Welcome!

This website is a research-oriented collection of items pertaining to the Fernee and Godart families of London, England. The events gathered here will not provide a complete picture of any one person, just tidbits from their lives. Here we have the scanty beginnings of a full understanding of each family, which requires context - what skills did their jobs entail, what was their neighbourhood like, what were the mores of the time, and so on. The web is a perfect location for such a study - accessible to far-flung cousins and easy to refine as assumptions are proved or disproved and new information is discovered. The Fernee & Godart family history website is by no means finished!

There are no details about living people although their names may appear as a child in their parents' family section or on a chart. 

 

Finding a person on the site

Find someone via the surname index, the charts, or the search tab, all accessible from the top menu.

There is an individual page for each person for whom I have a reasonable amount of information, which is arranged as follows:

  • Name and birth/death dates
  • Parents' names
  • Person's relationship, if any, to William Oliver of Cheriton Fitzpaine
  • An "Extended Family" button which opens up a diagram of the subject's siblings, children, parents, grandparents, and great grandparents
  • Links to charts on which they appear
  • Family section, listing known children
  • The main section - a chronology of life events
  • Source citations
  • A link to contact me with information, photos, corrections, or just to let me know you are interested! 

 

Other areas to Explore

From the top menu you can also connect to

  • Surname Index - which lists everyone who has their own information page. If someone has no information other than while a child at home with their parents (e.g. birth, baptism, census), they won't have their own page.  They will, however, show up on the charts.
  • Charts - which illustrate ancestries and descendancies of key people
  • Calendars - just for fun...birthdays and marriages of everyone on this site
  • Images - thumbnails ... click the lightbox icon to enlarge the image or click the arrow to go to an individual's page
  • What's New? - major additions and changes to the site
  • Search - names and places on this site 

 

Icon Legend

    my direct ancestor
   the parents of this person are not yet identified
   someone who immigrated or was transported to Australia
   someone who immigrated to Canada
   someone who immigrated to New Zealand
   someone who immigrated to the United States
   click on the camera icon to see a photo
   click on the icon to see information about a place

Spelling

Spelling variations occurred at the whim of the recorder and are inconsequential. Generally I have found that if a document uses the spelling Godart or Fernee, it does refer to someone on these trees. However, individual Godarts may be found as, for example, Goddart and the more common Goddard. Fernee may be, for example, Fernie, Ferney, or Furney. Sometimes an accent is added. Indexes often introduce strange spellings, usually due to difficulty interpreting handwriting. Notes for a given document will indicate if the name was recorded differently than the standard Fernee or Godart.

 

Census records

Images of the pages have been viewed. Spellings, ages, birthplaces and other data in a census is frequently "incorrect". My notes retain the information as it was written by the enumerator, in most cases dispensing with the usual [sic] notation.
 

Odds & ends

Anything in [square brackets] is an explanatory note that I have added.

The information displayed on these pages will necessarily change as the research continues and this site is updated. Although great care has been taken, I do not guarantee the accuracy of all information on this website.

By checking the citations, you can see where a particular piece of information was found and evaluate how likely it is to be correct. For instance, a date of birth from a birth certificate is more reliable than one from a census or a published book. I have not cited every source that supports a fact...there might be 3 census records that say a person was born in Ontario but I typically don't cite them all.

If you are using any of the information presented on this site for your own genealogical research, please remember to cite accordingly.  Something along the lines of "Godart & Fernee Genealogy, online, http://genealogy.kolthammer.org/FerneeGodart-o/, accessed date" would be suitable.

If you would like to hear about updates to this site, please contact me.

 

Acknowledgements

  • The many people who are writing to me after finding this website. They are contributing information, photos, news clippings, &c.  All the cousins thank you.
  • Ann Collett, a delightful correspondent who gave me my first peek into this corner of my family tree.
  • On the Fernee side: Michael Fernee, an avid collector of Fernee family history. John Greenwood, my first Fernee contact. Muriel Moffat, a Gostick descendant.
  • On the Godart side: Bear descendants Ann Best, Mary Dyer, Pat Kemp and Cliff Ward.
  • Collectively, the professionals and volunteers who make records accessible at family history centers and on the internet.
  • The developers and supportive user community of The Master Genealogist and Second Site, programs which were used to produce this site.