News on developments in the research underpinning this website. See also the update history on the home page and the library index for a full list of articles. Go the About page for updates on the study and of structural changes to this website.
News Updates 2015-2016
Nov 2016 - Useful New Resources for Family Historians
Sep 2016 - DNA To The Rescue?
Jul 2016 - Systems and SerendipityBigamist, Robert Randall Skyrme
Nov 2015 - From Wales to America and Russia
Sep 2015 - Publication: The Skyrmes of Herefordshire
Aug 2015 - Exciting but Horrible Find
Jul 2015 - Visit to Herefordshire and Pembroke
Jun 2015 - Emigrants: By Choice or Otherwise
May 2015 - Skyrmes of Llangwm
November 2016
Useful New Resources for Family Historians
OK - I said I was updating my work on the Skyrmes of Manorbier and Penally in Pembrokeshire. But we One-Namers often receive enquiries or useful new information that causes diversions. This last month, and probably for another month, I've been researching one branch of the Skyrmes of Canon Pyon and area. This includes Skyrmes in Kings Pyon (e.g. Bush Bank, Wooton), Almeley (Logaston), Sarnesfield, Hurstley Court and so on. Almost all of the Skyrmes in these villages can be traced back to a Richard Skyrme (born about 1777 in Norton Canon) and his wife Marjery. The photo is of Bush Bank, a hamlet in Kings Pyon, the location of one of the Skyrme families.
In unravelling their stories, several sources beyond parish records and censuses have proved pauseful, some of them new this year. I give details below with some individual stories:
GRO Probate Calendar
Although the main geneaology websites have this resource, they are usually incomplete. For instance, there is a big gap in Ancestry's index for the preiod 1967-1972. If you go to the government's GRO website at https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#wills there is now a new facility that lets you search the probate calendar and order wills. As well as Skyrme as the main entry you also find Skyrmes in other entries, such as this interesting one:
Although the Skyrmes mentioned are from the Pembrokeshire branch I have found the probate calendars useful as one tool in unravelling the Albert Skyrmes of Herefordshire.
New GRO Indexes and Albert Skyrme
While building the trees for the Pyon Skyrmes, I came across several Alberts. Sometimes a middle name was given in the census, sometimes not. And there were three marriages of Albert Edward Skyrmes in 1919, 1920 and 1933 all in Herefordshire, so who were their parents? Since they were mostly farm labourers or tradesmen, they were absent in newspaper reports. Would I have to order marriage certificates at £9.25 each? Well, here the new GRO index came to the rescue. You have to open a (free) account at https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/Login.asp but the index now includes the mother's maiden name right back to the start of registration in 1837. Previously, on sites such as FreeBMD this was only available from September 1911. The GRO index only includes births up to 1915. During November the GRO ran a trial period where PDF copies of online indexed records could be purchased for £6. As for the Albert Skyrmes, the following are the highlights:
- Albert Edward Skyrme b 9 Jan 1884 Preston on Wye. Mother Olive (parent George Skyrme from Vowchurch). No father given. Moved to Glamorgan as coal miner. Married Lavinia Evans. Died 13 Jan 1940.
- Albert Edward Skyrme b 5 Jun 1889 Kings Pyon. Son of Joseph and Harriet Evans. Married Agnes Davies. Farmer, died 3 Dec 1968 Kinnersley. Estate worth £16,152.
- Albert Victor Skyrme b 8 Aug 1892. Son of Richard and Sarah Evans. Emigrated in 1911 to British Columbia as farm labourer. Married Sarah Clapperton (born in Perthshire before emigrating). Worked in a (lumber?) mill. Died Port Alberni 9 Oct 1964.
Albert Edward Skyrme b 3 Nov 1895 Canon Pyon. Son of Isaac and Sarah James. Married Blanche Oldacre. Was disabled ex-Army. Died Burghill (Silver Birch, Portway) abt Aug 1941. (Photo of grave in Canon Pyon)- Albert William Skyrme b 10 Nov 1895 in Almeley. Son of John and Mary (aka Elizabeth) Cartwright from Sarnesfield. Was gunner in artillery in WW1. Single. Farm labourer. Died abt Nov 1964.
- Albert Edward Skyrme b 1909 Hereford. Son of Arthur and Edith Godsall. Bricklayer. Married Gertrude Davies.
The four Alberts Nos. 2-5 are fairly closely related cousins, but their relationship to 1 and 6 has yet to be determined.
The 1939 Register
This is another relatively recent online resource which is available from FindMyPast. It gives details of the residence of many UK residents at the outbreak of the second world war. It was used until the 1980s by the National Health Service. Therefore, original entries often have remarks alongside with a woman's surname in 1939 crossed out, and replaced by the surname of her current husband with sometimes the exact date of marriage. Thus, the Skyrme in Blanche's records in no.4 above is crossed out and Morris added. After her husband Albert Skyrme died in 1943 she married another Albert, this one Albert Morris in 1945.
The 1939 Register also shed some light onto the wherabouts of (Florence) May Skyrme (born 16 May 1904 in Canon Pyon) in the mid-20th century. She had travelled to Canada in November 1928 as part of Canada's Empire Settlement Act, which paid the passage for immigrants to boost the supply of certain workers such as domestic servants. We can find no records of her in Canada, but it obviously didn't work out for her, since the 1939 register shows her as head housemaid at Boddington Manor in Gloucestershire. This was the home of John Skipworth Gibbons (born in Kidderminster 1852) whose portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery.
Other Thoughts
As noted previously, much of family research is joining the dots, and deciding what sources to take at face value and what to accept as not quite correct. Even in the cases mentioned above, ages on different censuses are slightly wrong, and even precise birthdates are often one year out. We have found this on some Vowchurch school records, Army records and death records that give identical birthdays but with the birth year date one year different from the 1939 register.
And in many of the cases noted above, when we have joined the dots, it often raises more questions than are answered - why, for example, did Albert Victor Skyrme migrate to Canada, and why did May Skyrme return to England? Unless some current descendants come forward with answers, such questions will continue to intrigue us.
September 2016
DNA To The Rescue?
I've commented before that I still have not found conclusive evidence of how the Pembrokeshire Skyrmes were related to the Herefordshire Skyrmes and that ultimately DNA testing may provide the answer - or at least some strong clues. Well, in August, the Guild of One-Name Studies ran a DNA seminar which I attended. I was so enthralled by speakers' stories of breaking down "brick walls" that I came home with a yDNA testing kit!
yDNA is from the male chromosome and the yDNA of male descendants mutates relatively slowly over time, so that it is possible to discern connections between widely separate branches of people with the same or similar surnames. The keynote talk was about the use of DNA to ascertain whether a body dug up in a Leicester car park in 2012 really was that of King Richard III. Analysis of DNA samples from one of his 13th generation descendants was quite conclusive. Another side effect of DNA testing is that it can uncover 'non-paternity events'. Contrary to documentary evidence, DNA can show that a given person is indeed not a descendant of their supposed ancestor.
There is a whole field and a growing body of useful resources on the use of DNA in genealogy. Suffice to say, I am just a novice with this modern genealogical tool. I am still waiting for the results of my 37-marker yDNA test from FamilyTreeDNA.com based in Texas. In the meantime I have created a Skyrme DNA project at:
www.familytreedna.com/public/Skyrme
This gives details of the project, its objectives and the various DNA tests. For the project to achieve its objectives, it takes several people with the surname Skyrme (or its modern variants Skyrm, Skyrms, Skyrmes, Skirm and Skerm) from different branches to participate. If you are a male and would like to join me on this new and exciting journey of discovery to find how we and other Skyrm(e)(s), Skerm etc. are connected, then don't hesitate to order yourself a kit (you get a discount if you join the project first and order through the project site listed above). Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.
So will DNA testing show how the Pembrokeshire and Herefordshire Skyrm(e)(s) are connected? We live in hope.
July 2016
Systems and Serendipity
Although it's been some 6 months since doing the last update, I've been actively working on the Skyrme ONS (One-Name Study) for 3-4 evenings most weeks. My systematic approach involves working on several of the 7 pillars at a time. With so many new sources coming on line, the number of unprocessed Skyrme records on my computer (images of census pages, parish register entries, wills, military records etc.) at 3,800 now exceeds the number of records (2,500) for which information has been extracted and entered into the master database.
But this systematic work is regularly interrupted by serendipidous discoveries and by emails from unexpected quarters. I am for ever grateful for the correpsondents who ask questions about their ancestors, leading me to research one branch in some depth, and those who make me aware of new information. I start with two examples of the latter, both involving accidents.
1. W. H. Skyrme's Humane Medal
I received a phone call one Sunday evening from someone who had earlier that day bought a Humane Society Medal at a medal fair. He discovered me on the internet and thought I could help. The citation read "Skyrme, W.H. Post Office Clerk. Case 30385. On the 14th August 1899, R.H.Kaye and W.C.Lewis were bathing at Little Haven, Pembrokeshire, when Kaye became exhausted. Lewis tried to save him, but failed. Skyrme, at great risk, then swam out, and supported him till a boat came up, into which he was taken." This is the terse official citation at www.lsars.org.uk/bronz99s.htm.
As a result of this call, I worked through my database and decided it was William Henry Skyrme, born in Haverfordwest in 1869. A newspaper report (Haverfordwest and Milford Haven Telegraph, 16 Aug 1899) added confirmation and more detail: "Mr Skyrme, who is himself only a very indifferent swimmer, very pluckily came to the rescue, and taking Kay by one arm, while Mr Lewis held the other, they pulled the unfortunate man ashore, several times, however, going under water before they were finally landed with the aid of a boat, which had by this time come to their assistance."
2. Inquest of Two Skyrme Sisters
Just like the example above, my website was discovered by someone other than a family history researcher. This time it was a railway historian who had been researching railways in the Aberdare area and came across my unusual surname in the report of an inquest. It was about the of four people including two sisters, Elizabeth and Sarah Skyrm, aged 11 and 8 respectively. They were tragically killed as a runaway loaded iron truck on the track crashed into a level crossing gate and trapped beneath it these innocent watchers of a procession.
The newspaper report goes into gory detail. The girls turn out to be born in Spittal (Pembrokeshire) the children of shoemaker Thomas Skyrme (1809-1876) and Sarah Higgon. Thomas, incidentally was the great uncle of William from the story above. By the time of the 1861 census, he had changed from being a shoemaker to a railway porter - perhaps we wanted to help improve the safety of the railways?
3. More early Skyrmes
Once you start looking at alternative spellings of Skyrm(e), you discover families who are probably related in many places other than Herefordshire or Pembrokeshire. As well as Skirms in Lincolnshire (17th century), Skermes in Kent (16th century) and several other variants in Middlesex/London (15th-17th century) I have recently found records of 16th century Skyrmes in Northamptonshire and 17th century in Yorkshire and Devon. One correspondent has provided me with information of Skyrmeston's in Shrewsbury in the 14th century. This too could be a variant.
One also comes across Skirm's in early American books, such as the Journal of the Society of the Sons and Daughters of Pilgrims and The Early History of the Thorne Family of Long Island. But one story that caught my eye was in a more modern book Unwelcome Americans: Living on the Margin in Early New England. From historical records the author (Ruth Herndon) cites how "foot-dragging transients" were transported back to their home town. In July 1785, one John Skyrme, a blind man, was passed from constable to constable in adjoining townships to transfer him back from Eastchester, New York to his legal residence of Providence. On his 21 day journey he was handed over to neighbouring township officials 24 times.
4. Joining the Dots
One of the long-term challenges of the Skyrme ONS is to find the connections between the various clusters. For example, does the fact that early US family members spelt their name Skirm(e) (as some in the USA today still do), mean that they are most likely to have descended from the Skirmes of Lincolnshire, where that spelling was most prevalent in the late 1600s?
Likewise, there have been several suggestions as to how the Herefordshire and Pembrokeshire clusters are linked but no firm evidence. However, one recent discovery of mine was that the earliest known ancestor of the Manorbier cluster John Skyrm (born around 1749 but not in Pembrokeshire) was married in Ludchurch in 1774. Examining a book on the history of Ludchurch shows that a Thomas Skyrme of the Llawhaden Skyrme's (with ancestors from Ludlow) was a landowner there. So that strengthens the case for a family connection.
So that is the 'Holy Grail' of this study - to connect all the dots. Is it achievable? Time - and documentary evidence - will tell.
November 2015
From Wales to America and Russia
Although I had planned to revisit the Pembrokshire Skyrmes, two emails and a serendipidous find has taken me in different directions. All have a Welsh connection.
1. Edith's leg
The first email was from Annie Irving, a Friend of Cathays Cemetery in Cardiff. She informed me that the cemetery contains the burial plots of four amputated legs. One of the was that of Edith Fanny Skyrme (1830-1924). She was one of the 11 children of Edward and Frances Skyrme from Pentre, descendants of the Skyrmes of Bromyard, Herefordshire, whose family are featured on page 20 of 'The Skyrmes of Herefordshire'. Edith had lost this leg in a terrible accident when visiting the Gelli colliery in January 1883. I had read about this accident but since the newspaper report referred only to a 15-year old girl, had wrongly attributed the accident to her sister Kate. However, Annie put me right. It is not all that common to bury legs in cemeteries, and the rest of Edith's body was buried at St Mary's, Whitchurch, Cardiff. Annie has written a full feature article about Edith's leg on her blog at:
http://sconzani.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/grave-matters-limbs-lost-and-found-part_30.html
Photo credit: Annie Irving
Update 2017 - I wrote a short article about Edith's Leg for Herefordiensis. You can download it from our document library here (PDF: 0.35Mb).
2. The Skyrms of America
The publication of 'The Skyrmes of Herefordshire' prompted one of my earliest correspondents Scott Skyrm to get in touch. We had first emailed each other in 1996 and around that time he had done extensive research on his ancestors and the Skyrms of America. Although there were Skirm's in Henrico County Virginia in the late 17th century, the Skyrm branch originated with a William Skyrm from Vowchurch, Herefordshire, who migrated around 1857. In the decade or so before he emigrated, he and his wife Frances (née Reece), had lived in Blaenavon (Monmouthshire, Wales) where he worked in the iron works. Their descendants initially lived in Ohio and Pennsyvlania (also working in iron works) but spread out to New Jersey and then further west.
Since Scott did his early research many more documents have become available such as the US 1930 and 1940 censuses. So there quite a bit of work to do to update the analysis of the US Skyrms. More intriguing is who were William's ancestors. There is a baptism entry for a William Skyrm in Vowchurch in Nov 1817, though the US documents suggest a birth date of around 1814. Since there are several William Skyrm(e)s born around the same time, some more digging is needed to verify which branch of Vowchurch ancestors William descended from.
3. To Russia and back
One of the characteristics of a One-Name Study is that you collect all instances of the name that you find as you research. So as I was checking through some Skyrme records on FamilySearch.org (a useful source for US data where it has images of many birth, marriage and death records for certain states), I stumbled across a couple of girls born in Russia, the children of Thomas and Elizabeth Jones (née Skyrme). Further scrutiny showed:
- Harriet Jones, born 15 May 1885, Hughesovka
- Marget Anna Jones, born 20 Jul 1888, Hughesovka
So why would an English or Welsh girl move to Russia and where on earth is Hughesovka? The answer is that Hughesovka was the settlement founded by John Hughes which is now modern day Donetsk in the Urkraine, and has been in the news over the last year for all the wrong reasons. He created an iron works there in 1870, and over the next decade or so, brought over Welsh miners and iron and steel workers with their families, particularly from the Merthyr Tydfil area. You can read an overview at:
Donetsk founded by Welsh ironmaster John Hughes (BBC)
while Glamorgan Archives (in Cardiff) have a whole collection of Hughesovka papers:
From the Valleys to the Steppes: the Hughesovka Research Archive
The archive includes papers on specific families, and there is one named "The Skyrme family of Blaenavon 1883", which I can't wait to see. Before I found this archive I had worked out that Elizabeth was the daughter of Daniel Skyrme, born 1835 in Vowchurch. The family had moved to Blaenavon for work in the iron works - the same as that for the US immigrant William Skyrm (see 2 above), so perhaps they were related. I can find no record of Elizabeth's marriage to Thomas Jones, but we do find her back in Blaenavon at the time of the 1911 census, a widow living with daughter Harriet. So there's some more work to do to tidy up the loose ends about this family - unless, of course, you know different.
September 2015
Publication - The Skyrmes of Herefordshire
It was about a year ago I started researching the Skyrmes of Herefordshire in earnest, but only after publishing The Skyrmes of Llangwm in May that I started writing it up. A project like this takes time to reach a meaningful end-point, and it will probably be another 1-2 years before this point is reached and I would normally publish. So for the Herefordshire Skyrmes, I have done an initial edition now based on key themes, and will expand on this with updated editions as the research continues. The contents of this edition are as follows:
- Where's that name from? Origins of the name and places around the world where it is found.
- Lugwardine - the earliest Skyrmes. Some early records that show the initial locations of Skyrmes in Herefordshire.
- Settling further afield - other places in Herefordshire with early clusters of Skyrme families.
- Vowchurch and the Goloden Valley - the most concentrated area of Skyrmes in the 19th century.
- Farmers of repute - the contribution of Skyrmes to the Hereford cattle breed, but also hop growing, orcharding and a prominent Australian vigneron.
- Servants at court - some of the manor houses around the county where Skyrmes served.
- Not every Skyrme was a farmer - some of the occupations pursued, especially in the larger towns, such as the glovers of Hereford and Worcester, and the pharmacists of Hastings (OK it's not Herefordshire but it's where their ancestors were from!)
- Emigration, by intent and otherwise - the Skyrmes who were deported to Australia (a significant punishment for the theft of two pigs!), but also those who emigrated of their own accord, to Australia, to USA (Iowa and Illinois) and British Columbia.
- Some colourful characters - most of whom had brushes with the law, including disappearing Amos, and Jospehine O'Dare, the society girl of the 1920s whose true identity was revealed as Trixie Skyrme, the daughter of a Canon Pyon farm labourer.
- Next steps - the next stages of research on the Herefordshire Skyrmes, the trickiest bit of which is contructing and joing the various branches and trees.
- Appendix - a tree of one of the main Vowchurch clusters.
Click on the image right or download the full 36-page document here (PDF: 2.0Mb).
August 2015
Exciting but Horrible Find
Towards the end of the month I made my first visit to Herefordshire Archives, recently reopened in a new purpose-built building on an industrial park at Rotherwas. I was able to expanded greatly the sources used for my current research - the Skyrmes of Herefordshire. This unearthed some useful findings, for example:
- New clusters identified - having access to more complete set of parish records than is available online, I found families of Skyrmes residing in the late 1600s at both Hampton Bishop (just across the River Wye from Rotherwas) and Withington (a few miles from Lugwardine).
- Yeoman and gentlemen - although 19th census records show a preponderance of agricultural labourers, it seems that in the 17th and 18th centuries, several Skyrme families were amongst the landed gentry. A 1730 will for Edmund Skyrme of Lugwardine showed him to have some sizeable assets including two feather beds and two wagons!
- Making connections - one of the current challenges is to work out how the Skyrmes migrated from their 16th and 17th century cluster at Lugwardine. Various clues in wills and parish records help this by referring to the place where the bride or groom lived. One interesting find was a link to the glovers of Worcester (see May news item 3).
Perhaps the most exciting find came during the last half hour of my 2-day visit. By that time no more documents could be ordered so I was browsing through several volumes on the open shelves. One shelf was full of transcripts of old rolls. Searching the indexes of the first 7 or 8 volumes yielded nothing, but then I struck gold. This from the Patent Roll, Vol 1 of the 4th year of Edward II (1310):
The transcript in the Herefordshire document had expanded on this (from another copy of the roll or editorial insight?) "Pardon to Roger le Yinge of Lugwardyn (on account of good service in Scotland) for the death of Roger Skrym of the same place". So there we have it, a Skyrme in Luwardine in the 14th century, but probably murdered!
On searching other mediaeval rolls online when I got home, I found two more Skyrme entries (one spelt Skryme, one Skirme). Both refered to a Richard Skyrme who was one of over 55 people (including two chaplains) who took part in an insurrection at Wrangle in Lincolnshire in 1404. They assaulted Robert Nenton, burnt his possessions to the value of £200 (worth over £100,000 today), and ill treated his servant. There are 17th century parish records of Skirm(e)s in Spalding and Wainfleet, just up the road from Wrangle - yet another early Skyrme cluster to investigate.
July 2015
Visit to Herefordshire & Pembroke
This month I took advantage of going on a photography course at Dale Fort, Pembrokeshire, to stop for a couple of days in Herefordshire on the way there, and at Pembrokeshire Archives on the way back.
In Herefordshire I visited over 20 towns and villages which were homes to various Skyrme families. Overnight I stayed at Vowchurch which had the largest concentration of Skyrme families in the 19th century. The photo shows St. Bartholomew's church where many Skyrmes were baptised and married. No doubt some of these ceremonies were carried out by the Revd Skeffington Dodgson, brother of Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll (author of Alice in Wonderland), who was rector at Vowchurch from 1895-1910.
As well as getting a sense of place and photographing probable dwellings where Skyrmes lived, I also came across several gravestones. These can provide additional information that is not readily available on death indexes or burial record transcripts, such as date of death and where thye last lived.
On my return from my course I spent the Saturday at Pembrokehsire Archives in Haverfordwest. Mostly I was looking at leases which involved a Skyrme as one of the parties. Perhaps the most interesting find that day was the correspondence and court papers from 1910-12 regarding a dispute over unpaid rent by Edwin Skyrme, the tenant of Lower Farm Lamphey, due to Charles Mathias of Lamphey Court. In the end one of Edwin's relatives came to rescue and the case was dropped, each side agreeing to pick up the court costs already paid out.
I photographed about 50 documents, and adding together some 100 documents I photographed in 2013 but which I have still not analysed, there's still a lot of work to do!
June 2015
Emigrants - By Choice or Otherwise
This month I have pursued more of the international dimension with some interesting finds. This is due mainly to discovering more non-UK online sources. One particular gold mine (pun intended) is Trove - at the National Library of Australia website where I found many references to Skyrmes in Australia. Here is a round-up of some of the interesting finds (not just from Australia):
- Richard Skyrme (b1804) - Richard from Herefordshire was deported to Australia in 1825 after being sentenced to 7 years deportation for stealing 2 hogs. His fate is recorded in several criminal documents, the passenger manifest of the ship SS Midas and also Australian records
- Benjamin Skyrme (b1826) - also convicted at Herefordshire Assizes and transported in 1846. He appears in several Australian newspaper articles. One describes where he deliberately broke some windows because he was destitute and thought he would be better off in jail!
- Ernest Skyrme. On a more positive note, I found several references to Skyrme in 20th century censuses of Armstrong, Enderby and Grindrod in British Columbia (Canada). I found more background information about them in the journals of the very active Okanagan Historical Society (the local area).
- Charles George Skyrme (b. 1865). Charles is recorded on several transatlantic passenger records in the 1920s and 1930s. He was obviously quite wealthy and sometimes referred to as "gentleman" in the column for occupation. His first wife Catherine died in Hastings in 1901 and he then married Katherine Smith from Maryland. Coincidentally he died in Newbury, where I lived for many years, and just a month after I was born. He is descended from Bromyard glover Thomas Skyrme (b. 1758).
- Harold Edgar Skyrme (1877-1930). One of my New Zealand correspondents mentioned how her family had migrated from Hastings, Sussex to New Zealand in the mid-20th century. I was able to trace her family back to the same Thomas Skyrme mentioned above. Harold (photo) was a well known chemist (pharmacist) who developed 'Shurzine' (the name of his pharmacy) proprietary preparations, used to heal the wounds of soliders in WW1. One of his sons became a well respected veterinary surgeon in Gisborne, New Zealand.
All of the above are from the Herefordshire branch of the Skyrmes.
May 2015
Skyrmes of Llangwm
It's been 9 months since I updated this section but I promise to update more frequently in future. It's been heads down writing up the Skyrmes of Llangwm, but with some interesting excursions:
1. The Skyrme's of Llangwm - finally published (download here: 3.1Mb PDF). Some of the new material added since last year includes:
- The story of the "woman in green" - the mysterious death of Muriel Skyrme near Warminster, over 100 miles from her home in Bushey, Hertfordshire.
- The auctioning of the property of John Brown Skyrme, a lay preacher at Llangwm Wesleyan Chapel, on his moving to Cheshire.
- Information on his two sons (Rowland and Anthony) who moved to live in other parts of the world - one in Jamaica, one in New Zealand.
- Information about another Skyrme, Frederick, whose career was that of a civil servant in Sudan.
- The Cardiff Connection - how one branch of the family settled in the Grangetown area of Cardiff, in 9 addresses altogether; School admission records of some provided interesting reading.
- An occupation analysis showing the shift from fishermen and ferrymen to shipwrights (at Pembroke Royal Naval Dockyard).
What I've tried to do this time is to provide more interesting contextual background, so the publication includes sections on oyster fishing, shipwrights, service in World War I and the unidentified cluster of Skyrmes in Haverfordwest.
2. What do famous British artist Sir Stanley Spencer and Frank Skyrme have in common? They were both serving with the 68th Field Ambulance Unit in Salonica in 1916. Stanley Spencer's paintings of his experiences are on display at the Sandford Memorial Chapel in Burghclere (the next village to mine). Thanks to Paul Grey for his enquiry about his Skyrme ancestors in the Wirral. This branch of the family is probably descended from the Skyrmes of Abbey Dore, Herefordshire.
3. Another enquiry led me to research the Skyrmes of Worcester. One Edward Skyrme was the licensee of the pub at Pitchdroft, Worcester racecourse, in the late 1800s. Further investigation showed that he had another pub, the Bird-in-Hand at The Cross. On various census nights, he and some of the children would be at one, while his wife Emily was with the others at the other. We traced this branch back via Malvern to some hatters in Worcester, with a tentative link back to farmers in Herefordshire. Thanks also to one of the descendants of the Skyrmes of Worcester in the USA for filling in some of the blanks.
Now that the Skyrmes of Llangwm has been published, my attention will now turn to the Skyrmes of Vowchurch, Herefordshire, before updating The Skyrmes of Manorbier and Penally with new information and corrections from readers. Please keep your enquiries coming - these diversions from the main task are always interesting!