TREES & BRANCHES
by
James BRADSHAW
The oldest ancestors I have are James BRADSHAW and Nancy CHADWICK. I can’t find where I got Nancy’s name from, but I think it might have been from someone else’s tree. My database of names has quite a few that I found that way. But I’ll start with them, since I can follow Nancy down through her children.
James was born in 1807, Nancy in 1806. Both were from an area know as Little and Great Marsden. A description of the area says “Marsden, a township and two chapelries in Whalley parish, Lancashire. The township consists of the two chapelries, called Little M. and Great M”. In various census records its shown in different ways and eventually becomes Brierfield. This was a bit confusing to me when I started researching. There were quarries, and coal mines and later came the cotton mills.
James and Nancy were married in November of 1825.
They had seven children starting with William born in 1827, followed by John 1833, Elizabeth 1835, Henry 1837 (who was the great, great grandfather of my dad) , Sarah 1841, James 1843 and Thomas 1846. They all were born in Great and Little Marsden, Lancashire.
In the 1841 census there was no sign of James, but Nancy was living with 5 of her children on Dark Lane in Little Marsden. The two younger children, James and Thomas, are not shown on this census but are on the next one. So they must have been absent from the home when the census was taken. But James senior is not there either, and he doesn’t appear again. To say this branch of the family is illusive is an understatement. Maybe Dad didn’t know anything after all.
BRADSHAW
I think I’ll write a little about my dad’s side of the family. He was one of three children, with one brother and one sister. I knew from my mum that he had a brother who died young and she thought there were a few other children who were deceased. My dad, as I said in an earlier post, was never very forthcoming about his family and when I searched the new 1911 census I found that my Grandma BRADSHAW had 9 children and only the three survived.
This side of the family lived in Lancashire, which is where I was born. Mum’s side came from Cumberland but moved there too later on.
My dad’s name was Clifford BRADSHAW and he was the youngest of the three that lived. He had a sister May and a brother Bertram (Bert). I haven’t been able to find Bert’s birth year. May married and her husband and my Grandad BRADSHAW both died when I was quite young. I don’t remember Uncle Fred and my only recollection of my grandfather is being taken into the front room of their house to see him in his coffin. I think I was about 4 or 5 years old, but haven’t been able to find their death records either. I think its probably because they’re still relatively recent. At one point my grandad played the piano for the silent movies. Auntie May and Uncle Fred used to sing semi-professionally at sea-side shows in Babbacomb, Devon where they lived. But this is all recent, so I should start at the beginning.
Nancy BARTON
John BARTON’s oldest child was Nancy, born in Annan Scotland in 1867 before the family moved to Carlisle, Cumberland. She appears in the 1871 census living at 1 Freestone Place in the township of St Mary. At the age of 14 she is working as a piecer in a cotton mill. She’s still single in 1881 at the age of 24, still living at home and still a cotton worker.
In the summer of 1892 she married James BELL in Carlisle and three years later had a son, John BELL. But by 1901 she’s a 34 year old widow. She’s back living at home with the family in Hope Street with her 6 year old son.
So far I haven’t found anything about James BELL. Their marriage and his subsequent death all happened over the 9 year period between when they were married and the 1901 census. When I looked for his birth and death records I found there were many, many James Bells!
John BARTON's Family - at least a beginning with more to come.
John was the oldest child of William BARTON and Jane MCINTOSH, born in Bolton, Lancashire in 1840. A year later he and his parents were living in Warwick, Cumberland at a place called Warwick Hall. By the 1851 census he’s living in Botchergate, Carlisle. His mother has passed away .
Over the next couple of years he leaves home and makes his way to Scotland. He’s working as a cotton spinner in Annan in Dumfries and Galloway, about 20 miles from Carlisle.
There he met and married Margaret TELFER. She was born in Annan in 1841. In 1861 she was keeping house for her father James and brothers Robert, John and James. Her father and brother John were agricultural laborers and her other brother Robert was a tailors apprentice. The younger brother was still a child.
John married Margaret in 1862. By At some point between 1869 and 1871 he and Margaret and two daughters Nancy and Jane moved back to Carlisle and are living at 1 Freestone Place, St Mary’s. Nancy was born in 1867 and Jane 1869, both born in Annan, Scotland. Their other children were all born in Carlisle.
There was Helen 1872, James 1875, W. John (possibly William after his grandfather?) born 1878, Margaret 1880 and their youngest Jennet born in 1884.
The census of 1891 finds John and Margaret living at 20 Hope Street, Caldewgate with his father William aged 70 living with them. The working children are all cotton workers but for James who’s an apprentice Joiner.
W. John, James and Helen are no longer living at home. There’s a lot more research to be done to see what happened to the other children.
I believe John BARTON died at the beginning of 1918 followed by his wife Margaret one year later.
John GENT
As an addendum to the BARTONs I’ve researched John GENT who married Martha and had two children with her.
John was from Exeter, Devon and was born in 1845. I searched the census sheets from that area and realized that GENT was like Smith in some places!
I did find one family that I thought might be his. His father was John born 1815, mother Mary 1820 and a brother Thomas born 1847. The father’s occupation was a bit of a puzzle to me. The census listed F-llmonger, I couldn’t read the second letter. When I looked it up it turns out he was a Fellmonger. You learn something every day. A Fellmonger was a man who took the hair off animal skins before they were tanned to make leather. When I was looking at the census page that I found them on, there were several women who were glove makers.
All this is speculation about his family. Maybe they are, I don’t know for sure.
Then I did find a record of him at a later date. I used a spread of a couple of years for his birth and up popped a soldier! John GENT, Private, 55th Regiment. He gave this same regiment as his occupation when he lived with the Bartons in Carlisle.
In 1861 he was listed at Fulwood Barracks, Lancashire. This was home to the Queens Lancashire Regiment. An interesting point about his record was that it showed his age as 18. He birth year in following records showed his birth in 1845 that would have made him 16, I wonder did he lie about his age to join the army?
He married Martha in 1879 and died in 1896
More on William BARTON
I had a little eureka moment. Using the date of the last census when William was shown living with son John in 1891 and the fact that he wasn’t on the 1901 census, I searched for his death record between those 10 years and found a William BARTON who died in Carlisle in 1896.
Then I started to think about what I had written about Mary MCINTOSH possibly being a relative of Jane’s. So I did a search for a marriage record for William and Jane with a 10 year spread from when son John was born. When you use Ancestry.com you can see the names of other people who are in the register at the same time as the person you’re looking for. So I kept looking for William and found a record from Bolton, Lancashire. Remember reader, that John BARTON was born in Bolton.
Then came the eureka moment. There they both were on the same page - William BARTON and Jane MCINTOSH married in 1837 in Bolton. I was right, Mary could have been her mother or grandmother and the other Mary maybe Jane’s neice.
THE BARTONS
I started with William BARTON. He was the oldest member of the Bartons that I could find. My grandmother was a Barton on my mothers side.
William was born in 1819 in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England. (Yes my Mum was right, there was family from there, just not her father.) The first place I found William was in the 1814 census. He was living in Cumberland and working at a place called Warwick Hall. So far I haven’t found a lot out about this place except that it was a big house with many servants. It lists his occupation as man servant. There is also a Jane BARTON, born 1816, listed with a son called John working there. I’m pretty sure this was William’s wife although she was gone when the next census was taken ten years later. That census didn’t record where you were born, just a Y or a N to indicate if you were born in the county or not. John shows up later with William.
Warwick Hall’s main building burned down in 1935 with all its records. In its place now stands a rather nice looking hotel.
The next bit of information comes from the 1851 census. At this time he was living at 20 Randlesons Lane, in Botchergate in Carlisle. His occupation at this point is laborer. Jane is no longer listed. So we have a father raising three children. There was John who was 11, Alexander 9, and Martha 6. Also living at number 20 was a Mary MCINTOSH who was 74 at the time, from Broomhills, Cumberland, and a child also called Mary MCINTOSH who was 10 years old. It’s only speculation but I think maybe Mary was his wife Jane’s relative. Maybe her grandmother, and the younger Mary a child from a sibling of Jane’s. I still have to follow up on this point. It would make sense to have a relative come to live with you and help you raise your children after your wife has died.
By 1861 William, who’s 50 by now, is living with his daughter Martha at 110 Crop Street, Botchergate. William is working as a groom and Martha, aged 15, is a factory hand. John and Alexander would be 21 and 19 respectively, and have moved away from the family home.
In 1871 it starts to get interesting. William is now working as a coachman, and Martha is 25 and a factory worker. What makes it interesting is the fact that the census records several little Bartons. William is listed as Head of Household, the children are listed as his grandchildren with Martha as their mother. There is William aged 7, Edward aged 3, and Jane aged 1 month. All the children were born in Carlisle. Martha was only 18 when William was born.
1881 brought changes to the household. In 1879 Martha married a soldier called John GENT who was from Exeter, Devon. He was a corporal in the 55th Regiment H.M. Infantry. Being so far from home I would imagine he was stationed at Carlisle Barracks.
They and their children are still living with William at 37 East Tower Street, St Mary Within. William is still working as a coachman and Martha lists her occupation as soldier’s wife. The children living with them are William now 17 and a cotton spinners assistant, Edward 14 who’s a rope spinner, and Jane 11. Martha had another daughter before she married John, Mary BARTON, 8 years old, and then had two more children James GENT aged 2 and Rebecca GENT 6 months. Quite a big family.
To complete the story of William BARTON I found the 1891 census. I haven’t found a record of his death as yet but it looks like he was living with his son John, Martha’s brother, at number 20 Hope Street, Caldewgate, Carlisle. He isn’t living there by the 1901, but John still is, so this gives me a window to find his death record.
What got me started
Even as a child I think I was interested, drawing trees with branches and putting names on them. My mother was very forthcoming about the ancestors but Dad wasn’t too interested. He didn’t even tell my Mum much really.
Mum is now 98 and living in Colne, Lancashire, England and we’ve talked about the family - who’s who and who married who. She mostly wanted to know where her father was born. She remembered something about St Albans, Suffolk or Bury St Edmunds Hertfordshire, but didn’t know for sure. So when I got an email with a trial membership to Ancestry.com I jumped in with both feet. That was November 2008 and now (end of January 2009) I have 2,000 leaves (names) on that tree. Yes, you heard right 2,000!
When you start putting family names into the search engine at Ancestry.com it looks at other people’s trees too. So several of my ancestors showed up as ancestors of other people. All of a sudden I had a huge number of relatives - not just the “coat tail” ones (the distant ones by marriage) but great uncles and aunts, and third cousins. People who’s names I’d never known before. Most stayed in England but there were some who came to the US also - to Mass. and Utah.
The search becomes an addiction - when was that person born? Is that person his wife do you think? What happened to the children that were in the census taken 10 years ago? I have spent a lot of hours doing the looking and the trial membership became a paid one. I did get a copy of Family Tree Maker 2009 for Christmas and that helps keep it all in one place.
Why did I want to post a blog of my research? I think it was so that I could write down the family connections, get a real picture of each of the families involved. Where they lived, what they did. What the connections were. So more for myself really. But anyone who might be interested is welcome to read it.