Some interesting family information gleaned during my recent researches.

 

Did You Know?

The Hildick-Smiths are a very recent invention, being created only in the early 1900's?

Did you know that the family has:

1. An ancestor who died after a coaching accident?  Look for Moses Hildick of Lapworth.

2. An ancestor who was murdered by a live-in "friend"? Look out for Francis Spencer Hildick

3. Two ancestors who were Mayors of Walsall?  Joseph Howes Smith and John Hildick.

4. Ancestors who were related to Kings of England? My 16th Gread-Grandfather was Edward IV of England. If you are related , he is too!!!

Look them up in the text and on-line tree.

The following pages contain a text version of a very large document that I am working on. As such it has few illustrations or photos, the formatting is a bit cranky and it only covers the period up to the "creation" of the Hildick-Smith name. 

 If yo want a full copy please let me know and I can send you one.

 Historical timeline.

Whilst the history mentioned above do not seem to go back all that far it is worth noting the historic background that the records should be placed against. All of our lives have been affected in some way by the major events of the past as well as our own smaller family happenings.

The earliest family records start around 1600 and at that time England had a total population of 4.1 million .No sanitation, running water, telephones, computers, oil, transport systems or TV, the economy was almost entirely agriculture based. The ordinary folk of England must have been a hardy breed. It was ruled by the Stuart dynasty, Elizabeth 1 was Queen (she died in 1603 and was succeeded by James 1) and the famous Gunpowder plot was being hatched and thwarted in 1605.

The very first european settlement in America took place in Virginia in 1607, the Pilgrim Fathers were to settle permanently in the Eastern USA from 1620 onwards. The English Civil War raged from the middle of the 1600’s, I wonder which side our families took and whether we fought? We lost a King by beheading Charles I, became a republic under Cromwell and then regained Charles II.

The final outbreak of the Great Plague was recorded in 1665 and London burnt in 1666, over a century before the USA finally defeated the British and declared Independence in 1776.

In the intervening period the Jacobites were causing problems in Scotland, The South Sea Bubble “burst” and we held the Boston Tea Party. The Enclosure Acts of the early 1800’s sounded the death knell for a primarily rural economy in England and the Industrial Revolution gathered pace.

The Battle of Trafalgar was fought in 1805, Waterloo in 1815, Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 and at the Irish Famines meant mass emigration to the USA , Canada and Australia.

By end of the century most of the current crop of Hildick-Smiths were in their infancy. Our families fought in The Great War (1914-1918), hoping never to have to go through such a terrible loss of life again, but just over 25 years later we did it all again (1939-1945). Man landed on the moon at the end of the 1960s and Halleys comet returned in the 1990s By the end of the millenium, the world had changed beyond all recognition and the earliest of our ancestors would be totally dumbfounded by the changes. In another 400 years someone yet to be related will sit down to look at their ancestors, this document may play a part in their researches.