So You Want To Trace Your Family History? Part 3
	Having obtained a complete set of Certificates of Birth, Marriage and Death for my Ratcliffe parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, I started to research my mother’s Tennant ancestors who also came from Long Compton, Warwickshire.  I was totally unprepared for the information that I found on my Great- grandmother’s Death certificate which stated that on 15th September, 1875, Ann Tennant, aged 79, the wife of John Tennant, Agricultural Labourer, had been wilfully murdered, deliberately stabbed to death by James Hayward with a fork under a delusion of witchcraft, Certificate received from J B Couchman, Coroner for Warwickshire after an Inquest held on the 17th September, 1875.  Several local history books refer to this murder, “In 1875 a weak minded young man killed an old woman named Ann Turner with a hayfork because he believed she had bewitched him”.  So you can imagine my shock when I found out that Ann Turner was really Ann Tennant, my great-grandmother. The local newspaper, “The Stratford-upon-Avon Herald” printed a full report under the headline “Brutal Murder at Long Compton” followed by a word for word account of the Inquest which was held 2 days later in the Red Lion Inn at Long Compton at which a highly respected jury returned a verdict of “wilful murder” and the Coroner issued a certificate for James Hayward to face trial at the next Assizes in Warwick.  The same newspaper reported the proceedings of the trial which took place on 15th December, 1875 when the jury after hearing the evidence returned a verdict of “Not Guilty on the ground of insanity” as a result of which James Hayward was ordered to be confined during Her Majesty’s pleasure.  As a result of discovering this information, I revisited Long Compton last year and the Chairman of the Local History Society took me up the village and showed me the cottage in Clarke’s Lane where Ann Tennant lived with her husband John after marrying him in Long Compton Parish Church in 1819 and where they brought up their family of 7 children.  He also pointed out the row of cottages a little further along the lane where James Hayward had lived for almost 30 years before killing my great-grandmother and threatening to kill 15 other women in the village.  I was taken to see the baker’s shop outside which great-grandmother met her end having gone to get a loaf of bread for supper as the men came off the harvest field on that fateful Wednesday evening in 1875.
	(regret poor quality photograph print of Ann Tennant's certificate. Web Ed.)
	Certificates can often produce unexpected information.  A Birth Certificate may reveal an illegitimate birth; a Marriage Certificate may reveal the name of the father of the illegitimate child or very often that one or both of the couples had been married before and had been widowed.  A Death Certificate may reveal unexpected causes of death like great-grandmother’s or evidence of an epidemic such as Measles, Whooping Cough or Diphtheria or perhaps by “The Visitation of God.” So do try and complete your sets of Certificates of Birth, Marriage and Death for as many of your direct ancestors as possible - but be prepared for some surprises. Richard Ratcliffe (Tel: 221905)