Beards Of Essex

Another old tree – the original was produced back in 2006, with the help of Anne Tinkler and Sandra Metcalfe, both of whom traced their ancestry back to George of Tolleshunt D’Arcy. I’ve since added several branches, notably the Surrey side of the family, using census records. It features 63…

This tree was produced some time ago (24 years ago, in fact….), with the help of Barbara Beard (nee Hanlon), who was married to Benjamins great, great, great grandson Maurice who represented the Australian branch of the family. It features 44 individuals who were born with the name Beard, with…

Another gem from the British Newspaper Archive is the following, which is a cautionary tale of several dimensions… So who was the runaway groom? Its hard to be 100% sure, but there were only two registered male Beards married in that quarter of 1843, and it just so happens that…

The British Newspaper Archive is a rich source of information, providing a window into the lives of individuals over the last couple of centuries. Frustratingly in my case the optical character recognition used by the site frequently reads “heard” as Beard, but it has turned up some interesting pieces. This…

As we have seen in the Origins section, the name Beard has deep roots in Gloucestershire. Some evidently made it across country to Essex. Richard Beard was born in either Little Dean or Cinderford, Gloucestershire around 1859. He appears to have moved to Uttoxeter in Staffordshire in 1881, and then…

All too often family history is reduced to names and dates hanging off branches of a tree; no photo, and no sense of the person or the life they led. This is particularly true the further back you go and the humbler the ancestor, and even piecing the tree itself…

On the “face” of it the origin of the name Beard seems pretty obvious; the first so named individual had a beard when it was unusual to do so, or had a relatively remarkable example. According to a number of sites (presumably drawing on the same source) to be “clean-shaven…