Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Wistful Wednesday : 1796

On October 8 1796 one of Far Guy's relatives was in trouble.


At our Quarter-Seffions on Thurfday, Daniel Abbott of Little Addington was indicted for a mifdemeaner, in engroffing and getting into his hands, by buying of Richard Wightman, fifty quarters of wheat with the intent to fell the fame again; and being found guilty, was fined in the penalty of five pounds. 

engroffing =  Taking over (I think)
fifty quarters of wheat = I believe 1 quarter is 8 bushels so 400 bushels
in 1796 it would take one acre of land to produce 15 -30 bushels of wheat.  A man would need 12 bushels a year just to make his bread for the year.

So this was a considerable amount of wheat.   The penalty was 5 pounds I have no idea what that would have been in dollars in 1796.

Anyways...this is Far Guy's GGGG Grandfather on his mothers paternal side of the family.  Daniel Abbott was born in 1747 in England and he died Feb 3 1833 he would have been 86 years old.  He died in Great Addington, Northamptonshire England.

In 1796 when this took place he would have been 49 years old.
Interesting bit of family history...there is possibly more to this story.
Far Side

16 comments:

Rose said...

Wonderful to have a bit of family history that old!

DJan said...

Once I was able to change the f's to s's in my mind, I could read the darn thing! He was certainly an enterprising man! :-)

Sam I Am...... said...

That is a long time ago! How interesting!

Miss Merry said...

I can get lost for hours and hours in old newspapers. Do you have a source that is digitalized? I am fortunate to live about 2 hours from the Rutherford B Hayes Presidential Library which has amazing genealogy resources. And the fact that it is 2 hours away makes sure I can't spend every day there. Because I could.

Tired Teacher said...

Interesting snippet of history.

Anonymous said...

How fun to know your relatives that far back. We know Dennis’ for many generations because his family is interested in genealogy, but no one in mine really is. I can’t go back much further than my grandparents at this point. Your grandfather sounds like he was a very enterprising man. He lived to an old age for that time period too.
Blessings, Betsy

Bonnie said...

How interesting to find information from so long ago. How did you find that? I recently joined ancestry.com but I have not yet found anything that old.

Sara said...

What an interesting bit of family history. Those ff/ss have often confused me when reading old documents until I had someone point out that the "f" was a double "s". Then things made more sense. Many years ago my mother, my aunt and I spent a couple of days pouring over old newspapers from the late 1800s in Fergus Falls looking for references to any family. They published such interesting things.

Jo-Anne's Ramblings said...

Interesting indeed

Far Side of Fifty said...

My husband found it on his family tree :)

Bonnie said...

His family has done a lot of research! Thanks!

Red said...

It took a lot of hard work to find this much.

diane in northern wis said...

I too dabble in some genealogy and have also come up with some pretty interesting tidbits in the family history. I think we're back into the 1400's now amidst queens and kings and all kinds of chicanery! Love your posts! Always interesting!

Granny Marigold said...

That's quite a tidbit of family history!

L. D. said...

That does go back a ways. It is interesting that you found it.

thecrazysheeplady said...

We'll be looking forward to your discovery of the "rest of the story"!