Susanna Beaumont's Account Book c.1703-1714

This important document resides in West Yorkshire Archives where it has reference WBH/71. It has been copied and images of the pages can be seen on the historytoherstory website (see note below). I have been looking at the images recently.

The book used to belong to Mr Desmond Gilbart-Denham. He lent it to my father, who took some notes out of it. Box 14/051 in this archive contains my father's notes and Mr Gilbart-Denham's letter (June 1977) after my father returned the book to him.

The notes were useful but there was nothing like seeing the images of the pages!

Here was page 6, the first proper page of accounts of what Susanna spent:

(I deleted the image because West Yorkshire Archives (Kirklees) wanted me to pay)

I was struck both by the overall consistency of the writing and its similarity to that of the later antiquary R.H. Beaumont ("RHB").

I started looking some more, and found several things. I will just mention these:-

1. Near the beginning of the book there is some genealogical information which goes much later than Susannah's lifetime. These notes do look very like things that RHB did. And not what one would expect to find in a book of accounts.

2. Towards the end, it gets quite scrappy, with entries in two columns rather than one, and looking rather incomplete - the kind of thing a copyist might do if (a) his interest was fading, and (b) he could see that there was not enough room in the book to fit everything in.

3. On page 62 there is an interlineated entry identifying "Bro: Jack" as "her husband's brother." This is all in the same handwriting and would have read "my husband's brother" if Susanna herself had written it. Here was page 62:-

(I deleted the image because West Yorkshire Archives (Kirklees) wanted me to pay)

It would seem worth considering the possibility that this document is largely, perhaps entirely, a transcript by RHB, not an original autograph account book at all. If so, it doesn't make it much less important, does it?

Here was a page from near the end, to show the decline in standard of writing:

(I deleted the image because West Yorkshire Archives (Kirklees) wanted me to pay)

The lady whose accounts these are, is of course, Susanna 1683-1731 (nee Horton) the wife of Richard Beaumont of Lascelles Hall and Whitley c.1670-1723. She is my own ancestor, through her daughter Frances (Fanny) who married George Beaumont of Darton. Historytoherstory call her Suzanna Horton.

Desmond Gilbart-Denham was a descendant of the later Beaumonts and closely related to Miss Joan Barnes-Gorell, whose Beaumont portraits were left to the National Trust for Ormesby Hall. My father knew Miss Barnes-Gorell. I remember her very well too. That is no doubt the connexion explaining why the book was lent to my father.

Mr Gilbart-Denham's letter is dated 14 June 1977, from 12 Spencer Road, SW18, in a neat hand, it says:

"I will certainly send this book, together with the confirmation of the crest (which has now come to light), to the Museum in Huddersfield.  In fact, if it weren't for you, I should not have known that Huddersfield had a collection of Beaumont family papers etc. Thank you very much for your help and advice in this matter."

February / March 2019