archive hours are 10-4 pm (but be sure to check before you go).
- On your first visit, you will be issued a free reader’s card. Be sure to bring photo ID that shows your home address. (This is a good reason to bring your drivers license even if you have no intention of driving. Canadian passports do not qualify as they do not have this info.)
- Booking a research table is recommended.
- If you have not prebooked your items, be sure to order them before midday. Any items ordered after that time will not be retrievable that day.
- You will be permitted to see three items at a time. If there are two of you, that’s six items. If you have more items to see, you will need to return what you have before they will let you have more.
- All items requested must be returned by 3:30 pm.
- To save money, local researchers transcribe information by hand. If you expect to be taking photocopies or digital images, you will be required to buy a permit. In July, the permit fee was £13.50/day.
- Small lockers are free.
- There are free toilets on site.
- You will be permitted to bring a laptop, cell phone, notebook, charge cords, and pencils into the archives.
Day 1 at the Lincolnshire Archives
I arrived at the archives feeling woefully underprepared. I had my iPhone and my old iPad opened to my draft tree on Ancestry. I borrowed a pencil and a sheet of paper from the archivist.
Rule one for visiting archives: always ask for a tour.
“Have you been here before?” asked the archivist.
“Never,” I said, smiling.
“Would you like a tour?” she said.
“Yes please,” I said, “I’m looking for the Maw family of Lincolnshire. I understand they were in Gainsborough and Wainfleet, possibly eighteen century. By the late nineteenth century, they had emigrated to Ontario, Canada.”
“Wainfleet or Wainfleet St Mary?” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said, “Also, I think they were Quakers.”
She stopped for a moment. “Oh, in that case, you won’t be using the microfiche. That’s all Anglican parish records. Or these,” she gestured to walls of finding aids. “What do you want to look for specifically?”
Rule two: always begin at the end, with cemetery, death, probate, and will records.
“How about wills and probate records,” I said.
And we were off. She pointed me to the finding aids of Lincolnshire Consistory Court (LCC) Wills. With an approximate date of death in mind – late 18th cent. – it was with a feeling of unreality that I quickly located “Maw: Thomas, Wainfleet St Mary, 1762/151.”1
“This looks promising,” I said.
She showed me how to fill in the request slip. “We have to hurry,” she said, “if we want to catch the 12:30 deadline.” It was already midday. I was shocked at how fast the time had passed. It had taken me 2.5 hours to look around, review my notes, analyze existing research, and ask for assistance.
While I waited, I browsed the other finding aids. Without dates of death, I reviewed every finding aid for Maw. When the will for Thomas Maw arrived, I asked if I could request a few more. That’s when she explained the deadline: records ordered after 1230 hrs would be retrieved the following day. Was I coming back? I was not. I’d have to be happy with the one find.
But what a find.1 I’m a big, big, big fan of digitized records but there is NOTHING like touching an original. Not since the HBC Archives at Winnipeg2 had I touched anything this old. On three large parchment pages, using ink dipped from a well, sealed with red wax, and signed by the testator and several witnesses, was the original will of my husband’s probable sixth-great-grandfather.
Rule three: always consult the paper finding aids.
At the time, I had no confidence I’d be back. As far as I knew, this was my one and only visit. I might not have been able to request any further archival records, but was there anything on the shelves?
The archivist was right. There wasn’t as much for Quakers, but there is a big difference between not much and nothing. In a box labelled “Quaker Births, Marriages, Burials, 2/BRACE/2/1,” I found three binders of transcripts for Lincolnshire area Quaker births, marriages, and burials. (Quakers do not believe in baptism, ergo there are no baptismal records to be found.) As genealogists know, original records are the best, but in their absence, a transcript is a good substitute. In the last minutes, I quickly imaged every page for Maw.
I later learned these were the work of H.W. Brace (d. 1962).
Rule four: find out who created the records.
Researching at archives isn’t the same as researching online. Let’s talk about citations. A well crafted citation should indicate the who, what, when, and where of a record. It should provide enough waypoints that anyone – even you – can find it again. 🙂 How did I find this? How could I find it again? How do I know what I know? What books/ finding aids / lists did I consult? Which finding aids did I consult that had NIL results? If there’s no page number, how would I be able to find this exact document again?
It’s time-consuming but I highly recommend writing citations at the site because regardless of how much information I think I’ve captured, I inevitably miss something, e.g., catalogue reference number, page count, paper finding aid. It was as I was writing my citations for the Quaker transcripts I realized I didn’t know who created them. Were they created by an employee of the Lincolnshire Archives? Or someone else?
I went to the front desk, where another archivist sat at a computer. “I notice that a number of the archival holdings regarding Quaker records have the same accession code: “2 BRACE.” The catalogue shows a H.W. Brace. What can you tell me about the accessions?” (Defined simply, an “accession” is an acquisition of materials deposited with a repository together.3)
Within minutes, he’d pulled three items for me: an archival report of the Brace accessions, and two biographies. Not only did I now have enough information for a complete citation, but I also gained a better understanding of the collection’s creator. Brace was a historian and secretary of the Quaker monthly meetings. He was a Quaker studying Quakers, and likely his own family. This gave me:
- Insights about transcription accuracy – he was likely to be accurate and careful in his transcriptions
- New avenues to research: in addition to surnames, Quaker meeting records, meeting house records, and financial records, family biographies, and maps, I could also research the Brace collection
Here is my citation. It’s in two parts. The first part describes the box, its contents, and where to find it. The second part after the semi-colon describes the creator and the collection.
U.K., H.W. Brace, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, “Quaker Transcripts of Births, Marriages, Burials,” Lincolnshire, England, box of three loose leaf binders, ID no. 2-BRACE/2/1, Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln, Lincolnshire St. Rumbold’s Street, Lincoln, LN2 5AB, email Lincolnshire.archives@lincolnshire.gov.uk, tel 01522 782040; Harold Witty Brace, (-1962), clerk, Linc. Monthly Meeting Society of Friends, Deposited Records Accession no. 2-BRACE, after 1962, collection includes bishops transcripts, parish registers, notes and extracts for the history of Quakerism, notes and extracts on the history of Gainsborough (12 vols).
Day 1 – what did I learn?
Working in archives is a race against time: I’m trying to glean as much as possible and I’m trying to learn history as well. I may not be physically moving much but I’m exhausted all the same. At the end of the first day, I learned:
- The Lincolnshire Archives held enough materials to be worth a second visit, even if it meant changing our travel plans.
- The presence of Thomas’s 1762 will and the Quaker transcripts showed rich record sources.
- The existence of the H.W. Brace collection meant research could progress not only directly with births, marriage, and deaths, but also into the rich lives of the 18th century Maws and their relatives.
Day 2 at the Lincolnshire Archives
Requesting table and fonds:
I went into full genealogist mode for our second visit. I asked for two research tables and thirteen sets of records, using the information from the Lincolnshire Archives online catalog. This time, I wanted the wills I’d identified in the LCC Wills finding aids, fonds from the H.W. Brace collection, and a few books. It took almost an hour to write the email, carefully checking my notes and the online catalogue. If you’re new to requesting archival files, be sure to include the classification number (sometimes called the identification number/numbers), title, and author.
Two business days later, I received confirmation. We were set.
On the appointed day:
We had five hours. We arrived at 10:30 a.m. We had planned to see the archives for a couple of hours and then walk Steep Hill to visit the Lincolnshire Historical Society. But archival research is a magical vortex where time disappears. We left four hours later, with only enough time to fetch our luggage, buy food, and catch the train.
Images of Lincoln in July 2024. Click on the photos to see the captions and larger pictures.
Next week: What we found.
Afterword
A love of genealogy follows me wherever I go. In retrospect it was silly to think I could leave it behind while visiting England. What surprised me was how much I wanted to research, like I was missing a limb. And I’d forgotten how many unoccupied hours there are in travel – how many plane and train trips – where there is nothing to do except wait. I wrote this series during the flights home. Finally, I realized that researching a fresh, new area was like a holiday, filled with the joys of discovery. I was and am captivated by British records, English laws, and Quakers.
Thank yous
To Quaker historian H.W. Brace and his widow, for meticulous genealogical work and the generosity to leave that work to the Lincolnshire Archives. To the archivists, for their guidance and knowledge. And to my husband and his father, for patiently answering my questions and coming along for the ride – thank you.
To the genealogy community, thank you. Since my first two posts in this series went live on July 24th and 28th, I’ve hugely enjoyed and learned from the discussions. Thank you to Bennett McCardle for collecting and sharing Canadian Quaker research sources.
And to Gail Dever of genealogy à la carte and Linda Stufflebean of Empty Branches on the Family Tree – Friday’s Family History Finds, thank you for the honour of including my work in your blogs.
References
1U.K., [will of] Thomas Maw (1762), Wainfleet St Mary, Lincolnshire, England, LCC Wills 1751-1800, L-R [finding aid], Lincoln Consistory Court, Wills for 1751-1800, sec. “M,” eighth page, ID no 1762/151, Thomas Maw, Wainfleet St. Mary, four loose pages, Lincolnshire Archives, St. Rumbold’s Street, Lincoln, LN2 5AB., email Lincolnshire.archives@lincolnshire.gov.uk, tel 01522 782040.
2Linda Yip, “Exploring the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives with the surprisingly detailed story of Thomas Thomas (1766-1828), governor of HBC,” 6 May 2024, blog, Past-Presence.com, accessed 23 Jul 2024.
3U.S., Society of American Archivists, “accession,” 2024, online dictionary, Dictionary of Archives Terminology, accessed 23 Jul 2024.