The
Pracy Family History
From north Wiltshire to north London:
the Wiltshire roots of the Pracy family
One of the amazing things about the internet is
that family historians who for years ploughed their separate furrows can now
get together and share their findings.
At least half a dozen people had been researching the Pracy family, and
all got stuck on the origins of Edmund PREACY of the parish of St Luke’s Old
Street, who married Lucy CARLTON at St Leonard’s Shoreditch in 1767.
In 2002 I cracked the problem, with the family
historian’s usual combination of hard work, inspired guesswork and sheer
luck. Perhaps the best way of explaining
it would be to retrace my steps from the beginning and work through
systematically.
I began family history in 1973 and soon got
back to Edmund and Lucy. An Open
University degree and three books about Nazeing where I live meant that for
many years family history took a back seat.
I was aware that the internet was transforming family history and, when
in 2001 I started teaching a family/local/house history course at the local
college, I knew that I would have to find out about the net at least one week
ahead of the class! I decided that as a
practical exercise I would revisit the problem of Edmund and Lucy. Ironically, almost all my new discoveries
were the result of traditional methods, although the net did give me one
crucial lead.
I began with the IGI, which told us that around
1730 at St Giles Cripplegate three children with variations of the name Pracy
were baptised. They were:
1728 William PRACCEY son of
Thomas (Wheelwright) and Elizabeth
1732 Rachel PREACY daughter of
Edmund (Baker) and Elizabeth
1734 Hannah PRAYSEY
daughter of Charles (‘Dier’) and Sarah
There was also Sarath PRASCEY, baptised at St
Benet Fink in 1737, whose parents, Edward PRACY and Sarah SIMMONS, were married
at St Matthew Friday St in 1734.
Knowing that St Luke’s Old Street had been
carved out of St Giles in 1733, I thought there must be a good chance that
Thomas, Edmund or Charles might be the father of ‘our’ Edmund. I started ploughing through microfilm of the
St Luke’s registers at the London Metropolitan Archive, and it took me several hours
to get as far as 1739.
I found that in 1736 a couple recorded as
“Edmund baker & Alice BRACEY” had a daughter called Martha. I thought this was probably our family
because
·
B
and P in Wiltshire dialect are often interchangeable
·
Our
Edmund was a baker
·
Edmund
and Alice were unusual names, particularly in combination
However, this didn’t help with Edmund
junior. Many entries had been rendered
illegible by water damage and I became convinced that his had been one of them.
Not relishing another day squinting at the LMA
microfilm, I decided to visit the Society of Genealogists. I hoped to find a link with a PRESSEY family
that had been in London since the late 16th century and by the early
18th was well established in the neighbouring parish of St James
Clerkenwell. It seemed promising but
eventually I decided that it was a blind alley.
After a fairly cheerless lunch, I wandered
along the London parish register shelves and came across a handwritten index to
St Luke’s baptisms from 1742 to 1755.
Naturally I started looking for the PRs but the page fell open at the
PEs and my eye was drawn to an entry for “Edmund son of “Edmund & Alice
PEACEY, b. 28 July 1744, bapt. 19 Aug”.
I later checked the original at the LMA and found that it could equally
well be read Peacey or Pracey. This was
not just wishful thinking, for as late as 1891 the badly written marriage
certificate of Henry Pracey was wrongly but understandably indexed as Peacey by
the GRO.
Back at home, I checked English Origins. No sign of
Edmund, but there was a record for Charles PRACY, son of William Pracy yeoman
farmer of Bishopstone in Wiltshire, apprenticed as a dyer in 1726. It seemed reasonable that he had married
Sarah after his seven year apprenticeship, and that soon afterwards they
produced Hannah.
I knew that only about 30 of the London livery
companies have as yet been added to English
Origins, so I went to the Guildhall to look at the microfilmed records of
the Bakers’ Company and there was Edmund PRESIE, apprenticed on 15 January
1721/2. Unfortunately, however, the
Bakers didn’t record the fathers of their apprentices, so I was not much
further forward.
Then came at the SoG one of those days of which
family historians can only dream. First
I looked up the Pracys on their CD-ROM of Pallots Marriage Index is frees. There at Christchurch Greyfriars, Newgate St,
were the elusive marriages of three of the younger Edmund’s children: Elizabeth
(to James KERSHAW in 1805), John William (to Elizabeth Jane PALMER in 1806),
and Thomas (to Mary MORGAN in 1809). I
also checked Boyd’s Middlesex marriages, which had Edmund PRECEY &
Elizabeth EAMES at St Margaret’s Westminster in 1729, presumably the parents of
Rachel.
Knowing that even in a more literate age people
have trouble spelling my surname, I increasingly thought it likely that the
Edmund references from 1721 to 1744 were all to the same man, but I still
didn’t know where he came from. English Origins had suggested several
possible marriages in East Anglia and I spent a while on them without
success. Next I looked up Edmund BRACEY
on Boyd’s Londoners and was quite
excited to find three of them, but after flourishing from c1565-1620 they
petered out and my day seemed to be doing the same. I knew of several PRECY/PRESSEY families in
Wiltshire, Hampshire and
Then I remembered something rather theoretical
from one of my OU history courses - the push/pull model of migration. The idea is that if economic hardship forces
someone to move away, their relatives may be affected by the same circumstances
and move to the same area. From about
1640 to 1750 was a period when the population of England remained almost static
but the population of London doubled, so there was a chance that other members
of the family had moved to London. I
therefore decided to check the SoG’s parish register transcriptions for
Bishopstone where Charles Pracy had come from, and there he was! - Edmund
PRESSEY, son of William and Mary, born 16 October 1705, baptised 1
November. Charles was shown as being
born on 14 December 1707, thus confirming the family link.
David Pracy, Nazeing, Essex. Second published version, December 2007