My Books

Local History BA and MA etc Devon, Hoskins
Witchcraft
Thomas Gent
17th c Novel
Interior Design
Judaica
Other Old Books
Fine bindings
Manchester

I sit here surrounded by thousands of books, still too many even though I had a clear out a year ago.
My fascination with books started at my grandparents' farmhouse in North Devon sixty years ago. I don't have any of their fiction that I read then, children's classics like Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio, Grimm's Fairy Tales and the complete works of Henry Rider Haggard - I read every single one, and there were many. The volumes I still have from those days, here on the shelf behind me, are:
A New and Complete System of Geography, by Charles Theodore Middleton, published in 1779. These are two very large volumes, which were rebound for my great grandfather over one hundred years ago. They were purchased by John Gent and his wife née Sarah Booth in the 1780s as part of the education for their five children who were born between 1787 and 1794. The eldest and the youngest, John and Henry, both qualified as doctors.
We loved these volumes, and I read many of the 1,100 pages, learning how to cope with long s's, and hugely enjoying the many full-page engravings, with badly drawn elephants, and representations of prisoners floating down the Volga hanging from hooks under their ribs.

Middleton's map of the known world: much of Australia and North West America is only sketchily indicated.

Also there on the shelf is a similarly large volume, The Reades of Blackwood Hill and Dr Johnson's Ancestry by Alleyn Lyell Reade. Published in 1906, my great grandfather is listed as one of the subscribers to the volume, as are his friends the Misses Wagstaffe, of Knutsford. This was my introduction to formal genealogy, well researched and with detailed well drawn family trees. It was also my introduction to Dr Johnson.

My great grandfather as a subscriber to this work.

Until recently on this shelf was a massive family bible that also came from Mons Hall, my grandparents' farm. This was presented to Mary Sarah Gent by her parents for, I think, her sixteenth birthday in, I think, 1863. I recently gave this to my sister Dana so I should ask her for a photograph of the inscription. In it her brother, my great grandfather, recorded the births, marriages and deaths of the family, and it was added to until recently.
A few years ago, in 2001, I added to these books The Complete Farmer, by 'A Society of Gentlemen', printed in 1766. 

From 'The Complete Farmer"

I had the binding beautifully repaired by David Squirrell of Exeter. The original copy belonged to John Gent, my great great great grandfather, of Alcumlow Hall in Cheshire. That copy passed to his grandson George Frederick Gent of Liverpool, and presumably to his only son John Henry Gent, who died a bachelor in London in 1949, and the volume vanished from sight. I knew of the book's existence from my great grandfather's commonplace book where he had copied out a list in that book of the births and baptisms of John Gent and Sarah Booth's children. The massive volume is of interest for the guidance it gives at the time of the agricultural revolution, but for me its importance is in John Gent's notes.

John, son of John and Sarah Gent, born 1787.
[He was M.D. London and died in West Indies 1817, unmarried]  

Joseph, son of John and Sarah Gent, born April 1789, 3am,
baptised May 2nd by Reverend Joshua Stonehewer; christened 1790, Mr John Booth senior, sponsor  

Brian, son of John and Sarah Gent, born May 10th 1791,1.25pm, Mr and Mrs Salmon Mr Gent senior  

Mary, daughter of John and Sarah Gent, born January 23rd 1793, 10.30am; christened February 2nd, Mr Tom Gent, Mrs Gent senior and Mrs Booth sponsors  

Henry, son of John and Sarah Gent, born October 24th 1794, 4pm, christened November 10th, John Booth, John Gent and Ann Gent sponsors [MRCS London]

My great grandfather's commonplace book changed my life. I had it rebound by David Squirrell in 1993, so that it can be handed down to future generations of my family. It's very random and disorganised, but it reflects the fact that it is sundry information about the family that he had collected over several decades. The first sixty pages are transcriptions mostly of poems that he liked.

The titlepage of my great grandfather's commonplace book. Down the edge it is inscribed:"Book of Family history and descent, and connections, as far as I have been able to collect them, at much labour and expense, for the information of my children."

I won't list every single book that I have, just those that I feel have a particular significance. My copy of John Sleigh's The History of the Ancient Parish of Leek is a reprint of the 1883 second edition. I read both editions, in Manchester's Central Library, and at the Nicholson Institute in Leek when I cycled there in 1963 or 1964, and I suspect that this was the beginning of my interest in local history. There are the odd mentions of the Gent family, also of the Turner family.

I also have volume VII of A History of the County of Stafford in the Victoria County Histories, subtitles 'Leek and the Moorlands'. This area was the ancestral home of the Gent family, and there are five Gents in the index, including Gervase, the early Quaker. There was a Gent on the Rent Roll of Dieulacres Abbey before the Reformation, as I descovered when I visited the Staffordshire record office years ago. There are paragraphs on Middlehulme, though dealing with the Brough's farm across the road to our ancestral home, and the information gives the context for over four hundred years of the history of the Gent family.

Next on the shelf is a volume given to me by Dr Mick Atkinson, a friend of my student days and later a colleague at the WEA. This is a volume of Miscellaneous House of Commons Papers, 1821, vol. XXIII, which was discarded by Exeter University Library about ten years ago. On page 84 is a section dealing with captured negroes seized from Spanish slave ships between 1814 and 1817, and subsequently placed as apprentices with the inhabitants of Tortola. For each slave it gives their name, age, height, identifying marks, to whom apprenticed and when. I have added to the volume three pages that I think I downloaded from manuscript depositions: this one is dated October 1st, 1814 and is a harrowing account signed by G. R. Porter and J. Gent, both doctors, concerning slaves captured from a Spanish slave vessel.

These slaves were delivered to Francis Ingram the Customs Collector of Tortola by Abraham Mendes Belisario, the Marshal of the Court of Vice Admiralty. This is a name that leads to other connections, as Belisario corresponded with my ancestors in England when he was responsible for managing their property in Tortola. He featured in the book The Lindo Legacy by Jackie Ranston, explaining his Sephardi origins. The Hanging of Arthur Hodge by John Andrew is based very much on the account by Abraham Mendes Belisario of Hodge's trial. 

I have many family letters from this period, 1786 to 1840, all of which I have transcribed. I printed them in booklets in 1997 that I gave to many members of my family, but I also placed them on the internet. That was a good idea, as I suspect many of those original booklets are now lost.
A large section of the letters in that first volume involved letters sent and received by my great great grandfather, Dr Henry Gent, especially during his time living in Tortola, in the Virgin Islands, and fortunately he kept drafts of letters he was sending in book I still have. The book was originally a copy letter record book from the military garrison on St Croix in the Virgin Islands covering the period 1813-1815 which somehow came into my great great grandfather's hands.

Dr Henry Gent's commonplace book

Note by Henry Gent's son inside the cover, with his son's addition of his name and address. The inscription reads: "Writings by my Father about 1820, added to by my callings about 1880 to '87, showing the same temperament and characteristics to exist in both, and showing that the same disappointments of life are common to all, and apparently ever have been and ever will be."

The opening page of the colume with sundry items inserted, including the probate of Clewlow Grundy. Also known as Clulow Grindy, he was my six greats grandfather who died in 1728.

Medical records kept by my great great grandfather in 1818, presumably when he was living in the United States.

Willis Gaylord Clark was a friend of Dr Henry Gent during his stay in the United States and later his correspondent.

Dr Henry Gent's account of a visit to the Niagara Falls.

This volume leads us from books to the large collection of family documents, many of which I have transcribed and placed on the internet:

The Gent Family History

A site that includes lots of photographs, and lots of transcriptions of records. Also information about the Turner, Warburton and Neild families.

Gent Family Wills, Staffordshire and Cheshire

Transcripts and summaries of wills of the Gent family in Staffordshire and thereabouts, from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.

The Gent Family

Various articles and essays about the history of my own branch of the Gent family, from Leek in North Staffordshire.

Gent Family Letters, 1790-1841

Chiefly consisting of the correspondence of Dr Henry Gent whilst living in America, 1816-1830, and after his return to England.

Gent Family Letters, 1847-1891

These are transcripts of my family archive for the period that we lived in Knutsford, where Dr Henry Gent was in practice, until his son left for Manchester in 1878, until his marriage in 1891.

Gent Family Letters, 1891-1941

The life of my great grandfather, including a diary of family life for one year, letters after a serious road accident, and letters when his wife was dying.