Following a recent talk on Dorset Justice of the 17th century a number of questions were raised. The Dorset Record Society book volume 14 ‘Dorset Quarter Session 1625 – 1638’ is a transcription of the earliest surviving Order Book for Dorset. It is a font of information on life in Dorset in the early 17th century before the Civil War. We cannot reproduce extracts from this book for copyright reasons, but here is a list of the names of the people in Milton Abbas who occur in the book.

The introduction to the book discusses the judicial and administrative roles of the court of Quarter Sessions. Also highly recommended is ‘Dorset Justice’, Terry Hearing, 1999, which explains terms such as Recognisance, tippler, maltster, Assizes, Petty Sessions, Justice of the Peace. There will be a presentation next season of the Milton Abbas Local History Group which will cover these topics specifically for Milton Abbas.

What the Milton Abbas Local History Group are doing

We have extracted all the occurrences of Milton Abbas people from the Dorset Quarter Sessions 1625 – 1638 book, their occupations and why they appeared in court  One of our members is extracting all occurrences of Milton Abbas from the other Dorset Quarter Sessions Order Books 2 to 8 which are available at the Dorset History Centre and available to view by subscribers to Ancestry. These books have not been published.

Another of our members has completed the extraction of books 9 to 12 which takes us up to 1804. These will be available to our members. Please contact us for more information.

Together with our complete transcriptions of all the extant Overseers of the Poor Account Books 1771 – 1836 we, and family history researchers, are able to tell the stories of many of the poor people who lived in Milton Abbas in the past. Our transcriptions are available to members only.