There has been a considerable growth in interest recently in local and family history. With the ever increasing popularity of such programmes as 'Time Team', 'The 1900 House', and 'The House Detectives' we are all the more keen to find out where we came from and what life was like for our ancestors or those who lived in our home town, city, or village prior to us. Do you know...What a dreng is? The origins of the word 'endorse'? When the first poll tax was levied? Who the Luddites were? Where the surname 'Chapman' came from? What mummers do at Christmas? What Gregory King did? The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History, now available for the first time in the Oxford Paperback Reference series, provides an authoritative and comprehensive reference work to all things associated with local and family history. With over 2,000 fully cross-referenced A-Z entries the Companion gives detailed summaries of the latest knowledge in such fields as social, urban, agricultural, legal, family, and ecclesiastical history. Covering a broad canvas from prehistory to the present day, and taking the whole of the British Isles, the Companion paints a vivid picture of past and present urban and rural life. The book also offers information on archives, how to use them and where they can be found, and defines terms most commonly known in the study of local and family history. Entries include: Individuals: writers, historians and social commentators, map makers, antiquarians and architects: 'Capability' Brown, John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Thomas Hardy, W. G. Hoskins, Richard Jefferies, Gertrude Jekyll, Samuel Pepys, E. P. Thompson; Institutions and organizations: the Armed Forces, the British Library, the British Records Society, the College of Arms, the Inns of Court, National Register of Archives, trade unions; Agriculture: agricultural history, Board of Agriculture, cattle, cheese trade, spades, vaccary; Economic history: canals, chemical industry, Industrial Revolution, industry and trade, lace-making, poll tax, quarrying, railways, rural depopulation, smelting; Society: back-to-back housing, Black Death, Chartism, marriage, middle class, population levels and trends, Speenhamland system, town walls Church history: baptism customs, bishops' registers, Catholic Emancipation Act, minster churches, pews, Unitarians, vicar; Themes: aerial archaeology, alchemy, diet, emigration, holidays, romantic love, suicide, Welsh names; Misc.: cucking stool, belief in fairies, furlong, geese, gypsies, highwaymen, infangentheof, knitting, liquorice, nickname, postcards, rabbits, Shrove Tuesday, wall paper, wife-selling; The breadth of coverage in this Companion makes this an indispensable guide for amateur and professional researcher alike, and provides a fascinating introduction to the subject for the local history enthusiast.