Messervy Stories

  Branching out to a One-Name Study   #12ancestors  blog challenge means selecting one of the weekly themes for the monthly blog post.  For February 2022, the theme that called out to me is " branching out ".  Moving from your direct family lines to a project encompassing all of a surname is a very big leap in branching out.  This is essentially how I ended up with the beginnings of a one-name study for Messervy/Messervey.  I have previously mentioned how I was attracted to my maternal grandmother's Messerveys both for my own direct line genealogy and the history, chronological and social, that brought the Messervey name to life.     Delving into the Newfoundland history and discovering the Jersey presence going back to the late 1600s and early 1700s was enticing.  A bonus to the Newfoundland story was the discovery that the Messerveys, for the most part, settled in St George's Bay in the community of S...

Jure-Justiciers and more in the Island of Jersey   Week 2 of   #52ancestors   and the theme for the blog post is "Favourite Find", which can be interpreted in many ways.     It can be finding a mystery ancestor, coming across a great resource, discovering interesting moments of an ancestor's life.     So many choices, but I have to pick one.   Messervy is one of the oldest recorded surnames in Jersey.  Jersey has a long history, being part of the Duchy of Normandy from 933 to 1066, then in 1066 part of the Anglo-Norman world.  Jersey was ruled by Normandy until 1204, when it established its unique relationship with the United Kingdom as the Bailiwick of Jersey, a British crown dependency. [1]   Much of the structure of its governance emerged from Norman traditions, but today it is a mix of modern and traditional.  Why have I provided this little bit of history?  It is essential to introduce one fav...