(10) The EDWARDS

The EDWARDS side of the family is really what got me started down this road to finding the roots of my family. My mother always thought that her father (who died when she was 13) had come from St. Albans or Bury St. Edmunds. In fact the family was from there but her father Alfred EDWARDS was actually born in Lancashire.

The furthest I have been able to go back is to is John EDWARDS who was born in 1778 in St. Albans’s Hertfordshire, England. He married Sarah HILL on the 13th of June, 1801 at St. Stephen’s in St. Albans. Sarah was also from St. Albans born in 1780,her father was William HILL and her mother was Mary SMITH. They had eleven children.

These very early records came from the family tree of someone else with whom I share ancestors. So consider the fact that records of birth, deaths and marriages were not registered, by law, until 1837 and you can understand the sparse information I have on them.

The first was Suzanna EDWARDS, she was born in August of 1801 only a couple of months after the wedding but you must remember that the records were not always accurate back then, otherwise make your own conclusions!

Next there was William, born in December of 1802. He married Elizabeth BUCKLEY in 1827. She was also from St. Albans. He was followed by Thomas born in May 1805.

Then there was James who was born in 1807 and who died two years later.

James died in the March of 1809 as Joseph was born in the April of the same year. He married Mary WILSON in 1829.

Sarah was next, she was born in February of 1812 but died the following October. Mary EDWARDS followed Sarah in 1814.

The next son, Samuel, was born in 1816. He would go on to marry Lydia RYDER and become the direct line to my Grandfather Alfred EDWARDS.

Another son George was born in 1818 only to die a year later. Following George there was another Sarah, presumably named for the baby that died. Unfortunately this Sarah also, being born in late February of 1822, died the following February of 1823.

Finally came Eliza EDWARDS born in 1824.

All of the children were born in St. Albans, they were all Christened and I think it would probably be at St. Stephen’s where their parents were married. The drawing of a church at the top left of this page is of St. Stephen's Church.

For this jumping off point to the EDWARDS I must thank Harry Cautherley without who’s help I wouldn’t have known where to start.

(9) 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.

(8) The BRADSHAW side

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. In fact he was born on 4th June 1910 and the brother who died, Lawrence, died during the three months prior to Dad's being born. How hard that must have been for his mother. 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.

(7) 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 1892 she married James BELL in Carlisle and in 1983 had a baby that died either at birth or soon thereafter named John Barton BELL, three years later had another son, John James BELL. But by 1901 she’s a 34 year old widow. She’s back living at home with the family in Hope Street, Carlisle 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. The only way to continue to follow James would be to order a birth certificate for John J. giving his father's birth place and date.

When her husband died she would only be in her 30's and I wonder if she didn't marry again. When the 1911 census records for Cumberland are released I may be able to find this out.

(6) Following the BARTON Branch

I'm following the BARTON branch down the tree. William the patriach with wife Jane. Their three children John born in 1840, Alexander born in 1842 and the youngest Martha, 1847.

Martha, I've tracked through several children and a husband who was a soldier. John, moved to Scotland and married.

It took me a while to find what happened to Alexander. So far I've found a wife, Ellen, but I don't know anything more about her. I also found children - Jane, the youngest, born in Wigan, Lancashire in 1868. Next came Alexander born in 1870 in Maryport, Cumberland. William was born in 1873 in Prudhoe, Northumberland. Then finally Thomas who was also born in Prudhoe in 1874.

I did find a death record for Alexander in 1883, by then he was back in Carlisle. There's more research to be done on this family.

(5) 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 tailor's apprentice. The younger brother was still a child.

John married Margaret in 1862. 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 one year later by his wife Margaret.

(4) 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 areas!

I did find one family that I thought might be him. 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. His birth year in following records showed his birth in 1845, I wonder did he lie about his age to join the army?

He married Martha in 1879 and died in 1896.