As you can imagine the further back in time one travels, the tougher it gets to locate useful records! There are however times when a document surfaces that threads the story together. In this scenario, I was researching my Thomas Lambe family of Staplehurst, Kent.
The document that surfaced was the unselfish 1651 Will of Thomas’ step daughter, ‘Mary Butcher’. It was somewhat unusual for a woman to have a Will in this era and even more so, when one learns that she was just ‘19’ years old. It turned out that this Will was incredibly helpful in establishing the family dynamics.
