Articles

Extracted from a review of Guernsey by the then Governor, Lord Hatton, known under the pseudonym of 'Warburton.'

The History Section of the Societe Guernesiaise has produced a set of pedigrees of houses taken from Guernsey's Livres de Perchage, which list the owners of a particular house from the earliest times at which it was rated, together with a glossary of French terms found in these documents. These will prove very useful for genealogists and can be consulted at the Library, as can our collection of original Livres de Perchage.

In the mid-19th century Frederick Clarke produced in his establishment in the States Arcade this little booklet, attempting to distil in four pages the labyrinthine system of weights and measures at that time employed in the island. Its difficulty was compounded by the sheer number of currencies that island merchants and traders had to deal with. The information is taken literally from schoolmaster Thomas du Frocq's Nouveau Precepteur of 1818, which is a (mainly) applied mathematics primer of tortuous complexity and much greater length.

Almanac Journalier: Guernsey, Chevalier & Mauger, 1820

Receipt made up in 1796 by the shoemaker John Edwards for the footwear of Carteret Priaulx and his brothers. Anthony Priaulx, a 'bad boy,' wore out his dancing shoes as he was 22 at the time. The brothers, sons of Thomas Priaulx and Rebecca Le Marchant, were: the oldest, Carteret (1758-1822), Thomas (1762-1844), John (1768-1829), and Anthony, the youngest (1774-1820). A J T Edwards was a shoemaker in the Commercial Arcade in Guernsey in 1841. He had a large family; the census gives him as being born in England c 1800, and his wife Charlotte, aged 33, as also born in England. From a Scrapbook of receipts in the Library.

The Library acquired at an island auction summer 2013 three separate sets of letters and source materials of local interest.

Southampton Port Books; Festung Guernsey; Les Dicqs and the Rousse headland: an overview; Canadian biography; Livres de Perchage; Pugin and Guernsey; Maritime Normandy 1500-1650; Victor Hugo in Guernsey; Militia buttons; Basement hydrogeology and fortifications of the Channel Islands; German Tunnels in the Bailiwick.

Medicine and the five senses, ed. W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter; From our family albums, ed. Hargetion, J. and Vidamour, M.; Andrew Mitchell House: the beginning—creation of a hospice, text by Charlotte Barnes; Turner, Wesley B., The Astonishing General: The Life and Legacy of Sir Isaac Brock; Malcolmson, Robert, A very brilliant affair: the Battle of Queenston Heights, 1812: Begamudré, Ven, Isaac Brock—Larger than life; Borneman, W. B., 1812: the war that forged a nation; Symons, John: The Battle of Queenston Heights; Higginson, T.B., Major Richardson's 'Major-General Sir Isaac Brock and the 41st Regiment'; Marquis, T. B., Sir Isaac Brock, Toronto, 1929; Fryer, M.B., Bold, brave, and born to lead, 2004; Riley, Jonathon, A Matter of Honour: the life, campaigns and generalship of Sir Isaac Brock, 2011; Mawson, Gillian, The experiences of Guernsey evacuees in Northern England, 1940-1945; Titanic: Channel Island connections, by Alisdair Crosby, 2011

Sue Laker, our Deputy Chief Librarian, tells us about a wonderful book, of which a magnificent facsimile has been donated to the Library by the publishers. The beauty and interest of the illustrations alone make it well worth a look.

The De Lanceys in New York.