Where do Grace and Anne fit in?

Market Place, Garstang 

Sometimes the best way to solve a mystery is to think laterally. If you can't find the information you want about someone by a direct route, discover all you can about their siblings, in-laws, neighbours and friends, and you may find a clue that leads to the answer. That was my thinking when I set out to discover the maiden name of Betty Lambert, one of my great great great grandmothers.

Betty was probably born about 1772, based on her age when she died in 1833. She and her husband William Lambert had three daughters who were baptised in Garstang, Lancashire, in the early 1800s (Betty, Hannah and Esther). And that was all I knew about her. I couldn't find any record of her marriage to William.

First came Grace

Former Church of St John, Preston,
demolished and rebuilt in the 1850's.

So, taking the indirect route, I set out to find out more about the daughters. I didn't find anything useful in Betty and Hannah's stories. The other daughter, Esther (my great great grandmother) married Matthew Cragg in October 1833. In May 1831, two years before they married, Esther and Matthew were witnesses together at a wedding in Preston, Lancashire, between a Grace Lambert and John Singleton.

The next question was, who was Grace Lambert? Could she be a sister to Esther? Or a cousin? Knowing the answer to that could be a step forward in finding out more about Betty. Unfortunately, none of the baptism records I found for children named Grace Lambert appear likely to be hers.

All I have discovered about Grace is that she married John Singleton, had two children, George (1833) and Elizabeth (1841) and was living with her family in Bolton in 1841. The census suggests she was born about 1800. Young Elizabeth died in 1848.

It seems Grace must have died sometime between 1841 and the next census, since she doesn't appear in 1851. She is possibly the Grace Singleton whose death is recorded in Burnley in 1849. I haven't been able to trace with any certainty what became of her husband John or her son George after her death .

Since Grace was born and married before civil registration began in 1837, there are no birth or marriage certificates available for her. Her death certificate is unlikely to reveal much, as parents names were not recorded for adults. So instead of being a step forward, she has become another mystery.

And then there's Anne

I eventually discovered, by another indirect route, that Esther Lambert had an older sister named Anne. Her children, Mary and William Newsham, were living with Esther and Matthew Cragg when the 1851 census was taken. I've been able to trace their births, Anne's marriage in Preston in 1829, and her death in 1832.

Anne doesn't appear to have been baptised in Garstang, so William and Betty Lambert may have been living elsewhere when she was born. Perhaps she was the child named Anne Lambert, daughter of William and Elizabeth Lambert, who was baptised in Warton, near Lancaster, in 1795. But, so far, that is another cold trail. And Betty remains plain Betty Unknown for now.

Photo credits:
Royal Oak, Garstang cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Alan Godfree - geograph.org.uk/p/222246
St John's church Preston see St John's Minster Preston

A family of emigrants - William Heaps and his sons

The Neptune, a convict ship similar to
the one on which William was transported

While I was researching Matthew Cragg, I came across another migrant in the family, though not a willing one. William Heaps (born in Garstang in 1809), who was married to Matthew's oldest sister Mary, was transported to New South Wales in Australia in 1838 for stealing cheese.

There was perhaps more to it than just stealing a few slices of cheddar. An article in the Manchester Courier and General Advertiser, June 17 1837, listed a William Heaps of Garstang among several prisoners who had escaped from custody in Preston while awaiting trial. Then on August 2, 1837, the Blackburn Standard reported that William Heaps had been recaptured with another prisoner not far from Garstang. He had stolen goods (a few articles of clothing) in his possession. He was returned to the Preston House of Correction.

William was convicted in October 1837 and sentenced to 7 years transportation. He was sent to New SouthWales, Australia, on the convict ship Bengal Merchant, arriving in July 1838. He left behind his wife Mary and three children, Henry (born 1832), John (1836, died 1840) and Thomas (born 1837).

In 1844 he received his Certificate of Freedom, but as far as I can tell he never returned to England. Which is perhaps just as well, since his wife Mary had another child, Ellen, in 1840 and a son, Joseph, in 1843. They were both baptised with the surname Heaps but no father was listed. (Ellen died in 1843). Mary remarried in 1844, to a Joseph Spencer. Another son, Robert Spencer, was born 1848.

Since William Heaps was still alive, this marriage was technically bigamous. However, under English common law, ‘a person could be presumed dead, who had not been heard of for seven years by those who would be most likely to hear of them if they were alive.’ This was used both by the wives of men transported, and by the convicts themselves, as a justification for remarriage without falling foul of the bigamy laws.

Mary, her new husband and family moved to Swallowhill, near Darton, Yorkshire. Mary died there in 1853. It seems that three of her sons, Henry, Thomas and Joseph, converted to the Church of the Latter Day Saints, and with their families they migrated to Escalante in Utah, USA, where they were notable pioneers. Their history can be found in several places online, one with the charming but fanciful story that their father William Heaps fled England after killing one of the King's deer, and another that he was banished from England with a load of cheese for killing a chicken on the Sabbath. 

Matthew Cragg (1810-1878)

The Royal Oak and market cross, Garstang

Recently I took a break from researching my mother's side of the family and had another look at Matthew Cragg (1810 - 1878), my father's great grandfather and the husband of Esther Lambert. Apart from knowing that both his father and his grandfather were also named Matthew Cragg, I didn't know much about him.

Matthew was born in Kirkland, near Garstang, Lancashire, in 1810, the eldest son of Matthew Cragg and Mary Helm. His father's occupation is listed as "labourer" on his baptismal record. Matthew himself was a calico printer by trade, first in Radcliffe and then in Walton le Dale. I haven't found any mention of Matthew in the local newspapers of the time, which suggests that he was too poor to be noteworthy and stayed out of trouble with the law.

He married Esther Lambert in Preston in 1833. I've mentioned before that Esther and Matthew had two sons, Richard and William, who died within weeks of each other in 1847. It seems they also had another son, also named Richard, born in May 1837. He died before his first birthday, in March 1838. Only their daughter Mary Ann survived childhood.

Matthew's father, Matthew Cragg born in 1786, and his grandfather, Matthew Cragg born in 1745, were both associated with St Michael's on Wyre in the parish of Upper Rawcliffe. Several of the Cragg families in this area were Quakers, but I haven't been able to connect 'our' line to theirs. As we'll see in my next post, three of Matthew's nephews became Mormons. Matthew and Esther seem to have been solidly C of E all their lives.

Image © Alan Godfree under a CC license

Esther Lambert

Esther Lambert was my grandfather's grandmother. She was the youngest daughter (or at least the youngest known daughter) of William and Betty Lambert, and was born in Catterall, near Garstang, Lancashire, on 31 August 1807. She was christened at Garstang in September 1807. Esther didn't have an easy life, but nevertheless she lived to the relatively great age of 79, dying in 1887 in Walton le Dale.

Her life story is full of unanswered questions and intriguing hints. I haven't been able to find out much about William and Betty, nor about Esther's oldest sister Betty (born July1802). Her other sister, Hannah (born 23 March 1805) seems to have had two children while she was still unmarried and living in Garstang - Daniel in April 1829 and Esther in 1831.

In May 1831 an Esther Lambert and a Matthew Cragg were witnesses at the wedding of Grace Lambert and John Singleton at St John's church in Preston, Lancashire. It seems likely, but it would be fascinating to know for sure if this is the same Esther and Matthew who were later to marry in the same church. I haven't been able to find any connection between Grace Lambert (born about 1801) and William and Betty, or with the other members of the family. Unfortunately although Grace and John appear in the 1841 census with their two children, Grace had died before the 1851 census when her place of birth would have been recorded. She remains an enigma.

William and Betty both died within a few weeks of each other in June 1833, aged in their sixties. A few months later, in October, Esther married Matthew Cragg at St John's, Preston. The witnesses were Samuel Smails and Margaret Beesley, neither of whom seem to have any family connection.

In 1834 another son, James, was born to Hannah Lambert, who was now living in Accrington. She married a widower, James Cronkshaw, in 1834 and the whole family was living in Accrington at the time of the 1841 census. Whether she had any further contact with Esther is unknown.

Esther and Matthew's first son, William, was born in 1835 and Richard followed in 1839. At the time of the 1841 census the family were living in Cabbage Row, Radcliffe, Lancashire. A nephew, William Newsham, aged 9, was also living with them. Mary Ann came along in December 1843. As mentioned previously, tragedy struck in February 1847 when the two boys, William and Richard, died. 

It looks as though Esther and Matthew continued to provide accommodation for William Newsham, along with his older sister Mary Newsham. They were living with Esther, Matthew and Mary Ann, still in Radcliffe, at the time of  the 1851 census. 

Who were William and Mary's parents? One possibility is that they were the children of William Newsham and Anne Lambert, who married at St John's Preston in 1829. Anne died in 1832 (aged 37) and William senior in 1835. I haven't been able to discover what the connection was between Esther and Anne, although Mary and William Newsham are described as niece and nephew in the census, suggesting that Anne may have been a sister. There is a baptism record for an Anne Lambert, daughter of William and Elizabeth Lambert, in Warton, near Lancaster, in May 1795, which could fit. 

By 1861 Esther and Matthew had moved to Walton le Dale. William and Mary Newsham were gone, but another child, Nancy Heap, was living with them. Here is another puzzle - who was Nancy? Matthew had a sister Mary who married a William Heap, but they don't seem to have had any children name Nancy or Anne (Nancy being the diminutive form of Ann.)

It's possible that Nancy was the daughter of Mary Newsham. A Nancy Heap was born in Radcliffe in 1852 whose mother's name was Newsham. A Mary Newsham (father's name William) married Joseph Heap in 1851. This is all rather tentative evidence, but seems to be confirmed later, as we'll see.

The 1871 census records that Nancy was still living with Esther and Matthew Cragg in Ribblesdale Place, Walton le Dale. By this time Mary Ann had married John Ward and they had 3 children (John Willie, Matthew and Esther). John and Mary Ann moved to Littleborough sometime between 1874 and 1877, leaving Esther and Matthew and John's father Richard behind. Why did they move? It's one of those questions I'd love to know the answer to, but probably never will.

Matthew died in August 1878. Now Esther had no immediate family in Walton le Dale. However, it seems that Nancy had become very much part of the family. In 1881 Esther was living with Annie and John Parkinson and their three children in Walton le Dale, and she's described as "mother in law". My guess is that Annie is Nancy. An Annie Heaps, daughter of Joseph Heaps, married John Parkinson, clogger,  in Walton le Dale on Christmas Day 1875. Annie Heaps' address on the marriage record is Ribblesdale Place, the same as Matthew and Esther's address in the previous census. Perhaps Nancy and her children filled the place left in Esther's life when her grandchildren moved away.

Happy and sad family events in Littleborough

Holy Trinity in the snow
© Copyright SMJ 
licensed for reuse under this CC Licence 

Many years ago my husband and I were temporarily part of the congregation at Holy Trinity in Littleborough, Lancashire, and our first child was baptised there. So when I came across the parish records for Holy Trinity online recently, I was delighted to discover that my grandfather, Thomas Henry Ward, was also baptised there, on 9 January 1883. His sister Mary Ann was baptised at Holy Trinity on 20 August 1877, Fanny was baptised 24 January 1880, and Henrietta 26 September 1886.

Thomas' baptism is recorded as a private baptism, and John Ward, Mary Ann Ward and Thomas Howarth were his godparents.

Another happy event happened at Holy Trinity in February 1886 when John Ward's widowed brother Richard married one of John and Mary Ann's neighbours, Elizabeth Clarkson. (Elizabeth was also Fanny's godmother.) They moved to Pendleton, but eventually moved back to Littleborough when Richard retired from his job as a railway worker.

On a much sadder note, the local parish registers also record the burials of two of John and Mary Ann's children, Richard and little Mary Ann, within four days of each other in April 1879. They were buried at St James churchyard, Calderbrook, just above Littleborough.  Richard was 7 years old, and Mary Ann was about 20 months. The register doesn't record the cause of death, but some sort of infectious disease seems most likely.

It must have been a terrible time for their parents, and especially for their mother Mary Ann, who would have been pregnant with Fanny at the time. As I mentioned in a previous post, Mary Ann’s two brothers, William and Richard Cragg, both died in the same week when she was 3 years old, so the deaths of Richard and Mary Ann must have brought back sad memories for her, and also for her mother, Esther Cragg, who was still alive in Walton le Dale at this time.

The Ward family continued living in Littleborough until sometime after Henrietta's birth in 1886, and then for reasons that are unclear they moved to Rastrick in Yorkshire.

Mary Ann Cragg

When Mary Ann Cragg married “the boy next door”, John Ward, she was twenty years old and he was 22. Her parents, Matthew and Esther Cragg had moved to Walton le Dale sometime between 1851 and 1861 and took up residence as neighbours to the widowed Richard Ward and his son John in Mansleys Row. Both Mary and her father worked in the cotton mills, he as a block printer and she as a cotton loom weaver. The marriage entry in the church register lists her as 'Mary Craig' daughter of Matthew Craig, but this is almost certainly an error. The mother's maiden name for their children, where it is recorded, is Cragg.

Radcliffe Bridge about 1854
Photo taken by William Smith

Mary Ann was born in Radcliffe, near Bury in Lancashire, on December 21, 1843. She had two older brothers, William (born 1835) and Richard (born 1839). Tragically, both boys died within a few days of each other in February 1847. Perhaps they were victims of the typhus epidemic which swept through Britain that year, hitting Lancashire particularly hard, with nearly 10,000 deaths recorded in the Northwest. If so, three year old Mary was very fortunate to have survived. Perhaps it is an indication of her strong constitution.

Following her brothers' deaths, Mary Ann seems to have remained the only child of Matthew and Esther.  But she was not always alone with them. The 1851 census shows that Matthew, Esther and Mary were still living in Radcliffe, though they had moved from Cabbage Row to Radcliffe Hall. Living with them were a nephew and niece, William and Mary Newsham. They were much older than Mary, and were already working.

By 1861 they had left, but a 9 year old child named Nancy Heap was living with Matthew, Esther and Mary. She is described as a niece, but as far as I can tell she was probably the daughter of Mary Newsham. (More of these connections in a later post).

Lower Newlands, Rastrick, Yorkshire
Photo  copyright Humphry Bolton under a CC license

After her marriage to John Ward in June 1864, Mary Ann continued to work as a cotton weaver, even after the birth of John Willie, Matthew and Esther. According to the 1911 census, she and John went on to have 10 children in all, 7 of whom lived into adulthood. The family moved from Walton le Dale to Brighouse near Calderbrook before 1881, then to Rastrick in Yorkshire, and finally by 1901 to Clifton Street in Milnrow, Lancashire. Later in life, after John’s death in 1905, she continued his business as a boot and shoe retailer until her own death in 1916.

Esther Lambert

Name:			Esther LAMBERT
Sex:			Female
Father:			William LAMBERT (1765-1833)
Mother:			BETTY (1772-1833)
Individual Facts
Birth			31 Aug 1807		Garstang, Lancashire or possibly Catterall1
Baptism			20 Sep 1807 (age 0)		Garstang, Lancashire2
Census			1841 (about age 34)		Cabbage Row, Radcliffe, near Bury, Lancashire3
Census			1851 (about age 44)		Radcliffe Hall, Radcliffe, near Bury, Lancashire4
Census			1861 (about age 54)		4 Mansleys Row, Walton le dale5
Census			1881 (about age 74)		Ashton's Yard Walton le Dale6
Death			1887 (about age 80)		Preston, Lancashire7
Marriages/Children
1. Matthew CRAGG (1810-1878)
Children			William CRAGG (1835-1847)
			Richard CRAGG (1839-1847)
			Mary Ann CRAGG (1843-1916)

        1. familysearch.org, C04392-4.

        2. familysearch.org.

        3. 1841 census (UK), HO 107 549/2 page 39.

        4. 1851 census (UK).

        5. 1861 census (UK), RG 9 3140 pg 14.

        6. 1881 census (UK), RG11 4242/7.

        7. freebmd.org.uk.

More about Esther Lambert:

Esther Lambert

Matthew Cragg (1810)

Name:			Matthew CRAGG
Sex:			Male
Father:			Matthew CRAGG (1786-1843)
Mother:			Mary HELM (1789-1867)
Individual Facts
Birth			16 Jan 1810		Kirkland (near Garstang), Lancashire1
Occupation			1841 (about age 31)		Calico printer; Radcliffe, near Bury, Lancashire2
Census			1841 (about age 31)		Cabbage Row, Radcliffe, near Bury, Lancashire3
Census			1851 (about age 41)		Radcliffe Hall, Radcliffe, near Bury, Lancashire4
Census			1861 (about age 51)		4 Mansley Row, Walton le Dale, Lancashire5
Death			1878 (about age 68)		Walton le Dale, Lancashire6–7
Marriages/Children
1. Esther LAMBERT (1807-1887)
Children			William CRAGG (1835-1847)
			Richard CRAGG (1839-1847)
			Mary Ann CRAGG (1843-1916)

        1. familysearch.org.

        2. 1841 census (UK).

        3. 1841 census (UK), HO 107 549/2 page 39.

        4. 1851 census (UK), HO 107/2216 folio 42(?) p 166(?).

        5. 1861 census (UK), RG9 3140 pg 14.

        6. freebmd.org.uk.

        7. Lancashire Online Parish Clerk project.

More about Matthew Cragg

Matthew Cragg 1810-1878
Esther Lambert
Mary Ann Cragg

Mary Ann Cragg

Name:			Mary Ann CRAGG
Sex:			Female
Father:			Matthew CRAGG (1810-1878)
Mother:			Esther LAMBERT (1807-1887)
Individual Facts
Birth			21 Dec 1843		Radcliffe, near Bury, Lancashire1–2
Census			1851 (about age 8)		Radcliffe Hall, Radcliffe, near Bury, Lancashire3
Occupation			1861 (about age 18)		Cotton powerloom weaver; Walton le Dale, Lancashire4
Census			1861 (about age 18)		4 Mansleys Row, Walton le dale5
Census			1881 (about age 38)		Crabtree St, Blatchinworth with Calderbrook6
Census			1891 (about age 48)		Lower Newlands, Rastrick Yorkshire7
Census			1901 (about age 58)		17 Clifton St, Milnrow8
Census			1911 (about age 68)		17 Clifton St, Milnrow9
Occupation			1911 (about age 68)		Boot and shoe retailer; Milnrow, Lancashire9
Death			1916 (about age 73)		Rochdale, Greater Manchester1,10
Marriages/Children
1. John WARD (1842-1905)
Children			John Willie WARD (1865-1946)
			Matthew WARD (1867-1949)
			Esther WARD (1870-    )
			Richard WARD (1872-1879)
			Edward WARD (1874-    )
			Mary Ann WARD (1877-1879)
			Fanny WARD (1879-1956)
			Thomas Henry WARD (1882-1952)
			Henrietta WARD (1886-1937)

More about Mary Ann Cragg:
Mary Ann Cragg
Happy and sad family events in Littleborough


Footnotes:

        1. freebmd.org.uk.

        2. Lancashire Online Parish Clerk project.

        3. 1851 census (UK), HO 107/2216 folio 42(?) p 166(?).

        4. 1861 census (UK).

        5. 1861 census (UK), RG 9/3140 folio ? p 14.

        6. 1881 census (UK), RG 11/4120 folio 36 p 20.

        7. 1891 census (UK), RG 12/3581 folio ? p 34?.

        8. 1901 census (UK), RG 13/3831 folio 106 p 9.

        9. 1911 census (UK).

        10. Lancashire bmd online.