The entry is the first one on the first page. It is for the baptism of Mary the daughter of William Warner a Gardener and his wife Elizabeth, 22 Oct 1697 at Great Baddow. The word I'm having trouble with is the word above the & sign which is between the words Gardener and Elizabeth., not sure if it is the name of a place or a property. Thanks.
Could it be the name of one of the Manor house owners? It looks to me like Gardener to ? Or could it be Gardener Li (little) Baddow?
A hard one, this. I've blown it up, turned it round... I keep seeing the word 'Border' but of course that doesn't make sense.
'Border'? 'Borden'? with an initial in front? T? J? The name of William's employer, perhaps? or is it all one word - 'Gardner & dissorder'? - but the 2nd word should start with a capital, so perhaps not. Sorry Derek. I'm stumped. Jane
I thought disorder but looking at the Whitebread name below the writer does not cross his t so could it be dissenter?
The first letter is a capital D and there is a double 's' written as 'ff'. These, coupled with the fact that the recorder does not seem to cross his 't's - or if he does, it is done very lightly - leads me to think that the word is 'Dissenter' as well. The following is from the Little Baddow website. As this village is only about 3 miles from Great Baddow, chances are that similar was happening there as well: Puritanism had a strong hold in Little Baddow, with Thomas Hooker and John Eliot, preachers and colonists of North America living at Cuckoos from 1629-31. In 1708 Francis Barrington gave a field for the purpose of building a “Meeting house for the public worship of God by the dissenting congregation of Protestants”. Now called the United Reformed Chapel, it is one of the oldest in the country.
I see border as well and there seem to be a dot before border and what looks like a 3 before the dot.
If you come down the page you will see 'John son of John Gardner Inn Keeper AND A DISSENTER and Mary his wife was born the 4th Day of January 1697 and baptised ??? cant read 169?. So yes Im in agreement as to it being Dissenter.
Thanks you all for that, I'll record it as Dissenter, I could see parts of dissenter but not enough to make a word out of it so I had no idea what the word was. I didn't associate the lack of a baptism date to being a Dissenter family, completely missed that.
