The Monthly Magazine, XX (II) 1805, pp. 571 ff. 'At Upper Homerton, in his 51st year, Paul Le Mesurier, esq., alderman of London, representative in two parliaments for the borough of Southwark, a director of the East India Company, and Colonel of the Honourable Artillery Company.'
Contrats pour lire: 21 July 1589. Jean Le Pelley fils Collas de St Pierre du Bois [sells ] 6 bs de rente a Thomas de Lisle. Ditto 18 June 1598. Collette Pezett fille de Jean, de St Pierre Port [widow] de Jean Le Fyvre [sells] pour £33 sterling d'Angleterre & 12bs d'annuelle rente, La Croutte Pezett en St André, au fyeu des Esperons, cont. 10 vergees de terre, au north du Cortill John Bailleull, à l'est [] des Gouyes appartenant à Martin Belin à cause de [sa] femme fille de Thomas de Garys. A Collas Le Pelley fils Charles. Do. 5th September 1570 . Edmond Ettur [sells] à Pierre Le…
From Edith Carey's Notes on Sark, Le Pelley MSS. [Presumably a contemporary] translation from the French. Court of Probate, London.
Four of these boys died in the First War. Photograph from the Library Collection.
Ollivier the gunsmith, by Bernard Brett, from The Star November 1947. The business at 1, Tower Hill, was begun by his great-great grandfather in 1800.
No. 4 in Edith Carey's Wills and Legacies (Staff). The film of the original Ecclesiastical Court records may be consulted in the Library.
No.5 in Edith Carey's Wills and Legacies, Staff.
'Let me come at him, I will do for him, Damn him, a Butcher, I will do for him.'
Despite many advantages, the Métivier family, which included George Métivier (1790-1881), philologist and Guernsey's 'national' poet, suffered many ups and downs, and the collection of family letters held in the Library makes entertaining reading. The woodcut is by Dr Thomas Bellamy from his Pictorial Dirctory of 1843 in the Library collection.
Throughout the occupation of Guernsey (1940-45) Winifred Harvey (1888-1976) kept a diary, which has been edited and published under the title The Battle of Newlands, and which is still in print. In keeping her diary, she followed a family tradition; the Harveys have left behind them comprehensive records from the middle of the 19th century, so detailed that their lives could virtually be reconstructed from them, and much of that material is here at the Library. Their house, Newlands, is illustrated in the photograph above, from the Library Collection.
From St Peter Port to revolution. A request from Angela Jianu* of Warwick University for some research into the birth data of Marie Grant of St Peter Port has revealed the extraordinary history of a Romantic heroine, born here in Guernsey in 1819, daughter of Marie Le Lacheur, descendant of the Le Lacheurs of the Forest, and known today to all Romanians through her depiction as Revolutionary Romania, and because one of the main streets in Bucharest bears her name: Strada Maria Rosetti.
Ralph Durand (1876-45) came from an important Guernsey Huguenot family and was the Librarian at the Priaulx before and during the Second War. He was an explorer and author whose family history, described here, is full of interest, and includes refugees, soldiers, ministers, a provost of Eton, an actor-manager, and politicians.
