Cornelius Sadler (1794-1857) of Bristol and Newcastle upon Tyne

I’m currently living and working in the city of Bristol in south west England. With a few notable exceptions, my paternal ancestors are all from the north east, so I was surprised to discover that a four-times great grandparent was born in my adopted city.

My great-great-great-great grandfather Cornelius Sadler was baptised on Tuesday, 9 December 1794, at Holy Cross church in the parish of Temple, which lay in the part of Bristol south of the River Avon, in the historic county of Somerset. Cornelius’s father was also called Cornelius (a Biblical name which became popular in England from the 16th century onwards, possibly through Dutch influence); his mother was Ann.1

The ruins of Temple Church, Redcliffe, Bristol. 'The Leaning Tower of Bristol', its west tower has leaned 2.7° away from the vertical ever since its initial construction on soft clay in the 15th century. © Copyright Matt Gibson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The ruins of Temple Church, Redcliffe, Bristol. ‘The Leaning Tower of Bristol’, its west tower has leaned 2.7° away from the vertical ever since its initial construction on soft clay in the 15th century. © Copyright Matt Gibson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Temple Church was reduced to a ruin by the Luftwaffe on the night of 24 November 1940, when it took a direct hit from an incendiary bomb during the Bristol Blitz. The parish registers stored within the church were damaged by fire and by the water used to quell the flames, and the church itself was left an empty shell which is now a Grade II* listed monument.

While the original, damaged Temple parish registers (held at Bristol Archives) are not in a fit state for production, luckily the Diocese of Bristol’s transcripts of the records for the years including the baptism of my four-greats grandfather have been microfilmed.

On 13 March 1815, one Cornelius Sadler married Mary Harper at All Saints’ Church, Newcastle upon Tyne. Cornelius and his bride are both described as “of this parish” (i.e. at the time of their marriage they both lived in the parish of Newcastle All Saints, which included the eastern part of the city of Newcastle as well as the township of Byker on the other side of the Ouseburn Valley).2

Later records confirm that this is ‘my’ Cornelius Sadler, born in south Bristol in 1794. So far I have found no records that might help to explain what had brought him to a city hundreds of miles away from his birthplace, nor any definite further trace of his father, Cornelius Sadler senior, in Bristol* or elsewhere.

(*There is a record of a marriage of a Cornelius Sadler to an Elizabeth Bryant at St Nicholas’ Church, Bristol, in December 1810, but at the moment I have nothing to tell me whether this is a second marriage of Cornelius senior, a very early first marriage for Cornelius junior—he would have been only 16 years old at the time—or that of an unrelated person with the same, surprisingly common, name. More research needed.)3

Back in the north east, Mary Harper and Cornelius Sadler had seven children:2,4

  1. Mary, baptised 3 December 1815, Newcastle All Saints (N.A.S.)
  2. Isabella, b. 25 July 1818; bapt. 28 January 1821, N.A.S.
  3. James, bapt. 28 January 1821, N.A.S.
  4. Cornelius [III], b. 22 December 1822; bapt. 12 January 1823, N.A.S.
  5. Anne Charlotte, bapt. 21 January 1825, N.A.S.
  6. Tamar, bapt. 18 November 1827, N.A.S. – d. 1836 (aged 8)
  7. Thomas Mark, bapt. 22 September 1833, Aycliffe, County Durham

On their childrens’ baptism records the family are recorded as living in the Ouseburn area of east Newcastle – save their youngest child Thomas Mark Sadler, who was baptised in County Durham while the Sadlers were living in the village of Brafferton.4

Map of Ouseburn, Newcastle. Ordnance Survey six-inch map of Northumberland (sheet XCVII), 1864. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Map of Ouseburn, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Ordnance Survey six-inch map of Northumberland (sheet XCVII), 1864. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland. (The image has been edited and the River Tyne and Ouseburn River coloured blue for clarity.)

By the time of the 1841 census of England, the 47-year-old Cornelius, his wife Mary, and five of their seven children were back in Newcastle and living in Jesmond Vale, further up the Ouseburn Valley. Reflecting their baptism records, only Cornelius and his son (Thomas) Mark are enumerated in this census as not having been born in the county of Northumberland.5 Ten years later, the census return for 1851 confirms that Cornelius’s birthplace was Bristol.6

In both censuses and at all of his children’s baptisms, Cornelius was described as a flax dresser. This job involved separating and preparing the coarse fibres of flax or hemp with a tool called a heckle, so that it could be spun into linen fabric by weavers like my own Stainthorp ancestors. (This is also the origin of the verb ‘to heckle’ meaning for a member of an audience to shout derisory or disruptive comments at the speaker.)

My four-greats grandfather Cornelius Sadler died on 6 March 1857, at or near his home, in Stepney Bank, Newcastle. He was 63 years old.7,8

My three-greats grandfather was Cornelius’s fourth-eldest child and namesake, Cornelius Sadler [III] (1822-1882). He was a blacksmith, grocer and provision dealer, working out of premises on Lime Street, Ouseburn, for more than thirty years.812
This younger Cornelius married Jane Dixon Hall in Newcastle in 1844;13 they had ten children (five boys and five girls) including:

  • A son, Cornelius Sadler [IV] (1848-1909) – he became a blacksmith like his father and was the last to bear the name ‘Cornelius’ in this direct line, though the name crops up again in several collateral lines (i.e. nephews and grand-nephews); there are also separate dynasties of Sadlers in which Cornelius was a popular forename – in Wolverhampton, Sheffield, and Norfolk/Suffolk.
  • Identical twin boys, Mark Harper Sadler and Thomas Leighton Sadler, born 13 May 1855. M. H. Sadler (the elder twin by twenty minutes) was a real ‘local worthy’—serving as a member of the South Shields Board of Guardians, as an Alderman on the South Shields Town Council, as the representative for that town on the North-Eastern Sea Fisheries Committee, and as chairman of the South Shields Institute for the Blind and Blind Persons Act Committee—and a successful local businessman, as was his twin brother. In 1935 the twins celebrated their 80th birthday in South Shields; a family photograph taken on that occasion records a huge gathering of the surviving Sadler siblings along with dozens of children, grandchildren, etc. Mark Harper Sadler also wrote a very comprehensive ‘Chronicle of the Sadler family‘ in 1901, which has been very useful in confirming details of the bewildering number of Sadler cousins…14
  • A daughter, Annie Sadler, who ran a grocer’s shop in her own right before marrying currier Thomas Edward Heslop in 1894.13,15 Their own daughter, Jane Sadler Heslop, was my great grandmother. During WWI she was employed at the Armstrong-Whitworth engineering works in Elswick on the banks of the Tyne, and she was a keen musician, singer and amateur dramatist. Jennie Sadler Heslop married my great grandfather David Gray in Gosforth in 1921.16 She passed away in May 1979, just a couple of months after I was born.17
Sketch family tree of the Sadler family showing four generations named Cornelius.

Sketch family tree of the Sadler family
showing four generations named Cornelius.

Thanks to Bristol Archives and to the Bristol & Avon Family History Society for their assistance with local records.

Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com).
Version 1.0, updated 9 September 2018.

References

  1. Temple Church (Bristol, Somerset, England), bishop’s transcripts, microfiche, Bristol Archives.
  2. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “England, Durham Diocese Bishop’s Transcripts, 1639-1919”, digital images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org/ ; citing Durham University Library.
  3. St Nicholas’ Church (Bristol, Gloucestershire, England), parish registers, microfiche, Bristol Archives.
  4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Parish registers for Aycliffe, 1560-1919”, digital images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org/ ; citing Durham County Record Office.
  5. “1841 England Census”, digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ ; citing The National Archives, Kew.
  6. “1851 England Census”, digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ ; citing The National Archives, Kew.
  7. England and Wales, “GRO Online Index”, database, General Register Office, https://www.gro.gov.uk/ .
  8. Newcastle Journal, “British Newspapers 1710-1963”, digital images, Findmypast, http://www.findmypast.co.uk/ ; citing British Library.
  9. “1861 England Census”, digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ ; citing The National Archives, Kew.
  10. “1871 England Census”, digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ ; citing The National Archives, Kew.
  11. “1881 England Census”, digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ ; citing The National Archives, Kew.
  12. United Kingdom, “Find a will: Wills and Probate 1858 – 1996”, digital images, GOV.UK, https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#calendar ; citing National Probate Calendar.
  13. “FreeBMD”, digital images, FreeBMD, https://www.freebmd.org.uk/ ; citing General Register Office.
  14. Family artefacts, privately held by Paul Harland Stainthorp, [address for private use], Bristol, England, 2018.
  15. “1891 England Census”, digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ ; citing The National Archives, Kew.
  16. England and Wales, marriage certificate (certified copy), General Register Office, Southport.
  17. England and Wales, death certificate (certified copy), General Register Office, Southport.

Irish ancestry, or the lack of it

Earlier this year there was a genealogy idea doing the rounds online, tagged #MyColorfulAncestry. The suggestion, which originated with American genealogist J. Paul Hawthorne (GeneaSpy), was to create a five-generation pedigree/ancestry chart for your ancestors, using a Microsoft Excel template with the cells colour-coded according to each ancestor’s place of birth (U.S. state, or country).1

It’s an interesting way of showing the geographical spread of your ancestors over time. There were some very colourful examples – like this one – shared via social media, showing how people’s ancestors had migrated from many different lands and throughout the U.S.A.2

I joked that my own five-generation chart would not take long – every cell would be the same colour and would just read “England”. I could introduce more variety by labelling and colouring the cells according to the historic county of England in which each ancestor was born (over the last five generations, there would be nine: County DurhamDerbyshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Northumberland, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Yorkshire).

To reach my first non-English ancestor I would have to extend the chart to six generations so that it displayed my 32 great-great-great grandparents, including cordwainer (master shoe and boot maker) William Grady who was born in County Armagh in about 1830 or ’31.35 I am now fairly certain that William’s son Luke (O’)Grady (1867-????) was the mysterious absentee father of one of my great-grandparents.6 (I still don’t know what happened to Luke O’Grady after his child was born in 1888.)

This makes me about 3% Irish. When I started looking into my family history I had assumed – because of the extent of Irish immigration to Britain, and because my mother’s family name is an Irish surname (see below) – that I was going to find much more Irish ancestry, and more recently than the mid-C19th.

The #MyColorfulAncestry chart below covers seven generations. The top half is my ancestry back to three-greats grandparents; the bottom half shows my wife’s ancestors, who were also all born in England, making my children about 1.6% (1/64) Irish. Any lines that I have traced back further than my children’s four-greats grandparents have been wholly English. There may well be more Irish or other countries of origin in the lines I haven’t yet researched. There are Scottish names (notably Gray) amongst my paternal grandmother’s ancestors, but no proven connection to individuals born in Scotland.

Colour coded pedigree chart

Seven-generation pedigree chart colour-coded by birthplace
From an idea by J. Paul Hawthorne (GeneaSpy) #MyColorfulAncestry
Click on the image for a larger version.

I do not know when William Grady (or O’Grady) came to England. There are hundreds of people of that name in the 1841 + 1851 English censuses, including several Irish-born shoemakers of approximately the right age.7,8 The first definite sighting of William is at his marriage to Jane Spooner on 23 April 1859 at St George’s Church (C of E) in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire.9 According to the entry in the marriage register William was born around 1831 and that his father was James Grady, also a shoemaker. Later censuses (1861-’81) established that William was born in Ireland, in Armagh.35

There’s a good chance William left Ireland during the Great Famine between 1845 and 1852.10,11

St George's Church, Wolverhampton: now a branch of Sainsbury's © Copyright Roger Kidd and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

St George’s Church, Wolverhampton, where William Grady and Jane Spooner were married in 1859, is now a branch of Sainsbury’s. © Copyright Roger Kidd and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The National Library of Ireland has digitised its entire collection of Catholic parish registers and made them available for free, at: registers.nli.ie

I have only found one baptism entry in that collection for a William, son of James Grady or O’Grady in the whole of County Armagh around the right time period. This William was baptised on 3 May 1830 in Armagh City. His mother’s name was Mary Fitzsimmons or -simons. The father’s occupation was not recorded.12

The same James Grady and Mary Fitzsimmons also had a daughter, Jane Grady, baptised in Armagh on 10 January 1829. I cannot find a corresponding marriage for James and Mary.12

The baptism records above may well not relate to the family of ‘my’ William Grady. I have no way of knowing how many potential candidate baptism records have not survived (notoriously, many Irish records have not), or even whether William’s family were Catholic (an even higher proportion of the records of the Anglican Church of Ireland were destroyed – by fire, in 1922).13

Baptism of William Grady

Entry in the register of baptisms for William Grady, 3 May 1830, Armagh.
National Library of Ireland, reproduced under licence.

After William Grady and Jane Spooner were married in 1859 they moved initially to Lock Street in the city of Worcester.3 From 1867 onwards they were living back in Jane’s home town of Wolverhampton, at number 80, Temple Street.4,5,14,15 They had six children:

  • Ellen (b. 1860, Worcester – d. maybe 1900, Birmingham?)
  • Mark (b. 1862, Worcester – d. 1889, Newport, South Wales)
  • Martha (b. 1864, Worcester – d. ????)
  • Luke (b. 1867, Wolverhampton – d. ????)
  • Agnes (b. 1871, Wolverhampton – d. ????)
  • Winifred (b. 1876, Wolverhampton – d. 1930, Newhaven, Sussex)

Jane Grady née Spooner died in Wolverhampton in 1878 – William passed away five years later. He was fifty-three.14

You can see from the number of question marks in the list above that William and Jane’s children have a habit of disappearing without trace…

  • By 1891 Ellen was living in Camberwell, London, with her daughter Kathleen Turner (1887-????) and her sister Winifred (Winnie). I cannot find a marriage of Ellen (O’)Grady to Mr Turner. She may have died in Birmingham in 1900.14,16,17
  • Mark became a railway policeman with the G.W.R. and was posted to London then to Cardiff, Newport, and Crosskeys. He died in South Wales in 1889, aged twenty-seven.5,14,18
  • Martha was living in Lambeth, London in 1881, working as a professional dancer and lodging in the home of Edward Owden, clown(!) – she then disappears.5
  • Luke fathered a child in January 1888 – then disappears.6
  • Agnes was in Lambeth in 1891, working as a general servant. However ten years later she appears in Westminster, occupation: professional dancer (the same as her sister Martha twenty years before) – she then disappears.5,6
  • Winifred (Winnie) was living with her sister Ellen in 1891; six years later she married master grocer Austin James Horsley, settling down in Lambeth. They had a daughter, Elise Mary Horsley (1899-1993). Winifred died in Sussex in 1930.14,16,19,20

I have also traced the ancestry of my mother’s family name, Corr. My great grandfather Frank Corr was born an O’Grady (above)6 but used the name Corr throughout his life, giving it to his eleven children and thirteen of his grandchildren. Corr was the surname of Frank’s mother’s late husband, Edward Corr (1853-1887). Edward was also the first cousin of Frank O’Grady/Corr’s biological father, Luke O’Grady.

Edward was born in Wolverhampton in 1853 and worked as a machinist/turner and fitter in Birmingham before his early death.3,4,5,14 He married (Frank O’Grady/Corr’s mother) Emily Farley on 14 July 1872.21 Edward’s parents were Felix Corr (1834-1874) and Harriet Spooner.22

Harriet Spooner was the elder sister of Jane Spooner the wife of William Grady (above). On 27 December 1852 at St Peter’s Church in Wolverhampton she married file maker Felix Corr.23 Felix was born in about June 1834 in St Neots in Huntingdonshire and had moved to Wolverhampton to be apprenticed to a file maker, Elihu Price. His parents were another Felix Corr (about 1806-1838) and Emma Hancock.3,4,8,22

It’s very likely that Felix Corr, senior, was from Ireland – again, probably from Armagh. The surname Corr (Ir. Ó Corra) is particularly common in Ulster generally and in counties Tyrone and Armagh in particular.24

In Bradshaw’s 1819 Directory for Armagh City there is an entry for Felix Corr, huxter (i.e. hawker), of Castle Street.25

St Mary at Quay, Ipswich

St Mary at Quay, Ipswich, where Felix Corr (senior) and Emma Hancock were married in 1834. Now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust and home to a corporate events and ‘complementary therapies’ centre.
© Copyright Robert Edwards and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

On 1 April 1834 in the church of St Mary at Quay, Ipswich, Suffolk, Felix Corr and Emma Hancock were married. The witnesses were Emma’s sister Sophia Hancock and her future husband Shadrach Chaplin. (Sophia and Shadrach are ancestors of the actor Charlie Chaplin.)2628

Emma and Felix had two sons: Felix junior, and John, who died in infancy.14

Felix Corr, licensed hawker, died in Ipswich aged only thirty-two, of “decline”.29 His widow remarried in 1839; her new husband Peter McDonald was originally from Dundalk, County Louth and was also a hawker.7,8,14 Emma and Peter had a son, Michael McDonald, in 1840.14 The whole family including Emma’s son Felix Corr spent the next decade travelling round East Anglia, presumably engaged in hawking their wares.7,8

Michael McDonald later joined his half-brother Felix in the industrial West Midlands.5,17,19,20 The extended Corr/McDonald family were typical in one sense – huge numbers of Irish people migrated to Wolverhampton and Birmingham in the C19th, and Birmingham still has a large Irish community – but were unusual in coming to the West Midlands via rural East Anglia, which never had a big Irish population, and in their parents having been in England well before the huge wave of immigration from Ireland in the 1840s.30

Hancock sketch family tree

Sketch family tree of the Hancock, Chaplin, Corr, (O’)Grady and Spooner families.
Click on the image for a larger version.

References

  1. Hawthorne, J. Paul, “A Little Thing That Went Viral… #MyColorfulAncestry,” GeneaSpy, 26 March 2016 (http://www.geneaspy.com/ : accessed 3 October 2016).
  2. Last, Jana, “My Five Generation Birthplace Pedigree Chart,” Jana’s Genealogy and Family History Blog, 24 March 2016 (http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.co.uk/ : accessed 3 October 2016).
  3. “1861 England Census,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 18 December 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  4. “1871 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  5. “1881 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  6. England and Wales, birth certificate (certified copy); General Register Office, Southport.
  7. “1841 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  8. “1851 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  9. St George’s Church (Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England), parish registers; digital images, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 3 December 2014).
  10. Swift, Roger, editor, Irish migrants in Britain, 1815-1914: a documentary history (Cork University Press, 2002).
  11. Neal, Frank, Black ’47: Britain and the Famine Irish (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998).
  12. St Patrick’s Cathedral (Armagh, County Armagh, Ireland), parish registers; digital images, National Library of Ireland (http://registers.nli.ie/ : accessed 3 December 2014).
  13. “‘All Irish genealogical records were destroyed in the 1922 fire’: Myth or fact?” Irish Genealogy Toolkit (http://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/irish-records-burned.html : 5 October 2016).
  14. “FreeBMD,” digital images, FreeBMD (http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ : accessed 29 March 2016); General Register Office, Southport.
  15. Birmingham Post, 20 July 1880, p. 5.
  16. St Mark’s Church (Kennington, London, England), parish registers; digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 25 April 2016).
  17. “1891 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  18. “UK, Railway Employment Records, 1833-1956,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 26 April 2016); The National Archives, Kew.
  19. “1901 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  20. “1911 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  21. All Saints’ Church (Hockley, Warwickshire, England), parish registers; digital images, Ancestry.
  22. St Mary’s Church (Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England), parish registers; digital images, Findmypast.
  23. St Peter’s Church (Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England), parish registers; digital images, Findmypast.
  24. Grenham, John, Irish Ancestors – Irish Surnames (https://www.johngrenham.com/surnames/ : accessed 5 October 2016).
  25. Brown, Sharon Oddie, “Bradshaw’s 1819 Directory for Armagh City,” transcription, 23 June 2008, The Silver Bowl (http://www.thesilverbowl.com/ : 20 March 2015).
  26. Church of St Mary at Quay (Ipswich, Suffolk, England), banns; Suffolk Record Office, Lowestoft.
  27. Church of St Mary at Quay (Ipswich, Suffolk, England), bishop’s transcripts; Suffolk Record Office, Lowestoft.
  28. Suffolk Record Office, research service report, 5 October 2015, ref. 9/1/S/KEM.
  29. England and Wales, death certificate (certified copy); General Register Office, Southport.
  30. Swift, Roger and Gilley, Sheridan, editors, The Irish in Victorian Britain: the local dimension (Four Courts Press, 1999).

"A worthy dragsman, and a fat ’un" – my ancestor Isaac Batten, the archetype of the ‘swell coachman’

Stage coachman by George Cruikshank

‘Stage Coachman’ by George Cruikshank, The Gentleman’s Pocket Magazine, 1827.

This post is about my five-greats grandfather Isaac Batten (1790-1843). A minor celebrity of his day, as driver of the London-Cambridge stagecoach ‘The Times’ he helped to establish the early 19th century stereotype of the big, fat, Cockney, hard-drinking ‘swell’ coach driver or dragsman; a popular stock character that later appeared in works by both Charles Dickens and Walt Disney.

After hanging up his coachman’s whip in 1840 Isaac became a publican, just like his fictional counterpart in the Pickwick Papers. The doors of his old pub in north-west Essex are still open today.

Isaac Batten was born circa 1790,(1) probably in London.* Although I have not found a baptism record or any other document that explicitly names Isaac’s parents, it’s likely that his father was another Isaac Batten (born 1772), coachman, of Chelsea, and that his mother was called Mary. He also had a younger brother, Charles (1802-1880).(2)

(*That said, there is also a baptism of Isaac Batten, son of Isaac and Mary, in Freshford, Somerset, at the very end of 1789…)(3)

Either way, Isaac certainly had connections to London. Aged twenty-one he married Charlotte Mortimer (1789-1835) at St James’s Church, Paddington, on 30 May 1811.(4) There was an Isaac Batten paying tax in London as late as 1815.(5)

Charlotte & Isaac had six children, all easy to trace thanks to their parents’ distinctive choice of names:

  • Alfred Mortimer Batten (1811-1869)
  • Mary Anne Charlotte Batten (1817-1893)
  • William Wallace Batten (1819-1870)
  • Edward Charles Townshend Batten (1821-1895)
  • Frederick Adolphus Batten (1823-1826)
  • Georgiana Maria Batten (1825-1903)
Caricature of the swell coachman, 1832

Caricature of ‘the swell coachman’ from The Gallery of Comicalities (Part II), satirical print, London, 1832.
© The Trustees of the British Museum and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The first mention of Isaac’s occupation is in 1819 when, while living on Abington Street in Northampton, Charlotte & Isaac Batten, coachman, had their first two children baptised at the church of St Giles in the county town.(6) Their eldest son Alfred had been born in London (Clerkenwell or possibly Marylebone) just before his parents were married – but was baptised in Northampton aged eight.(6,7,8)

The term ‘coachman’ could mean a driver of one of several different classes of vehicle: privately-owned coaches, long-distance stagecoaches, and Hackney carriages. But at the baptism of his third child, Isaac’s job description was more specific: in the register for the parish of Welford, Northants, in 1819, he was recorded as a mail coachman.(9)

The introduction, thirty-five years earlier, of coaches which carried passengers in addition to the Royal Mail’s deliveries under armed guard, had revolutionised long-distance transport in England. Faster, less crowded, cleaner and safer (though more expensive) than private stagecoaches, the mail coach was the first reliable timetabled public transport service. The coachman – a tough, rough-and-ready, hail-fellow-well-met endurance sportsman, capable of driving through the night at breakneck speed and remaining cheerful throughout – rapidly became a kind of modern folk hero.

There is an excellent sketch description of the ‘coachey’ in The Gentleman’s Pocket Magazine (1827):(10)

“The stage coachman is a careless, jolly dog, in the very nature of whom there is something that smacks, like his own whip, of the dignity of monarchs. He is the elect of the road on which he travels … as he bowls along the road, with rubicund nose, and bang up benjamin [overcoat].

“Listen to the untutored melody of his voice as he preaches the word of exhortation to his tits [horses], and enforces his doctrine with the whip…

“Survey his importance. To some he gives a cool nod; to others a smile of recognition: but thrice happy is he who is honoured with a passing word.

“He has commonly a broad, full face, curiously mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin; he is swelled into jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity of coats, in which he is buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his heels. His waistcoat is commonly of some bright colour, striped, and his small-clothes extend far below the knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which reach about half way up his legs.

“All this costume is maintained with much precision; he has a pride of having his clothes of excellent materials; and, notwithstanding the seeming grossness of his appearance, there is still discernible that neatness and propriety of person, which is almost inherent in an Englishman.

“Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back, thrusts his hands in the pockets, rolls in his gait, talks slang, and is an embryo coachey.”

The Gentleman’s Pocket Magazine (London: Joseph Robins, 1827)

There’s some evidence that the compelling composite individual described above was based – at least in part – on my five-greats grandfather. Or, at the very least, that Isaac Batten’s appearance and demeanor fitted the existing stereotype so perfectly that he became the living embodiment of the ‘swell coachman’ and helped to popularise a new stock character in English literature and caricature.

Tony Weller by Kyd

Tony Weller (from Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers) by Joseph Clayton Park (Kyd), 1899. Image in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (More depictions of the veteran coachman and publican can be found on The Victorian Web.)

“COPIED FROM A TOMB-STONE IN A
BURIAL-GROUND NEAR CAMBRIDGE.

“A rum but steady driver,
Quite happy – sans a stiver,
In box-coat e’er attired,
As rough as heart desired.
Sang, drank and smok’d he,
The droll compound us’d to be
Of sense, of nonsense, and of drollery.
Pray for the soul of Isaac Batten,
A worthy dragsman, and a fat ’un.”

Northampton Mercury, 8 May 1830.

The above poem by an anonymous author was published without comment in a local newspaper, under a title which suggested it had been taken from a real gravestone.(11)

I don’t believe it really was – Isaac Batten was alive and well in 1830 and at the peak of his notoriety, and the humour seems a little coarse and inappropriate for a genuine memorial inscription in the first half of the 19th century. The somewhat puerile rhyme Batten / fat ’un was perhaps too obvious to resist, and it’s telling that essentially the same joke was made in another satrirical poem about well-known coach drivers, written by ‘Rowton’ (pseudonym of some Cambridge wag) and published in another newspaper earlier the same year.(12) I suspect that the ‘tomb-stone’ poem was just a vehicle for a cheap pun on Isaac’s surname and a joke at the expense of his expanse.

(Alternatively, it’s possible that this really was a genuine headstone inscription and that it referred not to the Isaac Batten who was alive in 1830, but to another Isaac Batten – probably his own father – who was also a coachman, and whose burial record has not yet been discovered…)

Now seated in my glory

‘Now seated in my glory’ by Isaac Cruikshank, circa 1811. (The title is a reference to a popular play, ‘The mail-coach‘, first performed in 1795.)
© The Trustees of the British Museum and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

It seems that an important part of a coachman’s public persona was the capacity for the intake of impressive amounts of alcohol. Partly this must have been necessary to keep warm on top of a speeding mail coach in the middle of a winter’s night! Partly it must have resulted from their working ungodly hours and taking all of their meals in coaching inns. Partly there seems to have been a sense of pride amongst coachmen in having, and displaying, huge appetites for wine, women, tobacco, roast beef, and song.

Mail Coach Pillar

Mail coach pillar, near Llandovery.
© Copyright shirokazan and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

​There is a memorial to the inevitable result of all this boozing at the reins, on the A40 between Sennybridge and Llandovery in Wales. On the night of 19 December 1835, mail coachman Edward Jenkins – well refreshed after a lightning-quick change of horses at the most recent coaching inn – overturned at full gallop and plummeted down 121 feet of Welsh hillside, his coach smashed to smithereens at the bottom.

Incredibly, no-one was killed or seriously hurt. A memorial pillar was erected in 1841 on the spot of Jenkins’ accident as a permanent warning against intoxication on the turnpike – the world’s first ever anti-drink-driving campaign.(13)

By the middle of the 1820s, our Isaac Batten and his wife Charlotte had moved from Northamptonshire to the university town of Cambridge and set up home in Brunswick Place (in a fairly well-to-do part of town near Midsummer Common, inhabited by lawyers, solicitors, surgeons and other professionals), where they added three more children to their family.(1418)

In Cambridge, Isaac became very well known as the driver of ‘The Times’ mail coach which ran the prestigious London-Cambridge route. The Times left Cambridge from the famous Eagle pub on Bene’t Street at 6 o’clock every morning (Sundays excepted), and ran down through Essex via Great Chesterford, Hockerill (Bishop’s Stortford) and Epping, reaching the George and Blue Boar Inn, Holborn, in under seven hours. The return coach left London at 3pm and was expected back in Cambridge by 9 o’clock.(19)

There is an explanation – of sorts – of Isaac’s move from Northampton to Cambridge, in the April 1829 edition of the Sporting Magazine.(20) (I say ‘of sorts’ because it’s written in such dense, late-Regency era sportsman’s slang, full of quotations from the classics, sporting jargon, double entendres, in-jokes, and nose-tap references to obscure people and places, that it’s a bit difficult to determine the exact story.)

It appears that Isaac was operating the ‘Rising Sun’ coach out of Northampton while its usual driver, John Topham, was in the infirmary having broken his leg. When Topham was fit enough to return to the driver’s box, Isaac Batten found himself unemployed. For a while he drove the Cambridge-Fakenham night mail (the ‘Fakenham Ghost‘), before being “brought out of darkness into light… and enthroned upon the bench of the Times, a situation every way calculated to call forth his energies and skill.”(20)

Isaac took over the reins of the Times from another celebrity dragsman called Bob Poynter, “a first-rate artist indeed – who, but for lifting his right hand to excess, must have been there to this day”. In other words, Bob Poynter had fallen victim to the coachman’s occupational hazard – rampant alcoholism.(20)

After Isaac took over the Times, he was supported by a second driver called Fawcett, formerly of the ‘Norwich Day’.(20) Mr Fawcett was a character in his own right: an accomplished classicist, an expert in Latin verse, and fond of shouting out, as he barrelled the Times down Bishopsgate Street, an apocalyptic line from Addison’s Cato:

“Here we go! Amidst the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds!”

Sporting Magazine, April 1829, p. 418.

The Cambridge Telegraph mail coach

The ‘Cambridge Telegraph’, a competing London-Cambridge coach, which ran from the White Horse, Holborn. Hand-coloured aquatint, 1825.
© The Trustees of the British Museum and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The Times was popular with both students of the university and London sportsmen (even Charles Darwin mentions having come down to Cambridge on the Times in a letter in 1829),(21) its drivers Batten and Fawcett quickly gaining a reputation as two of the most skilled and entertaining of the many hell-for-leather dragsmen operating along the Cambridge road.(22)

“EXPEDITIOUS TRAVELLING.—We had an opportunity, last Monday, of comparing the speed of the Cambridge Old Times Coach with that of the Southampton Telegraph, and are bound in fairness, to give the “palm” to the former, which for general appointments, excellence of tits [horses], and superiority of tooling [driving], by the Swell Dragsman, Isaac Batten, exceeds anything we have hitherto witnessed on the road. We left Shoreditch Church at half-past three, drank tea at the Crown, at Hockerell, and arrived at the Eagle, at Cambridge, precisely at nine; thus, doing the whole distance, 58 miles, stoppages included, in five hours and a half.”

Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 18 March 1827.

Clearly the mail coachmen revelled in excess speed on the highway (and, you suspect, had a fairly cavalier attitude when it came to the safety of other road-users). However, Isaac Batten was careful to appear suitably contrite when in October 1830 he was hauled up in front of Bow Street Magistrates to answer to a charge of furious driving. Racing a fully-loaded Times against another stagecoach for several miles through Essex, Isaac had overturned a gig, injuring its driver. He pleased guilty at once, accepted the magistrate’s warning that next time he could be up on a manslaughter charge, paid the hefty 10-guinea fine there and then, and was on his way.(23)

The Coachman from Disney's Pinocchio

‘The Coachman’ from Disney’s Pinocchio (1940). Walt Disney’s interpretation of Collodi’s original character L’Omino (‘The Little Man’) from Le avventure di Pinocchio (1883) was influenced by the ‘swell coachman’ trope of English caricature – most noticeably, in his Cockney accent and box-coat attire.
© The Walt Disney Company. This low-resolution screenshot has been reproduced here for the purposes of criticism or review.

Isaac’s wife Charlotte Batten died at her home in Cambridge on 24 March 1835, aged forty-six.(15,24) Isaac carried on as lead driver of the Times for about another five years. The newly-developed railways had begun to carry mail in and out of London in the 1830s, and by the end of that decade the writing was on the wall for the mail coach service, which could not hope to compete with the train on price, speed, capacity, comfort or safety.

While some dragsmen did find employment on the railways, the widowed Isaac Batten followed another well-trodden path for ex-coacheys and took over the licence of an inn. On 2 June 1840, Isaac organised a sale of all his household goods and furniture from Brunswick Place (including his four-poster bed, carpets, tables and chairs, glass and china, his night-commode, and a collection of stuffed birds…)(17) and placed the following advertisement in several local papers:(25)

QUEEN’S HEAD INN, LITTLEBURY, ESSEX.

“ISAAC BATTEN, (Late coachman to “The Times,”)

“BEGS respectfully to inform the Nobility and Gentry of the University and Town of Cambridge, and those of the county of Essex, and the public in general, that he has taken the above Inn, which is situate near the domain of Lord Braybrooke, and is about 14 miles from Cambridge, hoping by strict attention to their comfort and convenience, combined with moderate charges, to merit a share of their patronage and support.

“N.B.—Dinners ready on the shortest notice, and on the most reasonable terms.

“WINES, of every description, and of the finest quality, good Stabling, Lock-up Coach Houses, and Loose Boxes for Horses.”

Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, 6 June 1840.

The Queen’s Head in Littlebury near Saffron Walden, Essex, was established in the 15th century and is still going strong in 2016 (www.thequeensheadinn.net). Isaac was clearly trading off his ‘swell’ reputation as a coachman, perhaps hoping to attract some of his former passengers – ideally those with money to spend on fine wines, rich food, and their horses – to his new venture. It’s possible to see a parallel with the late-20th-century cliché of the sports star (maybe an American baseball legend) retiring and opening his own bar where he and his customers can reminisce and relive the glory days. Certainly the Queen’s Head under Isaac Batten became popular with the huntin’ and shootin’ fraternity, and Isaac appears the picture of the genial host, keeping the “toast and song passing freely round” till late into the night.(26)

Littlebury, Queens Head

Queen’s Head Inn, Littlebury, Essex.
© Copyright Dayoff171, all rights reserved.

Three of Isaac’s children – Mary Anne, Charles, and Georgiana – appear in the 1841 census for the parish of Littlebury; the occupation of all three was innkeeper. In the same household was Mary Willmott, aged sixty-seven, also an innkeeper. Isaac himself was not enumerated – where was he on census night? – and a household of only four people seems oddly depleted for a busy coaching inn in June – were there no guests? – no servants or stableboys?(27)

On 12 April 1843, at the age of just fifty-three, Isaac Batten suffered a fatal cerebral apoplexy (i.e. a stroke) at his pub in the village of Littlebury. He was buried back in Cambridge at the Holy Trinity Church, just a couple of streets away from his old coaching base at the Eagle.(1,15,28,29)

It’s tempting to assume that Isaac’s relatively early death was a result of his lifestyle: the alcohol intake; the obesity. However at least one of Isaac & Charlotte’s children also died young of apoplexy – perhaps the Battens were at an increased risk of stroke through some genetic factor.

In the September after Isaac died, his son Charles Batten placed a newspaper advert offering up the lease of the Queen’s Head.(30) The same year an Act of Parliament was passed which paved the way for a railway connection between London and Cambridge. The heyday of the mail coach was over, though the speed and flair of the Times and her driver would be fondly remembered by those who had travelled in her:

“MANY must still be living who can remember those good ‘old coaching days,’ when the box-seat of a well-appointed conveyance was considered one of the most enviable of places, and when the coachman happened to be popular, and would hand over the ‘ribbons’ to some ‘gentleman dragsman,’ fresh from Oxford or Cambridge. Many a five-shilling piece, or even a sovereign, was his reward for endangering his passengers’ lives.

“To go back some forty years, when two of the best-appointed coaches of the day, the ‘Times Cambridge,’ and the ‘Cambridge Fly,’ one driven by Batten, the other by Fawcett, both celebrated men of that day. It is of the ‘Times’ we have to speak. On its panels was written Tempus fugit;’ by no means wrongly applied, for the journey from London to Cambridge, fifty-three miles, was completed within five hours; and it performed the wonderful feat, when running opposition to the ‘Fly,’ of changing horses and driving in and out the yard, of that (in those good old times) celebrated inn Epping Place, in the all but incredible space of one minute! These were pleasant days, gone, alas! never to return.

(‡Tempus fugit – ‘The Times flies’ – another pun.)

Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, 1881, vol. XXXVI, p. 34.

Louth to London mail coach

Illustration of the Louth to London mail coach
being loaded on to the back of a train, pre-1845.
© Copyright The Postal Museum, all rights reserved.

Isaac Batten’s eldest child, my four-greats grandfather Alfred Mortimer Batten, was born in London (Clerkenwell or Marylebone) on 23 April 1811, but baptised in Northampton at the age of eight.(6,7,8)

On 16 November 1842 in Swaffham, Norfolk, Alfred married farmer’s daughter Mary Ann Buck:32 they had nine children. At first, living in Brandon on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, Alfred, following in his father’s footsteps, was a coachman – then, like many recently-redundant coacheys he found work as a railway guard, in London. Around 1855, Alfred and his growing family moved north to Liverpool, where in another change of career he became a pawnbroker. He was presumably supported in this by his uncle, Isaac Batten’s brother Charles, who was already in that trade in Liverpool.(7,8)

Alfred M. Batten died at his home in Ashton Street, Liverpool, on 15 March 1869; he is buried in Toxteth Park Cemetery.(1,33,34) Alfred’s own eldest child, my three-greats grandmother, was named Charlotte Georgiana Maria Batten after her grandmother and aunt. She married wholesale clothier John Burrows in 1859; the couple lied on the marriage register to cover up the fact that Charlotte was barely fifteen years old.(35)

Charlotte & John Burrows had a large family – twelve children including my great-great grandmother, Patti Lilian Burrows;(36) Patti’s daughter Marion Curry married master butcher Henry Harland Stainthorp in 1928.(35)

Isaac Batten family tree

Sketch family tree showing my descent from Isaac Batten & Charlotte Mortimer.
Click on the image for a larger version.

Of Charlotte & Isaac Batten’s other five children:

Mary Anne Charlotte Batten was born in Northampton on 17 November 1817 and baptised there just before her second birthday.(6) She was recorded in the 1841 census as an innkeeper in Littlebury.(27) Two years later, shortly after the death of her father, she married a barrister, William Beresford, who became a county court judge in Carmarthenshire.(34,37) She died in 1893 in Machynlleth registration district.(38)

Kelsboro Ware Toby Jug

Kelsboro Ware coachman Toby Jug, 1950s. “In box-coat e’er attired,
As rough as heart desired.”

William Wallace Batten was born and baptised in Welford, Northamptonshire, at the end of 1819.(9) On 15 January 1839, aged nineteen, he entered into service with Her Majesty’s Board of Excise and was posted to Ireland.(18) He married twice and had four daughters.(39) (One small oddity: at both of his marriages in Ireland, William’s father’s name is recorded as Isaac Smith Batten. Where did the ‘Smith’ come from? Isaac has no middle name on any other record he appears in.) On 2 July 1870, at his desk in the Custom House, Dublin, William Batten suddenly fell backwards without uttering a word, dead of apoplexy at fifty years old. He is buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.(3942)

Edward Charles Townshend Batten, known as Charles. Born in London on 18 September 1821,(7) he was baptised at the church of St Andrew the Less, Cambridge, in January 1828 aged six.(14) He was recorded in the 1841 census as an innkeeper in Littlebury.(27) Along with his uncle Charles and brother Alfred, Charles Batten was a pawnbroker in Liverpool.(7) He married twice and died in Eastcote, Northamptonshire, on 6 September 1895.(36,43)

Frederick Adolphus Batten was born in 1823 in Cambridge. He died shortly before his third birthday.(14,15)

Georgiana Maria Batten, born in Cambridge on 18 November 1825. For some reason she was baptised twice at the same church (St Andrew the Less, Cambridge) – once in December in the year of her birth, then again in January 1828 alongside her elder brother Charles.(14) She was recorded in the 1841 census as an innkeeper in Littlebury.(27) She married twice and had two daughters; both sadly died in childhood. Georgiana herself died in Southport registration district on 10 September 1903 and was buried in Toxteth Park Cemetery in Liverpool.(34,36)

I would like to thank a distant cousin T. F. C. Batten whose own research established the link between Isaac Batten of Northampton/Cambridge and his likely parents Isaac and Mary in London; also for the fantastic and generous hoard of digitised documents, articles, and ideas. Thanks also to the members of the RootsChat family history forum for suggestions for further research.

Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com).
Version 1.2, updated 18 November 2017.

References

  1. England and Wales, death certificate (certified copy); General Register Office, Southport.
  2. Personal e-mail; privately held by the author.
  3. “FreeReg,” database, FreeReg (http://www.freereg.org.uk/ : accessed 2 September 2016).
  4. St James’ Church (Paddington, London, England), parish registers; digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 2 October 2015).
  5. “London, England, Land Tax Records, 1692-1932,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 29 June 2016); London Metropolitan Archives.
  6. St Giles’ Church (Northampton, Northamptonshire, England), parish registers; digital images.
  7. “1851 England Census,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 18 December 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  8. “1861 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  9. St Mary’s Church (Welford, Northamptonshire, England), parish registers.
  10. The Gentleman’s Pocket Magazine; and album of literature and fine arts (London: Joseph Robins, 1827); digital images, Hathi Trust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/ : accessed 9 May 2016).
  11. Northampton Mercury, 8 May 1830.
  12. Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 17 January 1830.
  13. Watkins, Graham, Mail coach monument, 8 March 2011 (http://www.grahamwatkins.info/ : accessed 26 September 2016).
  14. “Cambridgeshire Baptisms,” database, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 23 May 2016); Cambridgeshire Family History Society.
  15. “Cambridgeshire Burials,” database; Cambridgeshire Family History Society.
  16. “UK, Poll Books and Electoral Registers, 1538-1893,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 19 December 2015); London Metropolitan Archives and Guildhall Library.
  17. Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, and Huntingdonshire Gazette, 30 May 1840.
  18. William Wallace Batten. Entry papers for service as an Excise man. The National Archives, Kew, ref. CUST 116/6/21.
  19. The Cambridge University calendar for the year 1829 (printed by J. Smith for J. & J.J. Deighton, 1829).
  20. Sporting Magazine, April 1829, vol. XXIII N.S., no. CXXXIX, pp. 414-419.
  21. Larkham, Anthony W. D., A natural calling: life, letters and diaries of Charles Darwin and William Darwin Fox (Springer, 2009)
  22. Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 18 March 1827.
  23. Courier [London], 23 October 1830.
  24. Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, and Huntingdonshire Gazette, 27 March 1835.
  25. ibid., 6 June 1840.
  26. Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 21 March 1841.
  27. “1841 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  28. Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, and Huntingdonshire Gazette, 15 April 1843.
  29. Essex Standard and General Advertiser [Colchester], 21 April 1843.
  30. Chelmsford Chronicle, 1 September 1843.
  31. Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, 1881, vol. XXXVI, p. 34.
  32. Church of St Peter and St Paul (Swaffham, Norfolk, England), parish registers; digital images, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 26 September 2016).
  33. Liverpool Mercury, 20 March 1869, p. 5.
  34. Anderson, Robert and Anderson, Rose, Toxteth Park Municipal Cemetery inscriptions (http://www.toxtethparkcemeteryinscriptions.co.uk/ : accessed 3 October 2015).
  35. England and Wales, marriage certificate (certified copy); General Register Office, Southport.
  36. “1891 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  37. St Luke’s Church (Chelsea, London, England), parish registers; digital images.
  38. “FreeBMD,” digital images, FreeBMD (http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ : accessed 29 March 2016); General Register Office, Southport.
  39. Ireland, Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, “Civil Records,” digital images, Irish Genealogy (https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/ : accessed 2 October 2016).
  40. Evening Freeman [Dublin], 4 July 1870.
  41. “Calendars of Wills and Administrations 1858 – 1920,” digital images, The National Archives of Ireland (http://www.willcalendars.nationalarchives.ie/ : accessed 2 October 2016).
  42. “Dublin Headstones,” digital images, Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives (http://www.igp-web.com/IGPArchives/ire/dublin/photos/tombstones/ : accessed 1 October 2015).
  43. “Find a will: Wills and Probate 1858 – 1996,” digital images, Gov.UK (https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/ : accessed 1 July 2015); National Probate Calendar.

A Black dynasty: the Lincolnshire descendants of John Black of Doncaster in the County of York

I’m writing up my notes about my wife’s ancestors the Black family of Lincolnshire for a relative who is visiting England next year.

John Black & Eleanor Martin

The story begins in 1773, in the Lincolnshire village of Carlton-le-Moorland, half way between the market town of Newark-on-Trent and the city of Lincoln, with the birth of a child. On 7 March that year, a girl was baptised in Carlton at the village church of St Mary’s, her name entered into the register as:

Black mark

Black mark – the mark of John Black
of Doncaster in the County of York“, his marriage bond, 11 March 1773. Reproduced from the original held at Lincolnshire Archives.

“Fanny, Illegitimate Dr of John Black & E. Martin”.1

Four days later, no doubt under pressure from the Martin family and from the church, the girl’s father John Black obtained a marriage bond from the Diocese of Lincoln: this allowed him to marry Eleanor Martin on 12 March 1773 in Carlton-le-Moorland without the usual reading of Banns… on pain of forfeiting £200 to the diocese if the marriage turned out not to be valid.1,2

(Spelling being much more variable in the 18th century than it is today, Eleanor Martin’s name was sometimes written as “Hellen”, and she herself signed the marriage register using the spelling “Ellner”. John Black made an “X”.)1

While Eleanor was resident in the parish of Carlton-le-Moorland, John Black had come from Doncaster in Yorkshire, forty-odd miles to the north. Like most working men in England in the time before the industrial revolution, John was an agricultural labourer.

After they were married, John and Eleanor had two sons in Carlton:1

  • George (1780)
  • William (1784)

John Black died in Carlton-le-Moorland in 1803. He was 57 years old when he died, which places his birth around the year 1746.1 I haven’t yet traced John’s early life in Doncaster before he came to Lincolnshire. He may have been born and baptised there, or like many agricultural labourers he may have moved from parish to parish, securing work at annual hiring fairs before eventually settling down.

William Black & Ann Eato

At some point before or following the death of John Black, his family moved to the village of Waddington, eight miles from Carlton-le-Moorland on the road to Lincoln. I haven’t been able to find out what happened to Eleanor and John’s first child – their daughter Fanny – but their two sons George and William Black both became successful farmers in Waddington. (Eleanor herself died in Waddington in 1827 at the age of 82 and was buried back in her home village of Carlton-le-Moorland.)1

The elder son George married Mary Hammond on 16 May 1809 at the old parish church of St Michael in Waddington.3 (This old twelfth-century church no longer exists – it was destroyed on the night of 8 May 1941 by a bomb intended for the nearby RAF base.)4 George and Mary had two sons (George and John); the family farmed land on the manor of Mere Hospital, east of the village of Waddington though now cut off from it by the huge airbase at RAF Waddington. George Black died in November 1846.3,5

St. Michael's, Waddington, Lincolnshire

The new St Michael’s Church, Waddington, built in 1954 as a replacement for the twelfth-century church destroyed during WWII.
© Copyright Brian and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

John and Mary’s younger son William married Ann Eato on 17 May 1821 in Waddington. “Eato” is an unusual old East Midlands surname subject to more than the usual amount of spelling variation – for example on William and Ann’s entry in the marriage register it is spelt “Aitoo”.3

OS six-inch map of Waddington and Mere, 1887

Ordnance Survey six-inch map
of Waddington and Mere, 1887,
showing the manor of Mere Hospital.  
National Library of Scotland.

Ann came from Wellingore and was the daughter of Joseph Eato and Mary Codling.6 Ann and William Black had eight children in Waddington village:3

  • Eleanor [or El(l)en, or Helena!] (1822)
  • William (1825)
  • Joseph (1826)
  • Mary (1828)
  • John (1830)
  • George I (1832 – died in infancy)
  • George II (1833)
  • Ann (1837 – died in infancy)

By now you will have spotted the repetition of names across the last two generations. This seems to be a particular feature of the Black family – until the early 20th century they were very conservative in following the traditional practice of naming sons after fathers, uncles and grandfathers; daughters after mothers, aunts and grandmothers. All families did this to a certain extent, but in farming families like the Blacks the custom seems to have been followed rigidly. It can make it difficult to trace individuals when, for example, there are four George Blacks on the go in the same village at the same time…

Black family tree (part 1)

Sketch family tree of the Black family (part 1).
Click on the image for a larger version.

William and Mary Black, with two of their six surviving children, appear in the 1851 census of England in the parish of Waddington. William – aged 66 and born in Carlton-le-Moorland – is listed as a cottager or smallholding farmer of 8½ acres – this is the land the Blacks were known to farm at Mere Hospital.7

When William died on 17 May 1856 he was 71 years old. In his will, proved at the Consistory Court of Lincoln on 6 June that year, William specified that the 8½ acres of copyhold land he held of the manor of Mere Hospital be made available for the use of his wife Ann for the rest of her life or until she remarried, then divided amongst their six living children (sons William, Joseph, John and George; daughters Elen and Mary).8 William’s wife Ann Black née Eato died one year after her husband, in June 1857.3

All of William and Ann’s children lived out their entire lives in rural Lincolnshire – except one. Their youngest son George Black (born in 1833) – named after an older sibling who sadly lived for less than a fortnight – was apprenticed to a joiner in his home village, but left Lincolnshire for the Chorlton area of industrial Manchester, where he became a beer retailer.7,9 He died in Manchester in 1868.10,11

William Black & Mary Robinson

William Black’s second child and eldest son with his wife Ann was named William Black after his father.

William the younger was baptised at Waddington St Michael’s on 1 May 1825.3 This William was born at a time of agricultural revolution in England, as a wide variety of new machinery was developed and new efficient methods of farming introduced. By the time William senior died in 1856, the proportion of the British population working in agriculture was under 22% – lower than in any other country in the world.12

On 8 July 1851 – three months after he was enumerated on the 1851 census as an agricultural labourer, living with his parents in Waddington – William Black married Mary Robinson at her home parish church of All Saints, Nettleham.13 Mary’s parents were William Robinson and Jane Clayton. The Robinsons were originally from Rampton in Nottinghamshire but had been living in Nettleham since the 1820s.7,13

The signatures of William Black and Mary Robinson

The signatures of William Black & Mary Robinson,
from the parish register entry for their marriage, 1851.
Reproduced from microfilm held at Lincolnshire Archives.13

By 1861, William and Mary were living in Waddington on Ancaster Road, with the eldest three of their eventual four children:3,9

  • Ann (1855 – died aged 15)
  • William (1858)
  • Mary (1860)
  • Ada (1869 – died in infancy)

After his mother’s death in 1857, William junior had inherited a part of his father’s land in the manor of Mere Hospital.8 By 1861 he had added to these 8½ acres, being recorded as cottager of 20 acres of land. (Yet more of the Mere Hospital land was being farmed by William’s siblings and Black cousins.)9

William died on 26 August 1872.3,10,11 The executors of his estate – his widow Mary and brother Joseph – arranged a public sale of the Mere Hospital copyhold land, at the Horse and Jockey Inn in Waddington on 24 October 1872.11,14 This sale of the land seems slightly strange to me: why didn’t the copyhold pass to William’s only son – who certainly carried on farming – and/or his only surviving daughter Mary? William’s probate file – which could be ordered from the UK Find a will service – may hold the answer.11

Horse and Jockey, Waddington, Lincolnshire

Horse and Jockey Inn, Waddington, Lincs., where William Black’s land was sold in 1872.
© Copyright Brian and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

William’s widow Mary was still living in Waddington in 1881. She was recorded as being of independent means: perhaps she was still living off the profits of the sale, eight years earlier, of her late husband’s land. With her was her son William, aged 23 and a farmer.15 Three years later her daughter Mary, who had been working as a cook in service at Usselby Hall,15 married coachman Edward Barnes.16 The couple moved to Coleby, the next-but-one village south of Waddington, and the widowed Mary Black moved in with her daughter and son-in-law: she died in 1891 shortly after the census was taken.3,17

William Black & Mary Pask

William Black, the third generation to hold that name, was born on 7 February 1858 in Waddington.3,10,18

William III grew up in Waddington, the son of a farmer and later a farmer in his own right. For some reason he did not inherit his father’s land at Mere Hospital manor, which was sold in 1872.14

Photograph of Mary Pask, William Black, Rebecca Mabbott and others

Photograph of (back row) Mary Black née Pask,
William Black?, “Eva” with unnamed baby,
(front row) “Tom” (Spicer?), Rebecca Pask née Mabbott,
at the latter’s home in Boothby Graffoe, before 1934.
Family photograph, © all rights reserved.

On 19 July 1885, William married Mary Pask at the Free Methodist Chapel on Silver Street in the city of Lincoln. (This chapel no longer exists – it was demolished in the early 1970s.)10,17

Mary Pask, the daughter of master cordwainer (shoemaker) William Pask and his wife Rebecca née Mabbott, was born in the village of Navenby on 9 March 1864 but grew up in nearby Welbourn before going into domestic service.10,15,18

The surname “Pask” is another unusual and interesting one, deriving from the Norman-French Pasque meaning ‘Easter’, and ultimately from Hebrew פֶּסַח (Pesach) – Passover. There is a long-running and comprehensive one-name study of the Pask families of Lincolnshire and elsewhere, with a website at: www.pask.org.uk

By the time of her marriage to William Black in 1885, Mary’s parents had moved to Boothby Graffoe, not far from William’s home village.15 Her mother Rebecca Pask (née Mabbott) is at the centre of a family photograph taken probably around the time of her 90th birthday. In it, Rebecca (born 1842), wearing very Victorian-looking black, is seated in her garden at Boothby Graffoe surrounded by members of her family including her daughter Mary and probably her son-in-law William Black. She is certainly the earliest person in my family tree that I have a photo of.

William and Mary Black née Pask left Waddington around the year 1887. Initially they moved into the West End of the city of Lincoln where William worked as a general labourer.17,20 Following this, the family spend several years moving from village to village (Burton in 1901; Nettleham in 1902; Skellingthorpe in 1903) where William did a series of agricultural jobs – these moves are reflected in the varied birthplaces of their children.2125

By 1906 the Black family were back in Lincoln, settling down at number 35, Hope Street, near the corner with Norris Street, in the south of the city very near the Cowpaddle common.24,25,26

Black family tree (part 2)

Sketch family tree of the Black family (part 2).
Click on the image for a larger version.

William and Mary had a large family – the largest in my family history software – of fourteen children:

  • Jennie (1885-1971) – born 8 December, Waddington. Worked as a domestic servant for George John Bennett, noted composer and organist of Lincoln Cathedral. Had a son, Robert Sydney (“Bob”) Black in 1913. Married building contractor Albert E. Donson, 1936, Lincoln; they lived at her parents’ old house, 35 Hope Street.10,18,25,27
  • William “Jack” (1887-1972) – born 5 February, Waddington. Emigrated to Australia; married Aletha May Eggins, 26 May 1915, Sydney. Lived at 443 Cabramatta Road, Liverpool, New South Wales; worked as a railway employee.10,18,28,29,30
  • Ada (1888-1948) – born 16 November, Lincoln. Married fish dealer Naaman Spicer, 19 December 1910, St Andrew’s Church, Lincoln. Lived in Long Bennington, Lincolnshire and Stanton Hill, Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. Eight children including two sons who emigrated to the Canadian province of British Columbia.10,18,25,27,31
  • George Mabbott BlackGeorge Mabbott (1890-1915) – born 30 November, Sturton by Stow. Worked as a farm waggoner and foundry machine hand. Joined the Royal Navy in 1914 as a stoker. Died of dysentery on board HMS Wolverine, Aegean Sea, 27 August 1915; memorialised at East Mudros Military Cemetery, Lemnos (Λήμνος), Greece.10,18,25,32,33,34
  • Amy (1893 – died in infancy)
  • Alice (1894 – died in infancy)
  • Three of the Black childrenEva (1896-1957) – born 12 February, Lincoln. Married Harry Bunn, 1923, Lincoln; one son (Maurice) who died in infancy. Worked as a housekeeper in Lincoln.10,18,25,27
  • Arthur (1897-1915) – born 2 May, Lincoln. Worked as a butcher at a shop in Sincil Street, Lincoln. Joined the 4th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment in 1914. Killed in action in the battle of the Hohenzollern Redoubt, 13 October 1915; his name is recorded on the Loos Memorial.10,18,25,34,35
  • Fred (1899-1991) – born 17 August, Lincoln. Joined the Royal Navy in 1921; also served three years with the New Zealand Navy from 1926. Married Violet G. Goodenough, 1922, Kingston, Surrey; seven children. Lived in Portsmouth.10,18,25,32,36
  • Harry (1901-1986) – born 31 October, Burton. Married Annie Goy in 1928 in Timberland; five children. Lived on Fen Lane, Timberland; worked as a general labourer.10,18,25,27,36
  • John Victor (1903-1975) – born 6 May, Skellingthorpe. Married Elsie May Cullen, 1939, Lincoln. Lived at 14 Palmer Street, Lincoln; worked as a railway shunter.10,18,25,27,36
  • Elsie Mary (1904-1987) – born 7 December, Nettleham. Lived in Southsea, Hampshire; worked as a cook. Married Stephen Dudley Doust, 1940, Portsmouth; three children.10,18,25,27,36
  • Two of the Black childrenDora Annie (1906-1984) – born 13 October, Lincoln. Married millworker John Thomas (“Tom”) Foster, 1935, Lincoln; one son. Lived at 68 Goldsmith Walk. Died 12 June 1984, Lincoln St George’s Hospital.10,18,25,27,36,37
  • Cyril Stanley (1908-1974) – born 28 May, Lincoln. Lived in Timberland; worked as a roadman. Married Mabel Barrand, 1940, Timberland; one son.10,18,25,27

I’ve written elsewhere about the brothers George Mabbott Black and Arthur Black, both of whom were killed in the First World War – one by disease and one by enemy action. Since that original post I have been sent a copy of a newspaper article from 1915 which reported that the younger of the two brothers, Bugler Arthur Black of 4th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment, had been reported missing in action. The article includes part of a letter of sympathy and reassurance written by Arthur’s comrade – and fellow Lincoln resident – Signaller George Crosby, to Arthur’s mother Mary Black:35

Commemoration of 100 years since the Battle of Loos

On Tuesday, 13 October 2015, the centenary of the battle which killed Arthur Black, the bells of St Mary-le-Wigford in the centre of the city of Lincoln rang out half-muffled.
The names of the men killed on that day were placed on a board outside the church.

“I will enquire all over, every day, until I do hear of him…
It was terrible that day. Hundreds seemed to fall, and to see them falling, to rise no more, by our side, sent us all mad
Mrs Black, if the worst has happened, you can take it from me that he died a hero, and I am proud to be a pal of his.”

Lincolnshire Chronicle, 20 November 1915.

Arthur Black was killed on 13 October 1915 in the battle of the Hohenzollern Redoubt, when 357 soldiers of the 1/4th and 1/5th Lincolnshire Regiment died in less than half an hour along with a thousand other men. 90% of them – Arthur Black included – have no known grave.

William Black died at his home at 35 Hope Street, Lincoln, on 16 November 1938. He was eighty years old.10,26

His widow Mary moved out to the village of Timberland, fourteen miles south-east of Lincoln in the Witham Fen, to be near her sons Harry and Cyril Black; she died there in August 1939 after a short illness.10 Her funeral was attended by nine of her ten surviving children (only William, in Australia, could not be there) and by dozens of members of the extended family.38

Mary Black née Pask

Mary Black née Pask.
Family photograph, © all rights reserved.

Particular thanks are due to the staff of Lincolnshire Archives, to Stuart and Teresa Pask of the Pask, Paske one-name study website, and to E. Baglo for information, interest and photos.

Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). Version 1.0, updated 20 September 2016.

References

  1. St Mary’s Church (Carlton-le-Moorland, Lincolnshire, England), parish registers; digital images, Lincs to the Past (http://www.lincstothepast.com/ : accessed 29 August 2016).
  2. Diocese of Lincoln, marriage bond, ref. MB 1773/449, John Black, 11 March 1773; Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln.
  3. St Michael’s Church (Waddington, Lincolnshire, England), parish registers; digital images.
  4. Miller, Terry and Towers, Jean, Waddington at war 1939-1941 (Waddington Local History Group, 1992).
  5. Lincoln Consistory Court, will and probate, George Black (d. before 3 Nov 1846), ref. LCC WILLS/1846/47; Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln.
  6. All Saints’ Church (Wellingore, Lincolnshire, England), parish registers; digital images.
  7. “1851 England Census,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 18 December 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  8. Lincoln Consistory Court, will and probate, William Black (d. 17 May 1856), ref. LCC WILLS/1856/38; Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln.
  9. “1861 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  10. “FreeBMD,” digital images, FreeBMD (http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ : accessed 29 March 2016); General Register Office, Southport.
  11. “Find a will: Wills and Probate 1858 – 1996,” digital images, Gov.UK (https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/ : accessed 1 July 2015); National Probate Calendar.
  12. Overton, Mark, ‘Agricultural revolution in England 1500 – 1850,’ BBC – History, 17 February 2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ : accessed 15 September 2016).
  13. All Saints’ Church (Nettleham, Lincolnshire, England), parish registers; Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln.
  14. Stamford Mercury, 11 October 1872, p. 2.
  15. “1881 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  16. St Michael’s Church (Waddington, Lincolnshire, England), parish registers; Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln.
  17. “1891 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  18. “Birth-Day Greetings”, birthday diary, printed circa 1900; family artefacts; privately held by the author.
  19. Lincolnshire Chronicle, 24 July 1885, p. 5.
  20. Church of St Mary-le-Wigford (Lincoln), parish registers; digital images.
  21. “1901 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  22. “FreeReg,” database, FreeReg (http://www.freereg.org.uk/ : accessed 2 September 2016).
  23. St Lawrence’s Church (Skellingthorpe, Lincolnshire, England), parish registers; digital images.
  24. St Andrew’s Church (Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England), parish registers; digital images.
  25. “1911 England Census,” digital images; The National Archives, Kew.
  26. Lincolnshire Echo, 17 November 1938, p. 1.
  27. “1939 Register,” digital images, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 3 March 2016); The National Archives, Kew.
  28. State of New South Wales, “Births, Deaths and Marriages search,” database, Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages (https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/ : accessed 23 July 2016).
  29. Clarence & Richmond Examiner, 5 June 1915, p. 1.
  30. “Australia, Electoral Rolls, 1903-1980,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 28 December 2015); Australian Electoral Commission.
  31. Personal e-mail; privately held by the author.
  32. “British Royal Navy Seamen 1899-1924,” digital images, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 31 August 2016); The National Archives, Kew.
  33. Lincolnshire Chronicle, 4 September 1915, p. 1.
  34. Commonwealth War Graves Commission, “Find War Dead,” digital images, CWGC (http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/ : accessed 1 April 2015).
  35. Lincolnshire Chronicle, 20 November 1915, p. 5.
  36. “England and Wales Death Registration Index 1837-2007,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ : accessed 12 July 2016); General Register Office, Southport.
  37. Lincolnshire Echo, 13 June 1984, p. 10.
  38. “The Death took place of Mrs. Mary Black…,” undated cutting, about 1939, from unidentified newspaper; family artefacts; privately held by the author.

Stainthorp, butchers

This post is inspired by the BBC television programme ‘Hidden Histories: Britain’s Oldest Family Businesses‘, specifically the episode about Balson’s butchers of Bridport in Dorset. My own family history can’t compete with Richard Balson’s: his ancestors have been butchers in the same town since 1515, only a few years into the reign of Henry VIII – five hundred years ago and counting – but there was an unbroken line of Stainthorp butchers in the north-east of England for at least 127 years:

Another difference between my line of butchers and the Balsons: while they have been in Bridport throughout their long history, my ancestors moved regularly, running shops in Hutton Rudby (Yorkshire), Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Seaham (County Durham), Gateshead, Wallsend, Whitley Bay, and possibly elsewhere, and branched out into the dairy business and into running licensed premises.

Before we were butchers

I’ve already written about my ancestors Francis (1765-1822) and his son Francis (1803-1882) Stainthorp, who were both hand-loom weavers of linen in the Yorkshire village of Hutton Rudby. Weaving was the main occupation in Hutton, and my Stainthorp ancestors had been weavers since at least the 1690s.1,2

Robin Hood Island, Hall Green - Butchers figure / dummy - Guinness hat - St Patrick's Day

Butcher’s figure / dummy
© Copyright Elliott Brown and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

By the middle of the 19th century, the industrial revolution brought cheap imported linen to Britain and killed off the cottage hand-loom weaving industry in north-east Yorkshire. Ironically one of the last uses of Hutton Rudby home-spun linen was to make the traditional striped material used for butchers’ aprons.3

The Stainthorps of Hutton Rudby were also farmers, again since at least the late 17th century,1 owning between 15 and 22 acres of land at Enterpen and North End.4,5 They will have slaughtered their own livestock and sold the meat locally and at nearby Stokesley market.

The booklet ‘A History Walk round Hutton Rudby‘ notes the “great many” butchers and slaughterers that were based in Hutton Rudby from the middle of the 19th century onwards, and describes some of the less-pleasant effects on the village environment:

“…the butchers’ refuse was dumped in the Blood Midden – the ponds off Green Lane to the west of Campion Lane. The smell was dreadful, especially when the farmer spread the rotted waste as muck, but it was a very popular place to go ratting, as the rats there grew “as big as terriers”.

– ‘A History Walk round Hutton Rudby’.6

One of these 19th-century butchers was my three-greats grandfather Charles Stainthorp.

Charles Stainthorp (1835-1905), butcher, farmer and dairyman

Charles was born in November 1835, the youngest and only surviving son of my four-greats grandfather, linen weaver Francis Stainthorp (1803-1882) and his wife Ann Seamer (1800-1883).2 He had two older brothers, William and Francis, who both died young of consumption – i.e. tuberculosis.7 Charles grew up with his parents at North End, Hutton Rudby;8 he is in the 1851 census of England as a fifteen-year-old farmer’s servant, in the household of farmer Ralph Agar at Tees Tilery, Normanby-on-Tees.9

In 1859, just before he married grocer’s daughter Ann Kay at Rudby All Saints’ church,2 Charles set himself up in business as a butcher with £50 capital.10 His first shop was located in Enterpen, which is the name of both a road and an associated hamlet-cum-suburb of Hutton Rudby proper.11

At first, Charles was the picture of the successful rural small businessman. He and Ann had six children (tragically, three died in childhood including their two-year-old daughter Phillis who was fatally injured when she fell out of her father’s butcher’s cart while travelling home from his shop in Enterpen).11 Charles also had an apprentice, the splendidly-named Denton Fortune, who later became a butcher in his own right in East Rounton.4,5 He continued to farm sheep on the family land in Hutton,12 and also bred and exhibited prize-winning greyhounds.13 During the 1860s, Charles Stainthorp held the role of chairman/vice-chairman of the local Friendly Society and presided over their annual dinners.14

By 1883, Charles and his son William had a butcher’s shop at 87 Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough.15 This building still exists, and in 2016 was occupied by a branch of the electronic goods retailer, Maplin.

Newspaper advertisment for Charles Stainthorp, butcher, 1883

Christmas advertisement
The North-Eastern Daily Gazette [Middlesbrough],
22 December 1883, p. 2

Around this time, things seem to have started to go wrong for Charles. Within a single year he lost both of his parents and his wife Ann (aged only 53, to heart disease).7 Already responsible for his youngest unmarried daughter Maria Stainthorp, and for a household including two servants, since 1886 Charles had also had to support six of his grandchildren, the offspring of his eldest daughter Lucy Ann, after her husband Alfred Cockcroft – violent and a meths-drinker – had abandoned his wife and children.10,16,17

By the end of 1887 Charles knew he was falling into insolvency. On 10 April 1889, at court in Stockton-on-Tees, he was declared bankrupt with debts of £686 3s 3d – close to £57,000 in today’s money.18

The Stainthorp family farm was sold, and Charles and William Stainthorp both left Hutton Rudby for good. There were no Stainthorps left in Hutton by the end of the nineteenth century.

Charles moved: first to nearby Skelton-in-Cleveland where son William was also living, and later to the Heaton area of Newcastle upon Tyne. By this time Charles had remarried, to Sarah Wood.19 27 years his junior – younger in fact than Charles’ eldest daughter – Sarah had been living in Enterpen, Hutton Rudby, and had two sons baptised and registered under her own surname.2 It’s not clear whether John George Wood and Joseph Wood were actually Charles Stainthorp’s biological sons, but he raised them as his own children and they both took the surname Stainthorp after Charles and Sarah were married.2022

047221: Shields Road, Heaton 1908

Shields Road, Heaton, 1908
Public domain image, Newcastle Libraries

In Heaton, in a departure from butchery, Charles and Sarah established a milk delivery business. Operating first out of 56 Addison Road, and later at 97 Cartington Terrace, Stainthorp’s dairy became well-known in the Heaton area and the business was carried on well into the 20th century by Charles and Sarah’s two sons John G. and Joseph, daughter Lily (1894-1974), and their descendants.2124

Sarah died in Heaton in 1904; Charles Stainthorp, “milk salesman formerly a butcher (master)“, passed away a year later on 21 November 1905, at the age of 70.7

William Stainthorp (1862-1924), butcher and publican;
also his sons Frank (1886-1918) and Charles (1887-1945)

My great-great grandfather William was the second child and eldest son of Charles Stainthorp and his first wife Ann (née Kay). He was born on 27 January 1862 in Hutton Rudby;25 by the time of the 1881 census he was working in his father’s butcher’s shop in Enterpen.5 Perhaps in order to strike out on his own in business, William later took out an £80 bank loan on which his father Charles was guarantor.10

When he married Margaret Annie Harland in 1884, William was living at the family butcher’s shop in Middlesbrough, at 87 Linthorpe Road.19

Margaret Harland was from a County Durham family of iron workers, but in recent years her father William Harland had been landlord of a string of Teesside pubs including the Cleveland Arms, North Ormesby, the Clarendon Hotel, Marske, the Tees Inn and the Lord Byron, Middlesbrough … and last of all the Royal Hotel, Redcar, where William Harland died in 1892, after falling down the stairs of his own pub.26 Margaret’s brother Henry Harland and half-brother William Dobson were also publicans.4,5,20

At first William and Margaret Stainthorp followed their Harland relatives into the licensed trade. In the late 1880s William was the keeper of the Crown & Anchor Hotel, High Street, Redcar (their first two children were born there)25; at the same time it appears they also ran a separate lodging house down the road at 135 High Street, Redcar – however they definitely still had the Middlesbrough butcher’s shop as late as 1887, and William’s occupation is recorded sometimes as an innkeeper, sometimes a butcher.25

Cleveland: Redcar: CROWN & ANCHOR

Crown & Anchor Hotel, Redcar
The building would have looked significantly different in William Stainthorp’s day, with an additional top floor demolished after 1961.
© Copyright emdjt42, all rights reserved

In the 1891 census William appears as a licensed victualler, landlord of the New Inn, 1-3 Cleveland Street, Skelton-in-Cleveland: two more of their children were born in those premises.20,25

In 1895, William, Margaret and their five children embarked on their next major move. (A sixth child, named William Harland Stainthorp after his maternal grandfather, had died aged 13 months of measles and is buried in Skelton cemetery.)27 By the end of that year the family were in Hartlepool;28 almost immediately they moved again, northwards to the area of Tunstall/New Silksworth, near Sunderland. (With all the chaos of these multiple moves, they neglected to register the birth of their youngest child.) Nowadays New Silksworth is part of the built-up metropolitan area of Sunderland. When my ancestors moved there it was a small colliery village of newly-built miners’ houses, surrounded by open fields.

This move also marks the end of William and Margaret’s career in the licensed trade, although two of their daughters married publicans, and Margaret Annie Stainthorp – like her father – died in a pub.7

Between 1897-1904, the Stainthorps lived at 57 Castlereagh Street, New Silksworth, Tunstall. Margaret and William’s last three children were born there, including the youngest of all, my great grandfather, Henry Harland Stainthorp (1904-1952).25 57 Castlereagh Street is at the corner of two streets and is currently a shop – in 2016, Devito’s pizza takeaway; before that a BMX bike shop – so it may well have been the location of William’s butcher’s shop in the early 1900s.

The impression given by snippets from the Sunderland Daily Echo is that William’s business was thriving in the first few years of the 20th century. In 1901 he advertised both for a “STRONG, respectable GIRL” to work as a general servant and for a “good MAN, capable of taking charge” of the shop in Silksworth.29 (A few years later he placed an advert in the same newspaper for a lost black-faced sheep… had his new assistant left the slaughterhouse gate open, letting William’s profits run away on four legs?)30

Birth notice, William Stainthorp

Birth announcement
Sunderland Daily Echo, 24 July 1901, p. 2

There is also an entry in Kelly’s Directory of Durham, 1902, for William Stainthorp, butcher, at 3 Trimdon Street West in the Millfield area of Sunderland. This can only be my two-greats grandfather, but I have no other record of a butcher’s shop at this address (which is right across the other side of the city from their home in New Silksworth), and the original buildings on Trimdon Street West have now disappeared.31

After 1904, the Stainthorp family moved two more times: to Horden in County Durham by 1911,22 then, around the end of the First World War, to the Northumberland seaside resort of Whitley Bay. I do not know where William’s shop or shops were located during this period. (As late as 1921, the butcher’s shop at 215 High Street East, Wallsend, which would later belong to William’s youngest son Henry, was being operated by a Mr William Coupe; before that by J. Cosans.)32,33

William died of a stroke at his home in Whitley Bay on 4 March 1924. His widow Margaret died fourteen years later at the Gladstone Hotel, Scotswood Road, Newcastle upon Tyne:7 I don’t know whether she was there merely as a customer or as the mother/mother-in-law of the licensee.

(Other pubs run by the descendents of William and Margaret include the Biddick Inn, Fatfield, and the Gibraltar Rock, Tynemouth. It’s likely there were many more but that will have to be the subject of a future blog post and a punishing genealogical pub crawl.)

My grandfather, born five years after William Stainthorp senior passed away, remembered his grandmother Margaret as a “sweet, quiet old lady”. He had less-fond memories of his aunt Madge – William & Margaret’s eldest child – who sent him to bed in the afternoon for misbehaving.34

Three of Margaret and William’s sons carried on the family butchery business: my great grandfather Henry Harland Stainthorp (below), and his two older brothers Frank and Charles:

Francis “Frank” Stainthorp (1886-1918)

Frank Stainthorp's headstone

Frank Stainthorp’s headstone,
Bedford House Cemetery, Ypres.
© Chris Leach, all rights reserved

I have already written about Frank Stainthorp, who was killed on 31 October 1918 near Kerkhove in western Flanders while serving with the 19th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry.35

The second child and eldest son of Margaret and William, before the war I believe Frank ran his own butcher’s shop in Seaham, although I have not been able to find the exact location.

He married Mary Helena Mason (known as “Lena”) in Sunderland on 28 July 1919 – they had two daughters.19

Frank carried his peacetime trade into the Army: when he was up in court in 1915 for being so drunk at Chesterfield Midland railway station that he jumped onto the railway line and had to be dragged out of the path of an oncoming train(!), he told the magistrate that he was butcher to his battalion.36 (He was demoted from lance corporal back to the rank of private for this instance of being drunk and A.W.O.L.)37

Frank Stainthorp may have been butchering right up to his untimely death. The family story is that he was doing his rounds, “bringing food up to the front” when the call went out for volunteers for a mission into no-man’s land to rescue a wounded soldier. Frank volunteered for the mission and never returned.34

As an aside, what happened to Frank Stainthorp’s widow and two children after WWI is still one of the major mysteries in my family history research.

Charles Stainthorp (1887-1945)

Frank Stainthorp’s younger brother Charles was born above his namesake grandfather’s butcher’s shop at 87 Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough on 23 November 1887.25 In 1911, he was working as a butcher alongside his father William, and living with his parents in Horden.22 On 11 December 1912 Charles married Margaret Elliott Smith at Gateshead register office.19

Charles Stainthorp

Charles Stainthorp
Family photograph, © all rights reserved

Rejected from military service in WWI because of an unspecified disability,37 Charles established his own business south of the Tyne. One early premises, according to the ‘History of The Felling‘ website, was at 12 High Street, Felling.38

By 1939 Charles was living and operating out of a shop at 145 Sodhouse Bank, Sheriff Hill, Gateshead, supported by his three children: Sidney, Frank and Verita.

After Charles’ death in 1945, his middle son Frank Stainthorp (1916-1975) took over the shop in Sheriff Hill.

Stainthorp’s sausages are the best,
they’re good for your belly and your chest.
If you eat them twice a week
they’ll cure your sweaty feet!

– Gateshead children’s rhyme34

This shop at 145 Sodhouse Bank is the earliest Stainthorp butcher’s that I have a photo of. I am extremely grateful to two of my relatives who both sent me copies of this photograph. It was probably taken after 1945. The man in the door in the white butcher’s apron is Charles Stainthorp’s son Frank.

The last record I have of Frank Stainthorp’s Gateshead shop is from 1952.39 It’s now a private house, though some of the original features have been preserved including butchers’ hooks in the ceiling.34

F. Stainthorp, butcher, Sodhouse Bank, Sheriff Hill, Gateshead

F. Stainthorp, butcher, Sodhouse Bank,
Sheriff Hill, Gateshead, after 1945?
Family photograph, © all rights reserved

Henry Harland “Harry” Stainthorp (1904-1952), master butcher

Henry Harland Stainthorp

Henry Harland Stainthorp
Family photograph, © all rights reserved

My great-great uncles Frank and Charles Stainthorp had three younger brothers: William Harland Stainthorp, mentioned above, who died in infancy; another William Stainthorp (1901-1919) who died aged 17 of a kidney infection;7 and finally the youngest of the nine siblings – my great grandfather Henry Harland Stainthorp, known as Harry. He was named after his uncle Henry Harland, another publican.

Born in New Silksworth on 17 March 1904,25 Harry Stainthorp married my “Nana” – my great grandmother – Marion Curry at St Paul’s church, Whitley Bay, in 1928.19 The couple moved from Walkergate near Newcastle to the coastal village of Cullercoats – to Links Road, then in the 1940s to a house on the Broadway.7,25,40

From at least 1936 until his sudden death in 1952 (at just 48 years old),7 Harry Stainthorp had a shop at 215 High Street East, Wallsend, directly opposite Wallsend Town Hall.39,40 I am sure that a photograph of this shop must exist somewhere – perhaps in North Shields library’s collection of 50,000 local images.

The Wallsend shop is just off the right-hand edge of this commercially-available photograph.

When I passed the location of the shop on the High Street in 2015, the building was empty and shuttered.

Harry seems to have had an odd sense of humour: during the Second World War he had more than one letter published in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle in which he commented on the more absurd aspects of wartime restrictions, including a poem about the honey-trap agents apparently used by the Ministry of Food to ensnare an unwary Wallsend butcher tempted to bend the rules on rationing…

Medallion and sash of the Tynemouth Butchers Association

Medallion and sash of the
Tynemouth Butchers’ Association

which belonged to my grandfather.
© Copyright stainthorp_ph,
all rights reserved

“BUTCHER’S LAMENT”

You may talk about your ration,
Through teeth you can’t help gnashin’,
While knittin’ scarves to warm the soldiers’ throats.
But when it comes to duty,
I can tell you of a beauty,
Whose job’s to make the butchers burn their boats.

There’s a girl I’ve heard them say
In the Food Controller’s pay
Who plys her trade with nothin’ but good looks;
She flits from shop to shop
Like a sparrow on the hop
To buy some meat without her ration books.

With her “Please, please, please,”
She’s almost on her knees;
The butcher tries to meet those eyes that melt;
The mutt succumbs at last,
And wraps her meat up fast,
And another scalp is added to her belt.

– H. Stainthorp, Cullercoats, 1940.41

William “Bill” Stainthorp (1929-2010), master butcher

When his father Harry Stainthorp died unexpectedly in 1952, my grandad Bill Stainthorp gave up his job as a bank clerk with Lloyd’s Bank and his expected future career, to take over the family business.34,42 He was joined in this at first by his brother Robin (1937-2007), who later went into the insurance industry. A third brother, Norman (1944-2006) emigrated to New South Wales in the 1970s.

William “Bill” Stainthorp was born on 7 July 1929 in Wingrove Road, Fenham, Newcastle upon Tyne.25
He ran his late father’s shop at 215 High Street East, Wallsend until about 1967.39

W. Stainthorp, butcher, Ilfracombe Gardens, Whitley Bay

W. Stainthorp, butcher, Ilfracombe Gardens, Whitley Bay, about 1985.
Family photograph, © all rights reserved

Before the birth of his eldest son in 1954, Bill Stainthorp bought another shop at 9 Ilfracombe Gardens, Whitley Bay. This shop had already been a butcher’s before my grandad took it over – in the 1930s it was run by a Mr T. L. Tyson.40

In 1974, William Stainthorp was taken to court by the trading standards department of the newly-formed Tyne & Wear County Council for selling brawn (which contains 60% meat, the rest being jelly) in his Whitley Bay shop under the name “potted meat” (which by law must be a minimum of 95% meat). His argument that “it is one of the quirks in the North-East for people to call brawn potted meat” – and that only “visitors from the south” called it by its ‘proper’ name – fell on unsympathetic ears and he was fined £10 and ordered to pay £10 costs.43

I can remember visiting my grandad’s shop as a child – I have a clear mental picture of the layout of the shop, the cold room up a couple of steps, and a small yard out the back. For some reason certain details have particularly stuck in my mind – the smell of the shop, sawdust on the floor, my grandad’s collection of pottery pig ornaments in the window, and containers full of tripe and pease pudding (“Geordie hummus”!) in the display cabinet.

Bill Stainthorp retired in 1986,34 127 years after his great grandfather Charles Stainthorp started out in business in Hutton Rudby. As far as I know my grandad was the last of the line of Stainthorp butchers: by 2015 the shop on Ilfracombe Gardens was being used as the offices of a firm of heating engineers. Bill died after a fall, on holiday in Yorkshire in 2010.7

Timeline of identified Stainthorp butchers' shops

Timeline of identified Stainthorp butchers’ shops
Created using RootsMagic software. I have not been able to find the addresses of any shops between 1904 and about 1934.

The end.

Diagram of butcher's cuts of pork

Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). Version 1.5, updated 18 September 2016.

References

  1. Exchequer Court of York, will and probate, Francis Stainthorpe (d. before 1 May 1693), Potto, Cleveland; Borthwick Institute for Archives, York.
  2. All Saints’ Church (Rudby, Yorkshire, England), parish registers; digital images, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 2 August 2016).
  3. Barrigan, Alice. ‘Epilogue.’ In: Remarkable, but still true: the story of the Revd R.J. Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of cholera. Guisborough: Westgate, 2007; HTML version, North Yorkshire History. http://northyorkshirehistory.blogspot.co.uk/ (accessed 15 October 2014).
  4. “1871 England Census,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 18 December 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  5. “1881 England Census,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 18 December 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  6. Barrigan, Alice. A History Walk round Hutton Rudby. Hutton Rudby History Society, 1997; HTML version, North Yorkshire History. http://northyorkshirehistory.blogspot.co.uk/ (accessed 9 September 2016).
  7. England and Wales, death certificate (certified copy); General Register Office, Southport.
  8. “1841 England Census,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 18 December 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  9. “1851 England Census,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 18 December 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  10. The York Herald, 4 April 1889, p. 3.
  11. The York Herald, 29 July 1871, p. 9.
  12. The Northern Echo [Darlington], 6 June 1881, p. 4.
  13. The Daily Gazette [Middlesbrough], 17 June 1879, p. 4.
  14. The York Herald, 4 January 1868, p. 5.
  15. The North-Eastern Daily Gazette [Middlesbrough], 22 December 1883, p. 2.
  16. The North-Eastern Daily Gazette [Middlesbrough], 6 July 1888.
  17. The North-Eastern Daily Gazette [Middlesbrough], 3 April 1889.
  18. The York Herald, 11 April 1889, p. 3.
  19. England and Wales, marriage certificate (certified copy); General Register Office, Southport.
  20. “1891 England Census,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 18 December 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  21. “1901 England Census,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 18 December 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  22. “1911 England Census,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 18 December 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  23. “1939 Register,” digital images, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.co.uk/1939register : accessed 3 March 2016); The National Archives, Kew.
  24. Newcastle Journal and North Mail, 23 September 1940, p. 2.
  25. England and Wales, birth certificate (certified copy); General Register Office, Southport.
  26. The Yorkshire Herald [York], 25 August 1892, p. 3.
  27. Register of burials in the burial ground of Skelton; digital images, Deceasedonline (https://www.deceasedonline.com/: accessed 8 ‎June ‎2016), 1893, p. 143; Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council.
  28. “National School Admission Registers & Log-Books 1870-1914,” digital images, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 5 October 2015).
  29. Sunderland Daily Echo, 4 March 1901, p. 5.
  30. Sunderland Daily Echo, 27 October 1904, p. 2.
  31. “UK, City and County Directories, 1766 – 1946,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 6 June 2015), Kelly’s Directory of Durham, 1902.
  32. “Historical Directories of England & Wales,” digital images, University of Leicester Special Collections Online (http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/ : accessed 13 September 2016), Ward’s Directory of Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1916.
  33. “UK, City and County Directories, 1766 – 1946,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 6 June 2015), Kelly’s Directory of Northumberland, 1921.
  34. Personal e-mail; privately held by the author.
  35. Commonwealth War Graves Commission, “Find War Dead,” digital images, CWGC (http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/ : accessed 1 April 2015).
  36. The Courier [Chesterfield], 5 June 1915, p. 6.
  37. “British Army WWI Service Records, 1914-1920,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 11 March 2015); The National Archives, Kew.
  38. ‘Felling High Street,’ History of The Felling..in bite size bits, 9 May 2014. http://the-felling.blogspot.co.uk/ (accessed 14 September 2016).
  39. “British Phone Books, 1880-1984,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 12 May 2015); BT Archives.
  40. “UK, City and County Directories, 1766 – 1946,” digital images, Ancestry Library Edition (http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 6 June 2015), Ward’s Directory of Whitley Bay, Tynemouth, North and South Shields, Jarrow, Wallsend, Newcastle… [etc.], 1936.
  41. Evening Chronicle [Newcastle upon Tyne], 9 May 1940, p. 4.
  42. “Find a will: Wills and Probate 1858 – 1996,” digital images, Gov.UK (https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#calendar : accessed 1 July 2015); National Probate Calendar.
  43. “Potted meat alleged to be ‘brawn’,” British Food Journal, vol. 77, issue 2 (March/April 1975), online archives, Emerald Insight (https://www.emeraldinsight.com/ : accessed 23 October 2014), p. 62.

The Hancock family of Oldcot (Staffordshire) and Ipswich, and the Charlie Chaplin connection

I’m piecing together the family of Benjamin Hancock (poss. 1780 – poss. 1814) and his wife Margaret (1782 – 1827) née probably Tunstall, of Oldcot, Wolstanton, Staffordshire, in the early 19th century, and three of their children who all ended up in Ipswich, Suffolk by the 1830s.

Their daughter Sophia is the great grandmother of the actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin (as described on the website of William Addams Reitwiesner); their son Thomas married into the same Chaplin family. Another daughter, Emma, ties in to my Corr family.

There are a lot of Hancock families in and around the parish of Wolstanton at this time, including several people called Benjamin Hancock.

The parish registers for this area from 1789-1812, available in Findmypast’s Staffordshire Collection, are pre-printed forms filled in by a single hand; some entries are very sparse and seem to be missing details.

Newchapel parish register

Example of the parish registers for the chapel of St James, Newchapel, on pre-printed forms, available in Findmypast’s Staffordshire Collection.

What I know…

My Hancock couple may have married in 1802, though I have no corroborating evidence that this is definitely their marriage:

  • 20th November 1802 – Benjamin Hancock, collier, mar. Margaret Tunstall at St Giles, Newcastle-under-Lyme – both resident in the parish of Stoke.1

I believe Benjamin and Margaret had at least five children:

  • Abt 1804 – Sophia Hancock born, poss. in Tunstall, Wolstanton, Staffs.2
  • 17th January 1808 – Margaret Anne Hancock, dau. of Benjamin and Margaret, bapt. St James, Newchapel – resident at Old[cot]. She died aged 15.
  • 18th March 1810 – Thos. Tunstall Hancock, son of Benjamin (mother’s name not given), bapt. St James, Newchapel – resident at Oldcot.
  • 24th May 1812 – Theophilus* Hancock, son of Benjamin and Margaret, bapt. St James, Newchapel – resident at Old[cot]. He died aged 4.
  • 22nd May 1814 – Emma Hancock, dau. of Benjamin, collier, and Margaret, bapt. St James, Newchapel – resident at Oldcot.3

(*Thomas Tunstall Hancock later called his first son “Theophilus” after his brother who died in childhood.)

There are also a couple of interesting earlier baptisms which have a different mother’s name:

  • 13th May 1804 – Sophia Hancock, dau. of Benjamin and Mary, bapt. St Lawrence, Biddulph.
  • 6th July 1806 – Margaret Hancock, dau. of Benjamin and Mary, bapt. St James, Newchapel – resident at Old[cot].3

The following burials seem to relate to this family:

  • 30th January 1814 – Benjamin Hancock, aged 34 (born abt 1780), son of John and Esther, bur. St James, Newchapel – resident at Oldcot.
  • 12th November 1816 – Theophilus Hancock, aged 4, son of Benjamin and Margaret, bur. St James, Newchapel – resident at Oldcot.
  • 10th April 1822 – Margaret Anne Hancock, aged 15, dau. of Benjamin and Margaret, bur. St James, Newchapel – resident at Oldcot.
  • 18th March 1827 – Margaret Hancock, aged 45 (born abt 1782), widow of Benjamin, bur. St James, Newchapel – resident at Oldcot.4

By the 1830s, the surviving Hancock children are all living in East Anglia and working as hawkers:

Charlie Chaplin circa 1916

Portrait of Charlie Chaplin as a young man, Hollywood, circa 1916 (public domain image).

  • 1st July 1833 – Thomas Tunstall Hancock mar. Phylorata Chaplin, St Mary-at-the-Quay, Ipswich, Suffolk.5
  • 1st April 1834 – Emma Handcock mar. licensed hawker Felix Corr, St Mary-at-the-Quay, Ipswich. The witnesses were Sophia Handcock and Shadrack Chaplin. Felix Corr died in 1838 of ‘decline’ aged just 32; Emma mar. Peter McDonald in 1839.6,7
  • 29th April 1834 – Sophia Hancock mar. Shadrach Chaplin, St Margaret, Ipswich.5 Shadrach is the great grandfather of Charlie Chaplin and the brother of Phylorata (above).
  • 1841 census – Thomas Hancock, hawker, Cox Lane, Ipswich.
  • 1841 census – Emma McDonald, hawker, Hythe, Maldon, Essex.
  • 1841 census – Sophia Chaplin, hawker’s wife, Gaol Lane, Ipswich.8
  • 1851 census – Thomas T. Hancock, hawker, Bond Street, Ipswich – born Wolstanton, Staffs.
  • 1851 census – Emma McDonald, hawker, Brickendon, Herts – born Goldenhill, Staffs.
  • 1851 census – Sophia Chaplin, brewer’s wife, Carr Street, Ipswich – born Tunstall, Staffs.2
  • 24 July 1868 – Sophia died at 1 Hatton Street, Marylebone, London.9

Research questions:

  1. Are the Benjamin and Margaret who married in Newcastle in 1802 the same Benjamin and Margaret who were the parents of Sophia, Thomas T., and Emma?
  2. Did the father Benjamin die in January 1814? On the baptism record of Emma Hancock in May the same year there is no mention of her father being deceased.
  3. Are the Sophia and Margaret baptised in 1804 and 1806 respectively also the children of Benjamin and Margaret, despite the mother’s name on the register being recorded as Mary, and despite the first baptism taking place in Biddulph rather than Newchapel (or Tunstall where ‘our’ Sophia was apparently born)?
  4. If they were, then what happened to the Margaret baptised in 1806?
  5. Why the mass move from Staffordshire to Ipswich by 1833-34, following their parents’ deaths?

Hancock sketch family tree

Sketch family tree of the Hancock family of Oldcot, Staffordshire and Ipswich.
The chart also includes my great grandfather Frank Corr who is not descended from the Hancocks.
Created using Microsoft Visio software. (Click on the image for a full-size version.)


References

  1. “Staffordshire Marriages” (digital images, Findmypast, http://search.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 13 ‎October ‎2015; citing Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service).
  2. “1851 England Census” (digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 7 ‎July ‎2015; citing Census Returns of England and Wales, 1851, The National Archives, Kew).
  3. “Staffordshire Baptisms” (digital images, Findmypast, http://search.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 19 ‎September ‎2015; citing Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service).
  4. “Staffordshire Burials” (digital images, Findmypast, http://search.findmypast.co.uk/ : accessed 17 ‎October ‎2015; citing Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service).
  5. “England Marriages, 1538–1973” (database, FamilySearch, https://familysearch.org/ : accessed 14 June 2016; citing FHL microfilm 918,523).
  6. Parish of St Mary at the Quay, Ipswich, banns of marriage, Felix Corr and Emma Handcock, March 1834, p. 9, no. 44; photocopy supplied by Suffolk Record Office, 13 October 2015.
  7. Parish of St Mary at the Key [sic], bishop’s transcripts, Felix Corr and Emma Handcock, 1 [April] 1834, p. 54, no. 160; photocopy supplied by Suffolk Record Office, 13 October 2015.
  8. “1841 England Census” (digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 7 ‎July ‎2015; citing Census Returns of England and Wales, 1841, The National Archives, Kew).
  9. Reitwiesner, William Addams, William Addams Reitwiesner Genealogical Services (http://www.wargs.com/ : accessed 13 October 2015), Wood, Michael J., “Ancestry of Charlie Chaplin”.

Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). Version 1.2, updated 15th June 2016.

The brothers Francis Stainthorp (1803-1882) and John Stainthorp (1810-1858), weavers of Hutton Rudby

Early life

Francis Stainthorp was born on 22nd August 1803 in Hutton Rudby in the old North Riding of Yorkshire. He was named after his father Francis Stainthorp (1765-1822); his mother was Francis’s second wife Hannah née Waring (1768-1836).1,2 The younger Francis was my great-great-great-great grandfather.

He was baptised at the parish church of All Saints on 4th November 1803, when he was two months old.2 His fourteen-month-old sister Hannah was christened on the same day. As well as Hannah, Francis had two older half-sisters, Margaret and Jane, from his father’s first marriage. Then after Hannah and Francis would come Mary and Ann. (Three other siblings died in infancy.)1

Last of all, Francis’s brother John Stainthorp was born in 1810 and baptised on 19th August that year.3 John and Francis both became hand-loom linen weavers like their father before them. At the time of their birth, Hutton Rudby was still dominated by the cottage weaving industry, and the brothers were doubtless among the one hundred and twenty-three weavers enumerated in Hutton in the 1831 census.4

Inheritance

The Hand Loom Weaver by F.W. Jackson

The Hand Loom Weaver by F.W. Jackson (Manchester Art Gallery).
Licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

When their father Francis Stainthorp senior died in 1822, he left a considerable amount of property to his widow and seven children: a house each for his older daughters Jane and Margaret; forty pounds apiece and all his remaining household goods to his other daughters Hannah, Mary and Ann. Francis and John inherited all of their father’s “…farming stock, Implements of Husbandry and stock in Trade…” (i.e. weaving), and no fewer than four additional houses, two acres of land, and an orchard in Hutton Rudby – with all the rents and profits going to their mother Hannah until she died or remarried.5,6

Francis’ and John’s half-sister Margaret died in February 1828 when she was only thirty-six. Francis Stainthorp was appointed as the joint administrator of her estate, along with her full-blood sister Jane.7

(Jane Stainthorp had married John Oates on 17th August 1827 at Rudby. Of the other sisters, Mary married Thomas Raney in 1826, Ann Thomas Robinson in ’27, and Hannah John Furness in ’28.)1,7

Like his father, the property Francis owned entitled him to vote in general elections, even prior to the wider suffrage which would shortly be introduced by the Great Reform Act.8

Marriage of Francis

Francis married Ann Seamer on 16th June 1829 at Rudby.9 He was twenty-five; Ann three years older. Ann was the daughter of William Seamer and Susannah (née Osbourne) and was born in the parish of Ingleby Arncliffe, five miles from Hutton Rudby.10 Francis and Ann Stainthorp had three sons:

  1. William (bapt. 11th April 1830 – died of consumption aged seventeen, 14th February 1848)11,12
  2. Francis (bapt. 4th August 1833 – died of consumption aged seven, 24th May 1840)13,14
  3. Charles (bapt. 27th December 1835)15

Only the youngest, Charles, survived to have children of his own: his brothers both died of ‘consumption’ (i.e. tuberculosis), though William lived long enough to be recorded on his death certificate as a weaver in his own right.12 Around one in four deaths in England in the early 1800s have been attributed to TB.16

Francis’ and John’s mother Hannah also passed away in 1836, aged sixty-eight. She was buried with her husband in the churchyard of Rudby All Saints; there is a headstone.17

In 1840, Francis Stainthorp was one of sixteen Cleveland weavers who added their names to a letter submitted as part of a House of Lords inquiry into the hand-loom weaving industry, confirming that a man could earn, on average, 9s. 6d. a week from weaving, based on a twelve-hour working day.18

Bridge over the River Leven, Hutton Rudby. © Copyright Paul Buckingham

Bridge over the River Leven, Hutton Rudby.
© Copyright Paul Buckingham and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The censuses

From this point on it is possible to use census records to trace the Stainthorp family in Hutton Rudby. The first ‘modern’ census of UK households was taken on 6th June 1841. Although censuses had been taken every ten years since the passing of the Census Act 1800, these earlier, pre-1841 censuses were anonymous head-counts of residents and occupations and are not generally useful for family historians.

In 1841, Francis would have been thirty-seven years old but appears on the census as thirty-five (adults’ ages were rounded down to the nearest five years). His wife Ann was forty. Their two sons William and Charles were eleven and five respectively – their middle son Francis having died a year previously. Also living with them is John, aged twenty-five (i.e. twenty-nine). Both Francis’ and John’s occupations are recorded as “L[inen] Weaver“, and the whole family are living together at North End, Hutton.19

North End is probably the oldest part of the village of Hutton Rudby, and many of the village’s weavers lived in the cottages around the green.20

Marriage and death of John

John Stainthorp married Mary Bennison on 15th April 1850 at the parish church of St Peter and St Paul in the market town of Stokesley, four miles from Hutton Rudby. Mary, the daughter of Thomas Bennison, was born in the tiny village of Easby, just to the east of Stokesley.21 Mary and John had two sons:

  1. Francis (born 13th January 1851)22
  2. Robert (born 11th November 1852)23

By the 1851 census, Francis and Ann, by now aged forty-eight and fifty-one, were living alone in North End. (Their remaining son Charles was away as a farmer’s servant in nearby Normanby.)24 Brother John aged forty, his wife Mary aged thirty-four and their eleven-week old son Francis were right next door in North End; probably this was a pair of cottages which they had inherited from their father as tenants in common. Again both Francis’ and John’s occupations were recorded as “Hand Loom Weaver Linen“.25

John Stainthorp was just forty-seven years old when he died, on 30th April 1858, of typhoid fever.26 John’s brother Francis reported his death to the Stokesley registrar, and he was buried two days later.1

Map of Hutton Rudby showing North End and South Side/Goldie Hill.  Ordnance Survey six-inch map of Yorkshire (sheet 28), 1856. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Map of Hutton Rudby showing North End and Goldie Hill.
Ordnance Survey six-inch map of Yorkshire (sheet 28), 1856.
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Later censuses

By 1861, Ann and Francis had left North End and moved a few hundred yards to South Side on the main street in Hutton, next door to the Primitive Methodist Chapel.27 The widowed Mary was still in North End, raising her eight- and ten-year-old sons on her income as a flax winder and charwoman (“chore-woman”, a jobbing maid or cleaner, and nothing to do with “char” being an Anglo-Indian word for tea!).28,29

Ten years later in the 1871 census, Ann and Francis were still by the Methodists’ Chapel on South Side, in a corner of the village which is still known as Goldie Hill.30 By now Mary in North End was also living alone; she is recorded on the census as a washerwoman.31

The last time they appear together is on the 1881 census. Ann and Francis are still on the main street at Goldie Hill. By now, at the age of seventy-seven, Francis had quit weaving (in fact, by now hand-loom weaving had all but quit Hutton Rudby…) and was recorded on the census as deriving income from his land.32 At sixty-three Mary was still working as a charwoman but by 1881 she had been rejoined in North End by her thirty-year-old son Francis—by now an ironstone miner—and his own wife and daughter.33

Deaths of Francis, Ann and Mary

Francis Stainthorp died on 14th August 1882 of bronchitis and general debility. He was seventy-eight years old.34 His widow Ann née Seamer followed five months later on 5th Feb 1883 aged eighty-two; her death was registered by their young granddaughter Maria.35 They were both buried at Rudby.1

Francis and Ann’s remaining son Charles Stainthorp (1835-1905) married twice and had eleven children. He was a butcher and farmer in Hutton Rudby before he left the North Riding and ended his days as a dairyman in Newcastle upon Tyne. Charles lived an eventful life and will be the subject of a future post. He was my great-great-great grandfather.

By 1891, Mary Stainthorp née Bennison was living with her younger son Robert and his family in Carlin How, near Saltburn on the Yorkshire coast.36 She died in the year 1900 at the age of eighty-two.37

Mary and John’s younger son Robert Stainthorp (1852-1937?) worked as a farm servant as a young man before marrying Mary Ann Dixon in 1881, settling down in Carlin How as a railway platelayer, and having seven children of his own (Tom, Maggie and Henry, plus four who died in childhood).38

Robert’s elder brother Francis Stainthorp (1851-1914) also worked as a farm servant, and later as an ironstone miner and blast-furnace labourer. He married Ann Parks in Skelton-in-Cleveland in June 1873, had two daughters (Annie Elizabeth and Mary Jane), and died in Middlesbrough on 24th February 1914.39

Sketch family tree showing the family of Francis and John Stainthorp in Hutton Rudby.

Sketch family tree showing the family of Francis and John Stainthorp in Hutton Rudby.
Some dates of birth and death are unconfirmed.
Image created using Family Echo software (www.familyecho.com).

Acknowledgements

This post is thanks to the National Archives, Borthwick Institute for Archives, Lincolnshire public library service, the libraries of Robert Gordon University and the University of Lincoln, the Northumberland and Durham Family History Society, the RootsChat web forum and the ENG-NORTH-YORKS mailing list.

References

  1. Hutton Rudby and District Local History Society. Handwritten transcriptions from the registers of the parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entries for ‘Stainthorp’ and related spellings. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com).
  2. Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the baptism of Francis Stainthorpe, 4th November 1803.
  3. Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the baptism of John Stainthorpe, 19th August 1810.
  4. Hastings, Robert P. Hutton Rudby: industrial village (c.1700-1900). Hutton Rudby and District Local History Society, 1979.
  5. Exchequer Court of York. The will of Francis Stainthorpe. Probate register 167, folio 621. Deanery of Cleveland, 11th November 1822. York: Borthwick Institute for Archives.
  6. Estate Duty Office. Death duty registers. Archive reference IR 26/932, S-T, folio numbers 1642-1942. Entry for Francis Stainthorpe, 11th November 1822. Kew: The National Archives.
  7. Prerogative Court of York. Admon of Margaret Stainthorpe. Probate register 178. Deanery of Cleveland, July 1828. York: Borthwick Institute for Archives.
  8. The copy of the lists of persons entitled to vote in the election of two Knights of the Shire for the North-Riding of the County of York, in respect of property situate within the several and respective parishes, townships and places, within mentioned, in the Division or Wapentake of Langbaurgh-West… etc. Northallerton: E. Langdale, 1834. Ancestry Library Edition. http://interactive.ancestrylibrary.com/2410/32969_605905_2052-00053/ (accessed 7th November 2014).
  9. Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the marriage of Francis Stainthorpe and Ann Seamer, 16th June 1829.
  10. Parish of Ingleby Arncliffe. Parish register. Entry for the baptism of Ann Seamer, 16th March 1800.
  11. Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the baptism of William Stainthorp, 11th April 1830.
  12. General Register Office. Certified copy of an entry of death. Entry for William Stainthorp, 14th February 1848. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). GRO index reference: Stokesley 24 399. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=WTid0xIRy7p4MMXBgtkdJg&scan=1 (accessed 15th October 2014).
  13. Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the baptism of Francis Stainthorp, 4th August 1833.
  14. General Register Office. Certified copy of an entry of death. Entry for Francis Stainthorp, 24th May 1840. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). GRO index reference: Stokesley XXIV 326. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=hFGOb3hYcdX31Axmj%2FMOYA&scan=1 (accessed 15th October 2014).
  15. Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the baptism of Charles Stainthorp, 27th December 1835.
  16. Douglas, Laurelyn. ‘Health and hygiene in the nineteenth century.’ The Victorian Web: literature, history & culture in the age of Victora. 1991. http://www.victorianweb.org/science/health/health10.html (accessed 15th October 2014).
  17. Headstone of Francis Stainthorp, All Saints, Rudby-in-Cleveland. Photograph taken by Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com), 6th April 2014. Find A Grave. http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Stainthorp&GSfn=Francis&GRid=128813340 (accessed 30th April 2014).
  18. Reports from Assistant Hand-loom Weavers Commissioners. The sessional papers of the House of Lords, in the session 1840 (3° & 4° Victoriæ). Vol. XXXVII. Westminster: House of Lords, 1840. Google Books. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9xFcAAAAQAAJ (accessed 4th November 2014).
  19. General Register Office. 1841 census returns. Archive reference HO107, piece 1258, book 9, folio 13, page 18. Entry for North End, Township of Hutton, Rudby in Cleveland.
  20. Barrigan, Alice. A history walk round Hutton Rudby. Hutton Rudby History Society, 1997. North Yorkshire Historyhttp://northyorkshirehistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/a-history-walk-round-hutton-rudby.html (accessed 14th October 2014).
  21. General Register Office. Certified copy of an entry of marriage. Entry for John Stainthorp and Mary Bennison, 15th April 1850. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). GRO index reference: Stokesley XXIV 665. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=BLCItMhJYmcTHB2CkO0cUg&scan=1 (accessed 14th November 2014).
  22. General Register Office. Certified copy of an entry of birth. Entry for Francis Stainthorp, 13th January 1851. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). GRO index reference: Stokesley XXII 559. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=Sktp6nlISW5P5E%2FZW1EjtA&scan=1 (accessed 7th November 2014).
  23. General Register Office. Certified copy of an entry of birth. Entry for Robert Stainthorpe, 11th November 1852. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). GRO index reference: Stokesley 9d 381. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=Vxj4h4HyZsjKd2eZoTHEfg&scan=1 (accessed 7th November 2014).
  24. General Register Office. 1851 census returns. Archive reference HO107, piece 2375, folio 268, page 27. Entry for Tees Tilery, Normanby, Guisborough.
  25. General Register Office. 1851 census returns. Archive reference HO107, piece 2376, folio 279, pages 15-16. Entry for North End, Hutton.
  26. General Register Office. Certified copy of an entry of death. Entry for John Stainthorp, 30th April 1858. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). GRO index reference: Stokesley 9d 311. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=dc%2B1re4MDF%2BbZ94BWsEQMQ&scan=1 (accessed 17th November 2014).
  27. General Register Office. 1861 census returns. Archive reference RG9, piece 3659, folio 16, page 10. Entry for South Side, Main Street, Hutton Rudby.
  28. General Register Office. 1861 census returns. Archive reference RG9, piece 3659, folio 23, page 24. Entry for North End, Hutton Rudby.
  29. Oxford English Dictionary. Entry for ‘charwoman, n.’ Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/30845 (accessed 12th December 2014)
  30. General Register Office. 1871 census returns. Archive reference RG10, piece 4861, folio 16, page 9. Entry for Goldie Hill, Hutton.
  31. General Register Office. 1871 census returns. Archive reference RG10, piece 4861, folio 18, page 13. Entry for North End, Hutton.
  32. General Register Office. 1881 census returns. Archive reference RG11, piece 4867, folio 13, page 2. Entry for High Street, Hutton Rudby.
  33. General Register Office. 1881 census returns. Archive reference RG11, piece 4867, folio 26, page 28. Entry for North End, Hutton Rudby.
  34. General Register Office. Certified copy of an entry of death. Entry for Francis Stainthorpe, 14th August 1882. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). GRO index reference: Stokesley 9d 435. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=R3yuf%2FUe7RBo1B8engtTeQ&scan=1 (accessed 21st October 2014).
  35. General Register Office. Certified copy of an entry of death. Entry for Ann Stainthorpe, 5th February 1883. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). GRO index reference: Stokesley 9d 453. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=hfX2WwpnTXEC0soyDLQJKg&scan=1 (accessed 21st October 2014).
  36. General Register Office. 1891 census returns. Archive reference RG12, piece 3998, folio 38, page 40. Entry for 4 Railway Cottages, Brotton.
  37. General Register Office. Index to the register of deaths. Entry for Mary Stainthorpe, September Quarter 1900. GRO index reference: Guisbro’ 9d 340. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=TdfMGRsn3QYMD%2FLELT7hVw&scan=1 (accessed 17th November 2014).
  38. General Register Office. 1911 census returns. Census reference RG14PN29163 RG78PN1689 RD534 SD1 ED12 SN291. Entry for 4 Railway Cottages, Carlin How, Brotton.
  39. Ancestry.com. Public Member Trees. Wilkins – Crooks_2011-08-21. Entry for Francis Stainthorpe. Ancestry Library Edition. http://trees.ancestrylibrary.com/tree/43012929/person/12605101672 (accessed 26th November 2014).

Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). Version 1.1.0, updated 12th December 2014.

Thomas Foster and Hannah Cass Bassett

The grave site of Thomas Foster, his wife Hannah Cass Foster née Bassett, and their daughter Eliza. Newport Cemetery, Lincoln.

The grave site of Thomas Foster, his wife Hannah Cass Foster née Bassett, and their daughter Eliza.
Newport Cemetery, Lincoln. 
Copyright © Paul Stainthorp, and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License

Thomas Foster was born in May 1849 in the hamlet of Friday Bridge on the outskirts of Wisbech in Cambridgeshire. He was one of the six children of Norfolk-born Thomas Foster senior (1822-1896) who was variously a farmer, railway worker and millwright’s assistant, and Susannah Batterham née Greeves (1823-1902).17

Thomas junior moved from Wisbech to Lincoln some time around 1870 and married Hannah Cass Bassett there in 1876.7

Hannah was born in Lincoln in 1855; she was the eldest child of Edwin Bassett, a tailor originally from Shropshire, and Lincoln native Margaret L. Cass.3,4,7 Hannah grew up on West Bight in uphill Lincoln;3 before her marriage to Thomas Foster she worked as a household servant at Mr Mantle’s school for choristers in Northgate (the forerunner of the current Minster School).4,8

After their marriage Thomas worked as a house painter, and the couple moved to number 63 Burton Road in the city in about the year 1900.5,6,9,10 They had seven children: Eliza, Louisa, Harry Edward, Fred*, Margaret, William Bassett**, and Jennie.7,11

Thomas Foster died in Lincoln in June 1931 at the age of 82; his widow Hannah Foster in March 1941, aged 86.7,11,12 They both received funerals at St Nicholas’ Church on Newport and were buried in plot D.310 in Newport Cemetery, along with their oldest daughter Eliza who died in 1965. Records show that there was a headstone but it has disappeared.12

*Fred Foster (1884-1957) was the father of John Thomas Foster (1909-1992).10

**William Bassett Foster became a Private in the 1/4th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment, and fought in World War One. He was killed in the “useless slaughter of infantry” of the Battle of the Hohenzollern Redoubt at Loos on 13th October 1915, aged 26, and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial in northern France as well as the city war memorial on Lincoln High Street.13,14

Acknowledgements

With thanks to the staff of the Crematorium Office of the City of Lincoln Council and the attendants of Newport Cemetery, Lincoln, for their help in finding the grave site. Thanks also to the Lincolnshire public library service and the Lincolnshire Archives.

References

  1. “FreeReg” (database, FreeReg, http://www.freereg.org.uk/ : accessed 22 June 2016).
  2. “1851 England Census” (digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 7 ‎July ‎2015; citing Census Returns of England and Wales, 1851, The National Archives, Kew).
  3. “1861 England Census” (digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 7 ‎July ‎2015; citing Census Returns of England and Wales, 1861, The National Archives, Kew).
  4. “1871 England Census” (digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 7 ‎July ‎2015; citing Census Returns of England and Wales, 1871, The National Archives, Kew).
  5. “1881 England Census” (digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 7 ‎July ‎2015; citing Census Returns of England and Wales, 1881, The National Archives, Kew).
  6. “1891 England Census” (digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 7 ‎July ‎2015; citing Census Returns of England and Wales, 1891, The National Archives, Kew).
  7. “FreeBMD” (digital images, FreeBMD, http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ : accessed 29 March 2016; citing General Register Office, Southport).
  8. Page, Anne, Of Choristers – ancient and modern, (http://www.ofchoristers.net/Chapters/Lincoln.htm : accessed 11 November 2014), “Lincoln, The Minster School”, 21 December 2004.
  9. “1901 England Census” (digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 7 ‎July ‎2015; citing Census Returns of England and Wales, 1901, The National Archives, Kew).
  10. “1911 England Census” (digital images, Ancestry Library Edition, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/ : accessed 7 ‎July 2015; citing Census Returns of England and Wales, 1911, The National Archives, Kew).
  11. “Lincs to the Past” (digital images, Lincs to the Past, http://www.lincstothepast.com/ : accessed 11 November 2014).
  12. City of Lincoln, burial record (Newport Cemetery, Lincoln), plot D.310.
  13. Commonwealth War Graves Commission, “Find war dead” (digital images, CWGC, http://www.cwgc.org/ : accessed 11 November 2014).
  14. City war memorial (High Street, Lincoln).

Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). Version 1.0, updated 11th November 2014.

First World War centenary family history

In commemoration of the centenary of the start of the First World War, here are my notes on my ancestors and their immediate family members who served in the British armed forces between 1914-1918. I know of two immediate relatives who lost their lives in WWI, plus three relatives of my wife’s:

  1. John Wears Gray (1894-1918)
  2. Francis “Frank” Stainthorp (1886-1918)
  3. George Mabbott Black (1891-1915)
  4. Arthur Black (1897-1915)
  5. William Bassett Foster (1889-1915)
  6. I have also included brief notes on other relatives who served and survived the war

Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). Version 1.0, updated 14th August 2014.

1. John Wears Gray (1894-1918)

Private John Wears Gray, 5132 Royal Scots, later 350197, "D" Company, 9th (Glasgow Highlanders) Battalion, Highland Light Infantry.

Private John Wears Gray, 5132 Royal Scots, later 350197, “D” Company, 9th (Glasgow Highlanders) Battalion, Highland Light Infantry. Died aged 25 on 29th September 1918. Buried at Targelle Ravine British Cemetery, Villers-Guislain, France. Family photograph, © all rights reserved

My great-great-uncle John Wears Gray was born in 1894 in Newcastle upon Tyne, the second son of corporation rent-collector Charles Gray and his wife Sarah née Wears. In the census of 1901, John, aged 7, was with his parents at the family home at 14, Dene Terrace, South Gosforth – at the same address in 1911 he was recorded as a 17-year-old grocers’ apprentice with the Newcastle Co-operative Society (John’s father Charles had died four years earlier, at the age of only 42, leaving five children and his wife Sarah expecting twins).

It appears that John Wears Gray enlisted sometime in 1915. Although his WWI military service record has not survived, John’s medal card records his rank (Private), regimental number (5132) and that he initially served in the Royal Scots regiment.

At some point, John was transferred from the Royal Scots to the 9th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry and given a new regimental number (350197); possibly he was one of the men who joined the H.L.I. near Mametz Wood in the Somme in northern France in July 1916 – this fresh intake of men was recorded in the regimental diary.

At 4.40am on Sunday 29th September 1918, “D” Company of the 9th Glasgow Highlanders moved out of their trenches behind the front line in the small French commune of Villers-Guislain, south of Cambrai. An hour later they charged the German lines in thick fog.

At Targelle Ravine, some 60 men led by Lieutenant Douglas Fountaine Brodie found themselves too far forward and cut off from the rest of the brigade. They dug in and sent a message asking for instructions (the order to withdraw given in reply was intercepted – the messenger was taken prisoner). Most of the men at in Lt D. F. Brodie’s isolated party at Targelle were captured. Lt Brodie escaped capture by feigning death, but was killed in action a month later.

John Wears Gray was one of more than 350 men killed in the fighting at Villers-Guislain on this single day in September. He was 25. Next morning’s entry in the regimental diary begins:

30 September 1918: front line at Villers Guislain.
The morning stand to was unusually quiet.
—Diary of 9th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry. WO 95/2431/1. Kew: The National Archives

Screenshot from the Ian Hislop episode of the BBC's 'Who Do You Think You Are?' programme, showing John Wears Gray's headstone at Targelle Ravine British Cemetery

Screenshot from the Ian Hislop episode of the BBC’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?‘ programme, showing John Wears Gray’s headstone at Targelle Ravine British Cemetery, Villers-Guislain. Broadcast on Yesterday, 14th November 2013

350197 Private John Wears Gray, the son of Sarah Gray, of 14, Dene Terrace, South Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, and the late Charles Gray, is buried in Targelle Ravine British Cemetery, Villers-Guislain, Nord, France.

David Murdoch Hislop, the paternal grandfather of the journalist & broadcaster Ian Hislop, served in the Highland Light Infantry alongside my great-great-uncle John Wears Gray, and also fought at the battle of Targelle Ravine. In the first series of the BBC’s family history programme ‘Who Do You Think You Are?‘, Ian Hislop travelled with his family to Villers-Guislain and retraced the footsteps of his grandfather in the battle on 29th September 1918. In a sequence filmed at the Targelle Ravine cemetery, the camera pans along the line of white Commonwealth gravestones, and John Wears Gray’s own headstone can be clearly seen on screen.

John Gray was posthumously awarded the standard Victory and British campaign medals which presumably were sent to his widowed mother Sarah. His name is inscribed on a memorial plaque at St Nicholas’ Church, South Gosforth – images of the memorial are available on the North East War Memorials Project website.

John’s elder brother, my great-grandfather David Gray, also served in the war (see below).

2. Francis “Frank” Stainthorp (1886-1918)

Another two-greats uncle, the son of butcher/publican William Stainthorp and Margaret Anne née Harland. Francis Stainthorp was born on 19th January 1886 at the Crown and Anchor Hotel, Main Street, Redcar, Yorks., where his father William was landlord. By 1891, William Stainthorp had taken over the licence at the New Inn, Skelton-in-Cleveland, and the 4-year-old Frank was listed there on the ’91 census.

By 1901, the Stainthorps had moved to 57 Castlereagh Street, New Silksworth, a mining-village suburb of Sunderland, and William had returned to the usual Stainthorp family occupation of butcher. Frank married Mary Lena Mason in Sunderland in 1910, and by 1911 the newlyweds had set up home in a three-room tenement on Burdon Lane, Ryhope, County Durham – Frank having followed his father into the butchery trade. One daughter, Margaret, was born in Ryhope on 14th January 1911 – a second, named Mary Lena after her mother, followed on 31st March 1913, after the family had moved to nearby Seaham.

Francis Stainthorp enlisted in the army on 9th September 1914 at Seaham Harbour, County Durham, joining the 14th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry with the rank of Private; regimental number 21653. He was 28 years old – his attestation papers recorded that he had previously served in the Northants (or possibly Northumberland – the handwriting is not clear!) Hussars, a Yeomanry regiment. He gave his occupation as butcher; his medical record shows that he was 5′ 9¼” tall and weighed just over nine stone.

While undergoing basic training at Halton Park near Tring in Hertfordshire, Frank was promoted to Lance Corporal. (He was stripped of this rank in 1915 after being picked up drunk and absent without leave, having overstayed his pass. He further marked his card in 1916 when he was arrested and tried by Field General Court Martial for “conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline” – Confined to Barracks for 10 days. He was eventually reappointed L/Cpl on 12th February 1917.)

In February 1918 Frank was among 200 soldiers transferred from the 14th to the 19th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry while the latter was encamped behind the front lines at Poelcappelle in Flanders.

Ordnance Survey / British War Office (G.S.G.S.), First World War Trench Map showing Avelghem and Kerkhove, October 1918. National Library of Scotland

Ordnance Survey / British War Office (G.S.G.S.), First World War Trench Map showing Avelghem and Kerkhove, October 1918. National Library of Scotland

By 31st October the same year—in the final “Hundred Days” offensive of the war—the 19th D.L.I. were in the front line north of Avelghem. At 5.35 on the morning of the 31st, the Faithful Durhams attacked along with two battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers. By 10.30am they had taken all objectives along with 350 German prisoners, and the British Army controlled a stretch of country to the east of Avelghem as far as the small village of Kerkhove with its church dedicated to Saint Amand (Sint-Amandus).

However these gains came at a heavy cost. 102 British soldiers were killed on this day at Avelghem.

21653 L/Cpl Frank Stainthorp, aged 32, died of his wounds on 31st October 1918 near the village of Kerkhove; he was buried in the churchyard at Kerkhove Sint-Amanduskerk. In November 1922, as part of a programme of ‘concentration’ of scattered individual British and Commonwealth war graves into larger cemeteries, his body was exhumed and moved to the huge Bedford House Cemetery near Ieper (Ypres).

Awaiting photograph…

Awaiting photograph…

Frank’s campaign medals were sent to his widow, Mrs Mary Lena Stainthorp of 15, Hill Street, Seaham Harbour, Co. Durham. In 1919, Mary was awarded a widow’s pension of 25s. 5d. a week.

Frank Stainthorp’s name was added to a memorial plaque which was erected at Chester-le-Street Wesleyan Methodist Church in June 1922. However, the plaque was lost when the church was later converted into a private house. Details of the memorial are available on the North East War Memorials Project website.

I have not yet been able to trace what happened to Frank’s family in County Durham after the war. His daughter Margaret may have married Reginald S. Godfrey in Middlesex in 1934.

N.B. this Francis Stainthorp (1886-1918) was the 2-greats grandson of Francis Stainthorp (1765-1822), weaver of Hutton Rudby, whom I have written about here.

3. George Mabbott Black (1891-1915)

4. Arthur Black (1897-1915)

My wife’s great-uncles George and Arthur Black were brothers: two of the thirteen children of agricultural labourer William Black and his wife Mary née Pask of 35, Hope Street, Lincoln.

George Mabbott Black was born on 30th November 1890 in Sturton-by-Stow, Lincs.; his middle name “Mabbott” was the maiden name of his maternal grandmother. A farm waggoner, he joined the Royal Navy and by 1915 was a Stoker on the destroyer HMS Wolverine. He died on 27th August 1915 in the Eastern Mediterranean, presumably while on active service as part of the Dardanelles Campaign. He was 24. George is commemorated at East Mudros Military Cemetery on the Greek island of Lemnos (Λήμνος).

Lincoln War Memorial and St Benedict's Church

Lincoln City War Memorial and St Benedict’s Church 
The names of George M. Black, Arthur Black, and William B. Foster are inscribed on the High Street memorial 
© Copyright Tom Bastin and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Arthur Black—the younger brother by 6 years—was born on 2nd May 1897 in the City of Lincoln itself. He became a Private in the 1/4th Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment; his service number was 1824. He died on 13th October 1915, at only 18 years of age, in the “useless slaughter of infantry” of the Battle of the Hohenzollern Redoubt. His name is inscribed on the Loos Memorial in northern France, one of the 3,643 Allied casualties of the battle.

5. William Bassett Foster (1889-1915)

William Bassett Foster was my wife’s great-great-uncle (two greats). He was born in 1889 in Lincoln: the son of house painter Thomas Foster and Hannah Cass née Bassett, of 63, Burton Road. Like Arthur Black, he was a Private in the 1/4th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment; service number 2783. He was killed in the same battle on 13th October 1915, aged 26, and is also commemorated on the Loos Memorial.

William Foster’s name—along with George and Arthur Black’s—can be seen on the city war memorial on Lincoln High Street.

6. Other relatives who served and survived the war

This list will grow as I discover more service records.

*I am greatly indebted to my distant cousin Nigel Butterfield who provided the information on the four Curry brothers who were my three-greats uncles.

Stone of Remembrance, Tyne Cot

Stone of Remembrance, Tyne Cot
© Copyright Mark Kilner and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

References

  • Francis Stainthorp (1765-1822), weaver of Hutton Rudby

    Thumbnail photo of my children with the grave of their six-greats grandparents

    Thumbnail photo of my children with the grave of their six-greats grandparents.
    Copyright © Paul Stainthorp, all rights reserved

    My great-great-great-great-great grandfather (i.e. five greats) Francis Stainthorp (1765-1822) and five-greats grandmother Hannah née Waring (1768-1836) are buried in the churchyard of All Saints Church, Rudby-in-Cleveland, in the north-east corner of the North Riding of Yorkshire, about nine miles south of Middlesbrough.1

    My Stainthorp ancestors lived in the adjoining village of Hutton Rudby from at least the early 1600s until c.1890.2 Our surname derives from the former market town of Staindrop, across the River Tees from Hutton, in County Durham. The placename matches Old Norse steinn + þorp meaning the ‘stony’ settlement or farmstead, or one belonging to a Dane named Steinn,3,4 but is probably a Scandinavianization of an underlying Old English placename stǣner (‘stony’) + hop (‘valley’).5 Staindrop is spelt Stainthorp or -thorpe on some eighteenth-century maps and gazetteers.6,7 The manorial district around the village was anciently known as Staindropshire.8Gilbert de Steyndrope, goldsmith and sheriff, was recorded in London in 1346.9

    The market town of Stainthorp (Staindrop), in “A Map of the BISHOPRICK of DURHAM North from London” by T. Badeslade and W.H. Toms, 1741.

    The market town of Stainthorp (Staindrop), in “A Map of the BISHOPRICK of DURHAM North from London” by T. Badeslade and W.H. Toms, 1742.

    The local history society in Hutton Rudby have transcribed the parish records for All Saints:2 despite dozens of Stainthorp burials recorded in Rudby over two centuries, Francis’s is the only one of my ancestor’s graves marked with a headstone.10 The memorial inscription is very well preserved and reads:

    The headstone of linen weaver Francis Stainthorp (1765-1822) and his wives Jane née Kendale (1764-1795) and Hannah née Waring (1768-1836). All Saints, Rudby

    The headstone of linen weaver Francis Stainthorp (1765-1822) and his wives Jane née Kendale (1764-1795) and Hannah née Waring (1768-1836). All Saints, Rudby. Copyright © Paul Stainthorp, and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License

    “Sacred
    TO THE MEMORY OF
    FRANCIS STAINTHORP,
    who died July the 19th, 1822;
    Aged 57 Years.
    ALSO
    JANE his First Wife,
    who died June the 17th, 17[95?];
    Aged 31 Years.
    ALSO OF
    HANNAH his Second Wife,
    Who died August the 14th, 1836;
    Aged 68 Years.”

    Francis Stainthorp, the only? son of Robert Stainthorp (d. 1820?) and Margaret née Wilchinson (d. 1771), was baptised at Rudby parish church on 10th March 1765.2 He became a linen weaver – hand-loom weaving at home was the traditional occupation in Hutton, which was at the centre of the Cleveland linen industry, processing Baltic flax brought into the Tees ports.1,11 The village was also notorious for its connections to smuggling:

    “Hutton Rudby, Enterpen,
    Far more rogues than honest men…”

    — traditional rhyme.12

    Francis married twice and had a total of ten children.2 Of those ten, three died in early childhood and the parents re-used their forenames for subsequent births. (This seems odd today but was not uncommon in the early nineteenth century.13 I have used Roman numerals I, II and III to distinguish the births below.)

    On 23rd May 1786, Francis married Jane Kendale at Rudby All Saints.2,14 They had three children:

    1. John I, died in infancy
    2. Margaret (b. 9th March 1791)
    3. Jane (baptised 9th February 1794)

    Francis’s wife Jane died in 1795 aged just 31 and he married Hannah Waring on 14th April 1798.2,15,16 Hannah and Francis had a further seven children:

    1. John II, died in infancy
    2. Hannah (b. 25th August 1802)
    3. Francis (b. 22nd August 1803 – d. 14th August 1882)
    4. Mary (bapt. 24th May 1805)
    5. Ann I, died in infancy
    6. Ann II (bapt. 16th October 1808)
    7. John III (bapt. 19th August 1810 – bur. 2nd May 1858)
    Title page of the poll book for Yorkshire, 1807

    Title page of the poll book for Yorkshire, 1807. Scan of a work in the public domain

    The two boys who survived were my four-greats grandfather Francis (1803-82), and John (1810-58). Both became hand-loom linen weavers like their father.17

    In 1807, the 42-year-old Francis Stainthorp’s name and occupation were recorded in the county poll book for that year’s election to the House of Commons of the two county MPs for Yorkshire – the so-called “Knights of the Shire”.18 Francis had the vote, pre-Reform Act, becaue he was a freeholder resident in the liberty of Langbaurgh (the wapentake which included Hutton Rudby). This was no secret ballot: how each man voted was recorded and published. Francis’s candidate—the incumbent anti-slavery MP William Wilberforce—retained his seat.19

    As his gravestone inscription records, Francis Stainthorp senior died on 19th July 1822 at the age of 57; he was buried two days later in the churchyard at Rudby All Saints, where his bones presumably still lie.2,10

    In his will, written on 21st January 1822, and proved at the Exchequer Court of York later the same year, Francis left a considerable amount of property to his wife, five surviving daughters (Hannah, Mary, Ann, Margaret and Jane) and sons Francis and John. The will mentions several houses in Hutton occupied by tenant weavers, two acres of land, an orchard, “farming stock, Implements of Husbandry, and stock in Trade… Household goods, furniture, plate, linen and china“, and sums of money to be given to each of his children. A copy of the will is held on microfilm at the Borthwick Institute for Archives in York;20 the will is also summarised and the estate valued in the death duty registers held at the National Archives.21

    I give to my said Wife for her own use
    absolutely the Cow now in my possession…

    — excerpt from Francis Stainthorp’s will.20

    After his death, some of Francis senior’s property in Hutton—consisting of two houses with a garden, orchard, [work]shop & stable—was bought by David Hebbron, a butcher.22 Francis’s elder son, Francis, lived to 78 and was one of the last hand-loom weavers in the village.23 Francis junior and his wife Ann Seamer had three sons of their own in the 1830s,2 though all but the youngest died in childhood.24,25

    Section of Francis Stainthorp's will, held in the Borthwick Institute in York

    Section of Francis Stainthorp’s will, held in the Borthwick Institute in York

    Francis junior’s third son Charles Stainthorp (1835-1905) and grandson William (1862-1924) became butchers, after the industrial revolution brought cheap imported linen to Britain and put paid to cottage hand-loom weaving in north-east Yorkshire. Ironically one of the last uses of Hutton Rudby home-spun linen was to make blue apron material for butchers like Charles and his descendants.26

    After a series of family and financial tragedies in the 1870s and ’80s, Charles and William Stainthorp both left the North Riding and moved their families to what would later become the metropolitan area of Tyne and Wear. William’s youngest child: my great-grandfather Henry Harland (Harry) Stainthorp, was born in Sunderland in 1904. He carried on the Stainthorp family butchering business on Tyneside, succeeded by his own eldest son: my grandfather, who ran a butcher’s shop in Whitley Bay until he retired in 1986.

    There were no (living) Stainthorps left in Hutton Rudby by the end of the nineteenth century.

    Acknowledgements

    I’m grateful to the following people, some of whom do not even know me, but without whose help I would not have been able to write this post :– my late grandad Bill Stainthorp and my grandma Marjorie, Joan Stainthorp, Gill S., Carole A., John and Marianne S., Margaret Brabin, Alice Barrigan (North Yorkshire History), J. E. Stainthorp, the staff of the Lincolnshire public library service, the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York, and several people on the RootsChat family history forum. Thank you.

    References

    1. Page, William (editor). ‘Parishes: Rudby-in-Cleveland.’ In: A history of the county of York, North Riding. Volume 2. London: St. Catherine Press, 1923. British History Online. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=64663 (accessed 14th October 2014).
    2. Hutton Rudby and District Local History Society. Handwritten transcriptions from the registers of the parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entries for ‘Stainthorp’ and related spellings. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com).
    3. Mawer, Allen. The place-names of Northumberland and Durham. Cambridge University Press, 1920. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/cu31924028042996 (accessed 14th October 2014).
    4. Simpson, David. ‘Place-name meanings P to S.’ England’s North East. 2009. http://englandsnortheast.co.uk/PlaceNameMeaningsPtoS.html (accessed 14th October 2014).
    5. Mills, Anthony David. A dictionary of British place-names. Oxford University Press, 2011. Google Books. http://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=ISBN9780199609086 (accessed 14th October 2014).
    6. Badeslade, Thomas and Toms, William H. ‘A map of the Bishoprick of Durham north from London.’ In: Chorographia Britanniæ: or, a new set of maps of all the counties in England and Wales, etc… 1742.
    7. Camden, William. Britaine, or, a chorographicall description of the most flourishing kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland. London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610. Transcription by Dana F. Sutton, 14th June 2004. A Vision of Britain Through Time. http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Camden/27#pn_9 (accessed 14th October 2014).
    8. Dufferwiel, Martin. Durham: over 1,000 years of history and legend. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2011. Google Books. http://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=ISBN9781780573946 (accessed 14th October 2014).
    9. Sharpe, Reginald R. (editor). Calendar of letter-books preserved among the archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall: letter-book F, 1337-1352. Folios cxxi-cxxx, pages 143-156. London: John Edward Francis, 1904. British History Online. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33540 (accessed 14th October 2014).
    10. Headstone of Francis Stainthorp, All Saints, Rudby-in-Cleveland. Photograph taken by Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com), 6th April 2014. Find A Grave. http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Stainthorp&GSfn=Francis&GRid=128813340 (accessed 30th April 2014).
    11. Barrigan, Alice. ‘Linen weaving and the paper mill.’ In: Remarkable, but still true: the story of the Revd R.J. Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of cholera. Guisborough: Westgate, 2007. North Yorkshire History. http://northyorkshirehistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/chapter-2-linen-weaving-paper-mill.html (accessed 14th October 2014).
    12. Pierson, Thomas. Roseberry Topping: a poem (originally published 1783): with notes, and also a notice of the author and a memoir of the late Thomas Jennett. Edited by John Walker Ord. Stockton: Jennett & Co., 1847. Google Books. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HbksAQAAMAAJ (accessed 14th October 2014).
    13. Fraser, Susanna. ‘What’s in a necronym?’ In Love and War. 9th June 2011. http://authorsusannafraser.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/whats-in-necronym.html (accessed 14th October 2014).
    14. Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the marriage of Francis Stainthorpe and Jane Kendale, 23rd May 1786.
    15. Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the marriage of Francis Stainthorpe and Hannah Waring, 14th April 1798.
    16. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Transcription from the registers of the parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the marriage of Francis Stainthorpe and Hannah Waring, 14th April 1798. Genealogical Society film number: 918436. FamilySearch. https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/NKBD-X5W (accessed 14th October 2014).
    17. General Register Office. 1841 census returns. Archive reference HO107, piece 1258, book 9, folio 13, page 18. Entry for North End, Township of Hutton, Rudby in Cleveland.
    18. County of York. The poll, for Knights of the Shire. York: T. Wilson and R. Spence, 1807. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/countyyorkpollf00unkngoog/ (accessed 14th October 2014).
    19. ‘Yorkshire election 1807.’ Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire_election_1807 (accessed 14th October 2014).
    20. Exchequer Court of York. The will of Francis Stainthorpe. Probate register 167, folio 621. Deanery of Cleveland, 11th November 1822. York: Borthwick Institute for Archives.
    21. Estate Duty Office. Death duty registers. Archive reference IR 26/932, S-T, folio numbers 1642-1942. Entry for Francis Stainthorpe, 11th November 1822. Kew: The National Archives.
    22. Barrigan, Alice. ‘People of Hutton Rudby in the C18/19: Southeran to Swallwell.’ North Yorkshire History. 10th June 2013. http://northyorkshirehistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/people-of-hutton-rudby-in-c1819_10.html (accessed 15th October 2014).
    23. General Register Office. 1871 census returns. Archive reference RG10, piece 4861, folio 16, page 9. Entry for Goldie Hill, Hutton Rudby.
    24. General Register Office. Certified copy of an entry of death. Entry for Francis Stainthorp, 24th May 1840. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). GRO index reference: Stokesley XXIV 326. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=hFGOb3hYcdX31Axmj%2FMOYA&scan=1 (accessed 15th October 2015).
    25. General Register Office. Certified copy of an entry of death. Entry for William Stainthorp, 14th February 1848. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). GRO index reference: Stokesley 24 399. FreeBMD. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=WTid0xIRy7p4MMXBgtkdJg&scan=1 (accessed 15th October 2015).
    26. Barrigan, Alice. ‘Epilogue.’ In: Remarkable, but still true: the story of the Revd R.J. Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of cholera. Guisborough: Westgate, 2007. North Yorkshire History. http://northyorkshirehistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/chapter-24-epilogue.html (accessed 15th October 2014).

    Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com). Version 1.2.5, updated 19th November 2014.