Update: Early Modern Resources is back up, though not as yet fully restored.
Some readers may have noticed that my Early Modern Resources website has been down for a couple of months now. I’m rebuilding it, but it’s going to be a little while. In the meantime, here is a google spreadsheet of about 150 online primary source collections from the EMR database.
This started with a question on Twitter about sources for JPs, which got me looking up some old references.
It slowly dawned on me that I had in fact seen a copy of that particular edition somewhere quite recently…
And that, in turn, got me thinking about how much freely available source material (primary and secondary) I’ve randomly stumbled across on local historical societies’ websites in the last few years. And wondering: how much more is out there?
I got several great responses to this*, so I began looking more closely, and the TLDR; answer is: a helluva lot of it. The upshot was a Google spreadsheet, which you can see at the bottom of this post.
I’m genuinely impressed at how much stuff these societies have put online, and several more are clearly keen to follow suit – if they can fund it. Some have adopted a pragmatic policy of embargoing their most recent publications (anything between 3 and 10 years; and if you really can’t wait that long, you can buy print or digital copies – or a subscription – for sod all). They often have limited resources, and good quality digitisation isn’t cheap. So, y’know, do encourage societies of interest to you to do this; but don’t lecture them if they haven’t (you might consider instead how you could actually help them to do it).
It’s also more generally noteworthy how many societies have websites (some kept more up to date than others…), and even if they haven’t digitised the publications, nearly all have made finding aids of some sort (indexes, TOCs, abstracts, etc, even searchable databases) available.
(And undoubtedly all this applies far beyond England and Wales, but someone else will have to compile those resources. Sorry.)
Why am I telling you all this? Because these local societies (under their many and varied names: “record/historical/antiquarian/archaeological” society, or some entirely quirky local name) are treasure troves for historians, not just those who think of themselves as “local” historians. They’ve been around for a long time (many were established in the 19th century), publishing high-quality source editions, calendars, abstracts, extracts, indexes, etc, for a wide range of archive sources – parish, legal and administrative, personal, estate records, and more – as well as secondary articles. But often they were published in tiny print runs and even finding aids were hard to come by before the advent of the online catalogue. So it’s a wondrous thing that so many can now be accessed freely and located much more easily.
In addition to content found at society websites, I added a couple more tabs to the spreadsheet: some of the many publications digitised for Welsh Journals Online, and an undoubtedly tiny portion of what might be found at the Internet Archive. Enjoy exploring!
link to spreadsheet (if you’d prefer a version you can download for offline use, use this link instead)
* Many thanks to @newton_key, @LinuxGnome, @VCH_London, @rdgresident, @alexjcraven, @anterotesis, @YstadauCymru!
A sad traveller’s tale from early 18th-century Denbigh, occasioned by this tweet:
Ouch! #histmed #earlymodern accidents while travelling or working! https://t.co/kAqjNGC3fi
— Lisa Smith (@historybeagle) September 19, 2016
In September 1726 the Denbigh coroner Thomas Lloyd, held an inquest and examined witnesses concerning the death of John Davies of Oswestry, gentleman. The jury brought in a verdict of misadventure.
John Myddelton of Denbigh, feltmaker:
saith that whilst he stood att the tyth barn near Astrad Bridge within the sd burrough on the afsd day, he saw the sd decedt John Davies on horse back comeing up to the sd bridge and immediatly observd the sd horse as the sd examinant apprehended to make a stand as if he started att something that appeard before him & upon the sd John Davies giveing him a stroke with his whip to go forwards the sd horse made over the battlements of ye sd bridge whereupon the sd examinant called to one William Hughes who stood near him to go to the sd bridge saying I fear ye man is lost and as soon as the sd examinant and ye sd William Hughes came to ye place they found the sd John Davies and his horse lyeing dead on ye ground under the sd bridge wch was occasion by the fall afsd
William Hughes of Denbigh, labourer:
saith upon oath that being called upon by the former examinant to go immediatly to the assistance of the decedt John Davies as he was seen to fall off the battlements of Astrad Bridge afsd this examinant ran with the other examinant to the sd bridge and found the sd John Davies and his horse lyeing dead on the ground under the sd bridge the water being att that time very low.
Source: National Library of Wales, GS 4/43/10.
