Place:Shalbourne, Wiltshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Shalbourne is a civil parish which was originally located partly in Wiltshire and partly in Berkshire. The parish was very large and contained a village of the same name and a number of widely spaced small settlements, including Bagshot and Stype, to the north, and Rivar and Oxenwood to the south.

In 1894 a law was passed obliging parishes to be located in one county only. Shalbourne was consequently split, leaving the parish church in Berkshire.

Shalbourne included a tongue of land projecting southwestward between the two parts of the ecclesiastical parish of Tidcombe. In 1895 a new parish named Tidcombe and Fosbury was formed incorporating Tidcombe, its chapelry Fosbury and this small part of Shalbourne.

Notable people

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

From 1608 until late 1637, tenants of the parish's Westcourt Manor included William Carpenter and his namesake son, both of whom emigrated to Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1638 on the Bevis from Southampton. The younger William Carpenter was a founder of Rehoboth, Massachusetts. The Rehoboth Carpenter family's descendants number in the tens of thousands, among whom are two U.S. presidents and a Project Mercury astronaut. William Carpenter [Jr.] married at Shalbourne in 1625 Abigail Briant, whose family had resided in the parish since at least the late 16th century.

Jethro Tull (1674-1741), agricultural pioneer, owned a farm in the parish.

Research Tips

• From this Ancestry page you can browse the Wiltshire parishes which have parish register transcripts online, quite often from very early dates. However, reading the early ones requires skill and patience. Transcriptions should also be in FamilySearch.
• A further collection of online source references will be found on the county page for Wiltshire.