11/03/2009 by admin.

I’ve uploaded a map which shows the geographical origin of the family trees we’re researching. These are colour-coded by DNA result; each of the five bright colours represents a genetic family, i.e. these trees have ben found to have the same common Pomeroy ancestor. The grey ones have unique DNA results within the project, the white ones have yet to be tested.

The map is at: www.click2map.com/maps/PFA/PFA1

I will over time add more details to each tree.

Best to all,

Chris

Posted in DNA Project, Admin's News | No Comments »

03/01/2009 by Membership Secretary.

Annual subscriptions to the PFA for 2009 are now due.

Please note that we do not send out invoices and personal reminders are very time consuming!

Due to significant exchange rate movements since our subscriptions rates were last set, we have made some changes — no increases, just reductions. Our current rates are:

Australia                    A$25
Canada                     C$20
Ireland                        €12
New Zealand            NZ$25
UK                              £10
USA                        US$15

Please make your payments to your appropriate country rep. Contact details can be found on the last page of Pomerology #40. Cheques/checks should be made out in the name of your country rep, except UK cheques which should be made payable to the Pomeroy Family Association.

I would like to pass on my thanks to those who have already promptly paid.

For members with UK bank accounts, if you currently pay by cheque but would prefer to pay by Standing Order, please let me know. My contact details are on the back page of Pomerology #40.

Happy New Year

Derek

Posted in Membership | No Comments »

30/12/2008 by admin.

My thanks to PFA member Mary Daniels who recently passed me a tree she’s been working on. This made the connection for me with another Exeter sub-tree, thus expanding this tree’s numbers by about 25%.

Mary’s thesis is that the John Pomeroy who married Elizabeth Boyce on 30th May 1825 in the parish of St David had previously married Susan Caddie on 11th September 1819 in nearby Heavitree, Susan having died on 28th March 1824 in St Sidwell.

This tree is still headed by Thomas Pomeroy who married Agnes Jenkins on 18th January 1719 in Exeter cathedral.

Posted in Devon | No Comments »

01/12/2008 by admin.

A major appeal is underway to fund the strengthening of the church tower and the refurbishment of the eight bells of St Mary’s. Details of the work, the appeal, and how to support it, are in the PDF.

PDF: The bells of St Mary’s, Berry Pomeroy

Posted in Anecdotes, Devon | No Comments »

30/11/2008 by admin.

Pomeroys were part of a major movement of miners from Cornwall to north-east England in the mid-1860s. Brought in to break a strike in the region, their families stayed put and are still there generations late.

PDF: Cornish emigration to the NE

Posted in Anecdotes, Cornwall | No Comments »

30/11/2008 by admin.

Andrea C Pomeroy is a Canadian ornithologist & wildlife ecologist. She recently completed her Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia (B.C.) with a detailed study of the migration behaviour of the western sandpiper Calidris mauri, a wading bird of the eastern Pacific.

PDF: Andrea C Pomeroy, Canadian ornithologist

Posted in Profiles, Devon | No Comments »

30/11/2008 by admin.

Member Peter Bolton tells me:

“I was at a hundredth birthday of a cousin of my wife when she let slip that she had worked in the British embassy as a secretary to a man who worked forging passports and getting Jews out [of Germany] in the 1930s. I was led to investigate which embassy and found a Henry E Pomeroy who was the British Vice-Consul in Berlin  in the period 1936-8.

“He seems to have been a long-term consular representative at Berlin. He makes regular appearances in my copies of Whittaker’s Almanac, the first being in 1924 when he was pro-consul. He was promoted to vice-consul in Berlin in 1929 and was there until the outbreak of war. There is a gap in my sequence of almanacs and 1922 and 1923 are missing. In 1921 coverage of consular staff is much reduced so it is impossible to say if he was there before 1924.”

[Henry Ernest Pomeroy, 1896-1943, died in Berne in Switzerland. He is a member of the Exeter 1719 tree – Ed.]

Posted in Profiles, Devon | 1 Comment »

29/11/2008 by admin.

US-based member James Austin found a reference in an online edition of a poem by Thomas Hardy poem called A Curate’s Kindness that intrigued him:

 “I thought they’d be strangers aroun’ me,

   But she’s to be there!

   Let me jump out o’ waggon and go back and drown me

  At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.”

James notes that “Pummery was another name for Poundbury Camp Hill Fort, Dorchester, also called Pummery Tout. When said quickly Poundbury & Pummery are quite similar, so in this case could Pummery really be a version of Pomeroy?”

Poem at: http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext01/tmsls10.htm

Posted in Anecdotes | No Comments »

29/11/2008 by admin.

“A list of captives redeemed east of Argiers, by His Majesties Bounty, and at His Sole Charge, in the Months of December and January 1674/5, by Sir John Narborough, Mr Brisbatie and Mr Martin His Majesties Consul at Argiers.”

(Source: London Gazette, Thursday, February 24, 1676; Issue 1072, from the Burney-Gale Archive)

Listing those men who had been captured by Barbary pirates who were subsequently  ransomed from the North African city state Algiers in 1675 including, to my astonishment, the last but one in roughly two hundred names, one Robert Pomery. I can’t hazard a guess at present who Robert is, but Pomeroys were living close to the Channel coast from Mevagissey in Cornwall, to Brixham in Devon, and on to the Dorset coast and on to Southampton. If we rely on the spelling of the surname, Pomery was the standard spelling in Cornwall but was also found in Dorset and Hampshire.

Robert Pomery, Christian captive of Algiers pirates

Posted in Profiles | 2 Comments »

28/11/2008 by admin.

Alma LaFrance recently wrote to me from the US:

<You write in the Annual Report re the early Beaminster tree…”While this tree is highly documented its origins are surrounded by questions. Famously, a researcher a century ago claimed to have found Eltweed’s baptismal entry in the Beaminster parish registers, but this was later dismissed as a fake. Now, I had not been aware that it was ‘Famously’ dismissed as a ‘fake’. Please let me know by whom  and when it was determined to be a fake.”>

Alma, I have to beg humble pie here, and I’m wishing now that I’d (re-)checked at least this part of the 15,000 words in the Annual Report.

I recall seeing, but cannot bring to hand, a paper from someone suggesting the baptismal entry of Eltweed had been inserted after the fact. I remember there was a picture of it too. I do have to hand Col. A’s 18-page pamphlet rebutting any insinuations of forgery. I recall that the suggestion was that the researcher Col A had hired had created the evidence they sought, not Col A himself. Alma, your screen grab from the A A Pomeroy book shows the transcript done by C A Hoppin in 1913. This certainly attests that the entry is there, in the copy of the registers made for Salisbury, the original parish records not surviving. I suspect that I have grabbed the wrong end of the stick here, so my apologies.

More widely, what is not accepted, as far as I’m aware, is the pedigree Col A uses to link Richard back to the noble Pomeroy family. That’s generations 14-17 in vol 3, pp 40-42. You’ll see that there is an absence of dates in this period, only assertions that people “moved” to different places. That whole section seems to hinge on a will in 1531. And although Col A acknowledges a revision since the previous edition, he doesn’t say why or how this change is made, just that Hoppen says so. This strikes me as a bit lax for someone who’d been attacked so publicly.

On page 272 the arbiter Col A finds to comment on the “cause celebre” states that though no particular (ie. specific, documented) line can be shown to link Eltweed to the noble family, it’s basically unthinkable that he’s not. Also see the pages 281-2 on the leap from Totnes to Beaminster. And note that there he’s appluading the original assertion, that Richard’s father was Henry, not John as the 1923 edition now claims, which he then gets around to in pp 300-303, where the evidence is circumstantial.

It may well be that all the details cited turn out to be accurate, and the connection suggested still the most logical, but I will hold off on that one.

More widely, I am hoping next year to go through all the archives we hold, per tree, and write up some details on each. That will allow me to check that all the data we hold is being used, and to note what is asserted by researchers but not documented ourselves. I’ll then need to schedule some time to get to the bottom of this!

Thanks for pointing that out to me!

Chris

Posted in Dorset | 3 Comments »