After returning to London from Berlin in the morning, we decided to follow up on my family history trip to Norwich the prior week. Our destination was "St. Edmund's Churchyard in Lombard Street, London," the burial place of Thomas Petyous, according to my mother's history of the Pettus (sometimes spelled Pethous or Petyous) family. Thomas was "admitted to the freedom of the city" in Norwich in 1491, and is the earliest known Pettus ancestor. In the line of ancestry, he is the fourteenth generation above mine.
Thanks to Kathy's skillful research and navigating, we soon arrived at the church of St. Edmund the King & Martyr, located on Lombard Street. The church dates from at least 1292. According to the article in Wikipedia, following the destruction of the church in the Great Fire in 1666, the current structure was built by Christopher Wren (a famous guy, take my word for it) in 1670-1679, "with a tower designed like a lighthouse ornamented at the angles by flaming urns in allusion to the Great Fire." On the other hand, it was described as "Wren's worst church" by a local publication in 1864.
It was dusk when we reached our destination, so the photographs are not the best. As noted on the sign (left click on any image to enlarge), the building no longer serves as a church. And any churchyard had long since been crowded out by tall buildings surrounding the church. But the church did indeed serve us, as advertised, as "a resource for ...exploration." When we inquired about the church burial records, we were informed that all of the church records had been moved to the City of London Guildhall. The Guildhall, which serves as the administrative and ceremonial center of the City of London, is several blocks away.
For a much nicer photo of the sacristy, see this image from the Wikipedia article.
We discovered that the Guildhall is partly in the Ward of Cheap, one of the 25 wards which make up the City of London (which itself is only a small part of Greater London). It somehow seemed appropriately connected to my research into family history! Actually, the meaning of cheap in this context is market. The old Guildhall (below) is an impressive building, parts of which date to 1411. The site goes back much further than that, as explained in this article from Wikipedia.
The research library is located in this newer wing of the Guildhall. It is there that we were ably assisted, just 15 minutes from closing time, by one of the librarians, Senior Archivist Wendy Hawke. It turns out that churches were not required to maintain records of births and deaths until about 1540 (if I remember correctly), and even then the law was not closely observed for several more decades. In any event, the records from St. Edmund's did not seem to reach back further than about 1590, and there were no listings for Thomas Pettus (or Petyous). Ms. Hawke then suggested a reference book listing all of the inscriptions from London churches, Arthur Jewers' The Monumental Inscriptions and Armorial Bearings in the Churches within the City of London. In the index for that work we did find a listing for "Pettus," but without any first name. It was connected to St. Paul's Cathedral. Since it was now closing time, the librarian offered to follow up on that lead in the morning and report to us by email. See the end of this post for the result.
The library closing was not the only constraint on our time there. We also had to hurry to arrive in time for a lecture at the Imperial College campus hosted by FIE, the sponsoring organization for St. Mary's University's study abroad program. The guest speaker was the Crown Prince of Jordan, and his talk was about the need for inter-religious and intercultural conversation and tolerance, as well as economic development, in the search for peace in the Middle East and throughout the world. The photo above shows Kathy's St. Mary's colleague, Ken Pohlmann (in light blue shirt), as we await the start of the program.
HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal addresses the audience, which consisted primarily of American college students. Kathy and I had the opportunity to meet and briefly visit with the prince at a reception following his lecture. He is a very energetic, but remarkably humble, man. When he discovered that our son, Hal, was looking into volunteer work opportunities, he made sure that his London assistant presented us with her business card.
Following the lecture, we headed out in the cold to a nearby pub recommended by one of Kathy's FIE colleagues. That did not pan out (it was a little pricier than what we were in the mood for), so we instead had dinner at a very nice Indian restaurant on the way back to the flat. But our route did take us past the outdoor skating rink adjacent to the Natural History Museum. The atmosphere was certainly quite festive.
We also passed by two car dealerships. I couldn't resist engaging in some window shopping. Do you think Kathy will let me trade my little roadster in for an Italian super car?
Certainly these vehicles would be much more at home in the Texas Hill Country and on a West Texas interstate than on the busy streets of London!
Now, back to the report from the librarian. The reference to Pettus "appears in a notes field about a monument in St. Paul's Cathedral. The note relates to the will of John de la Fontaine of Kirby Bellers in Leicestershire dated 17 January 1706/7. In his will, the testator left 100 pounds to 'goddaughter Pettus'." So it looks like this was probably a dead end. There does not appear to be any record, at least not from St. Edmund's, providing information about Thomas Petyous or his forebears. So, for now, the trail stops 14 generations into the past.
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