Margaret Lodder found our web site and sent this message.

I came across your web pages for Hints on the Internet, while searching for information on our English ancestors. These pages on English counties and towns available on the web are very useful - I imagine particularly to those of us who are located so far away from England. Good luck with the further development of the Hints pages.

I am sending you this message in the hope that you can help me by providing me with information which will help us trace further details of our English family - I suspect that this is not quite the kind of query that you really want to be bombarded with, but hope that you will forgive this intrusion, nevertheless.! (we welcome enquiries)

My maternal grandmother is descended from a William Fisher who was born in Hints in about 1797. We understand from information obtained from the family that there is a Fisher family tree available at Hints. I am trying to find out if such a family tree is available there or where one could try and trace such a document.

I presume that this "tree" would have been deposited in the church parish office. However my mother wrote to the Diocesan Office of Staffordshire in 1972 in this regard and was told that she should contact the Rector of the Church at Tamworth. (Maybe he looks after the parishes of Hints and Tamworth, as Hints is quite a small village?) As far as I can establish (my mother died some 10 years ago) she did try to contact the Rector at Tamworth then, but without success.

The Fisher's seem to have been a relatively poor family (William's occupation is give as "Groom" at the time of the 1851 British census). According to family members, this William Fisher was related to John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (1469-1535) who was canonized in 1935 (he was beheaded in the time of Henry VIII). I suspect that there is not such a link to the Bishop, based on the information which I have so far been able to trace, but hopefully further research will clarify this.

I am in the process of searching British Census records and various microfilm copies of Bishops Transcripts and Parish Records to try and trace further information, but this process will be considerably speeded up if I can locate this "tree".

I do hope that I have not abused the use of your e-mail contact address with this request, (not at all) and look forward to hearing from you. (I should note that I am sending a similar request for this information to the Staffordshire Records Office, as they may possibly also be able to help me.)

Yours sincerely,
Margaret Lodder