WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE
WFHC collection of miscellaneous material not fitting into the other categories.
LINKS & COMMENTARY (all files are in MS Excel or Word)
FIRE POLICY 080925.xls (22kB, 27 lines of entry, 2 pages) This Whitehouse index started from the index of the insurance policies of the Royal Exchange Assurance and the Sun Fire Office for the period 1775-1787. This was a University-led project some years ago. It covers RE policies 65962 to 102744 and Sun Fire Office policy register Volumes 253-342. It has been extended to include the “Place in the Sun” project, covering Sun Fire policies from 1808 to 1839. The registers are deposited at the Guildhall Library, London. The index covers the names at the head of the policy. In the newer series, all the premises insured by Whitehouses are in or near London, but the older series includes some provincial ones.
GWR SHAREHOLDERS 080327.xls (39 kB, 113 lines of entry, 3 pages) is an index to Whitehouses involved in the transfer of shares in the Great Western Railway Company from 1835 to 1910. It relates only to transfers that did not occur by simple sale. However, these shares were “blue chip” and held for long periods, so it has been estimated that 75% of the total number of shareholders is covered. It is stated that about 90% of the transfers resulted from death, 4% marriage, 4% power of attorney, 0.5% change of name, 0.2% lunatics, 0.1% bankrupts and the balance miscellaneous. About 92.5% of the events occurred in England & Wales, 3.5% in Scotland, 0.7% in Ireland and 0.6% overseas. (Presumably some were indeterminate, as this does not add to 100%).
The Whitehouse entries have been extracted from the index published on the findmypast.com website. There are 27 events (transfers), in some of which the Whitehouse was not the shareholder, but merely an executor or a declarant who confirmed the identity of another person. Some are instantly recognisable, so the WFHC reference has been added against the first line of the event. The appearance of a Whitehouse as an executor in the will of a person of different surname could throw up interesting questions. For example, why was Richard Whitehouse of Handsworth, the Birmingham gun engraver, an executor of the will of William Marsh of Oldbury ? He is no known relative and Richard never lived in Oldbury.
The Registers themselves are not publicly available and can be seen only by ordering a copy of the relevant pages from the Society of Genealogists, for which a fee is charged (currently £10), using the Volume, Folio and Entry reference shown. The transcription work was carried out by Frank Hardy FSG and other volunteers from the Society and took a very long time to complete, so it is difficult to find fault with this arrangement. The only additional information in the register, not in the index, is in most cases the occupations, but these were often merely “gentleman”, “spinster” etc. Some illegibly signed names of recipients were also omitted.
All but 2 of the 27 events extracted were the deaths of shareholders, here shown as “Shareholder, D”. “Recipient” means the person to whom the “documents” (share certificates ?) were sent by the GWR shareholders Registrar, possibly a beneficiary to whom a specific bequest of the shares was made. There are many events in which no recipient is listed, presumably because the shares were transferred to the executors, who might later have sold them to realise money for the estate. That later sale, being an ordinary commercial transaction, would not appear in this register.
Sometimes, people of the same name are listed twice with different addresses. Probably they are all one and the same person, e.g. a deceased who died at one address, but whose normal residence was elsewhere. However, since there is no way of telling from the register whether they are the same person or, e.g. father and son of identical names, they are listed separately.
As usual, downloaders are recommended to sort the index into event order, sorting by Database ref. and then by No. Abbreviations follow the same form as in the census index, except that “Widow” is written in full.
LUNATIC ASYLUMS 070924.xls (35 kB, 120 lines of entry, 2 pages) is an index to Whitehouse patients admitted to the county lunatic asylums in England & Wales, covering The National Archives pieces MH94/12 to 29 and 105. The years covered are 1846 to 1890, but there is a gap from 1885 to 1888 for which records of state-aided patients are missing. Although the first piece available is MH94/12, covering 1846, the numbering suggests that there is an earlier one, also missing. Nearly all patients were state-aided and thus indexed as “pauper”. In the WFHC file, all patients are “pauper” unless noted as private in a “Remarks” column.
For general information about this class of record, see “Lunatic Ancestors” by David T. Hawkings, Family Tree Magazine July 2007, pages 18 & 19.
PATS 1617-1901 070727.xls (48 kB, 215 lines of entry, 5 pages) is an extract of Whitehouse patent applicants at the UK Patent Office, as listed in the printed indexes, from the earliest times to the end of 1901. The earliest patent granted to a Whitehouse was in 1774. In the period extracted, patents and applications were numbered in a separate series for each year.
A famous invention by a Whitehouse
Arguably the most famous Whitehouse was Cornelius, who invented continuous welding of tubing. His patent is numbered by the year and the number within that year, 1825 No. 5019. It lasted for 14 years from grant. At that time, patents did not have claims defining the monopoly, but page 3 contains a statement of the principle of the invention, which is to heat the tubes of iron (the metal sheet bent into tubular shape) nearly to the point of fusion, withdraw them from the fire and pass them through dies or holes, by which the edges of the heated iron may be pressed together, and the joint firmly welded. The patent was printed in 1857 and a copy is provided here as 1825-5109 040130.doc (contains scanned-in pages, 446 KB). Cornelius Whitehouse's patent is highly unusual because it was amended on the petition of James Russell, to whom he had sold the patent. The amendment (not copied here) was to correct a trivial clerical error, but it contains details of the terms on which Cornelius assigned his rights and the difficulties that James Russell experienced in meeting a deadline for filing the patent specification with the proper authority.
Genealogical value of patents
Generally, patents do not contain much of genealogical value. The patent specifications give only the name of the town as the address - in the case of Cornelius, Wednesbury. - and sometimes an occupation. A pilot study has revealed that the indexes relate to patent applications. If the application never proceeded to a patent, the specification was not retained and so is not available. I have therefore included a column "Pat ?". "Yes" means that I have seen the specification, so it is available in the British Library. "No" means that I have ordered the specification and found it to be unavailable. The blank spaces mean that I not investigated availability.
The value of patents is as a "talking point" or decorative item for a family tree that has been arrived at by other means. The missing day and month part of the date for some 1889 patent applications arises from an official indexing error, which I have been able to rectify only partially.
Early US Patents
The British Library holds an index of US patentees for 1790 to 1847
There are two entries under WHITEHOUSE, both for Turner WHITEHOUSE:
WHITEHOUSE, Turner: Lock, door: Class 2 p. 49 (2) - found
WHITEHOUSE, Turner: Locks, mortice: Class 3 p. 50 - not found
The first entry shows:
Door-lock; T. WHITEHOUSE, Boston Mass Sept 8, 1837 No. 377
Door-lock; T. WHITEHOUSE, Boston Mass Jun 14, 1838 No. 783
Until 1836, US patents were not numbered. There are no Whitehouses in
"Early Un-numbered US Patents 1790 - 1836", Research Publications, Ind., Woodbridge CT USA, 1980
The British Library has an index of US patentees in yearly volumes from 1872 onwards.
Thus, there are no records here of US patentees from 1848 to 1871.
STAFFS RECUSANTS 080327.xls (17 kB, 10 lines of entry, 1 page)
This extract from the Staffordshire recusants list, kindly sent to me by Catherine Coleman, is notable for one Brewood family in 1767 which takes up 7 of the 10 entries.