[Bell Historians] Was Stedman really from Yarkhill?

[Chris Pickford]

We do know about Stedman's apprenticeship, which I once "found" in the published register of apprentices of the Stationers Company and thought I'd made a big discovery - until I learned that Bill Cook had also picked it up not long before I found it!! I was doing some research on the printing trade at the time, but it was a long time ago (perhaps late 1970s) and no longer have ready recall of the sources. But the apprenticeship register ought to be easily traceable. 

Details are in John Eisel's account of Stedman - the best up-to-date summary - in "Giants of the Exercise". Stedman was apprenticed to Daniel Pakeman,. a London Master printer, in 1956 and became free of the Stationers Company in 1663 at the end of his apprenticeship. The register would show, I'm sure, any others who were apprenticed to Pakeman (i.e. Wingate may be mentioned)

The following articles may be helpful in tracking down what we now know about Stedman, and in filtering out what is no longer believed to be true - past fictions and speculations that are hard to kill off, although now disproved!

"Fabian Stedman" by Frederick Sharpe in Ringing World 10 December 1971 p.1051 



"Fabian Stedman or, Little by Little" by John C. Eisel [New information on Stedman's career in publishing and printing, and an analysis of the early ringing textbooks with which he is associated] in Ringing World 14 May 2010 pp.489-91, 93



"Fabian Stedman, 1640-1730" by William T. Cook in Ringing World 29 October 1982 pp.900-901 



"The Stedman Family of Yarkhill" by John C. Eisel in Ringing World 21 May 1976 pp.429-30; "Fabian Stedman and his family at Yarkhill, Herefordshire" by Constance Purser in Ringing World 20 August 1976 pp.707-8 



"Fabian Stedman: The First Group Theorist?" by Arthur T. White in The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol.103, No.9 (November 1996), pp.771-778



"The Stedman Family" by the Rev. Eric Wood in Ringing World 12 July 2002 p.725 



"Who wrote the Tintinnalogia?" by Cyril A. Wratten in Ringing World 22 Nov, 1968 p.904  



Biographical account of Fabian Stedman in Chapter one "The Beginnings of Change Ringing" in John C. Eisel Giants of the Exercise: Some Notable Ringers of the Past (CCCBR, 1997) [no pagination]



CJP
           
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