Milnrow

John Ward and his family left Rastrick in Yorkshire, sometime before 1901, and returned to Lancashire. They settled in Milnrow, not far from Littleborough, where they'd been living before they went to Yorkshire.

Cottage handloom weaver at work.
(Image from Wikimedia.org)

Milnrow, located in a valley on the River Beal, was similar to Littleborough in many ways. It had once been a quiet sheep-farming village, nestled in the foothills of the Pennines. Until the 19th century, local people produced woollen cloth in their own homes and sold it to the traders in Yorkshire. (Have a look at this video to see what was involved.)

Over time, fellmongering (processing sheep skins and hides) became an important industry and Milnrow was home to what was, reputedly, the largest fellmongering yard in England, owned by William Clegg Company. Tens of thousands of hides were brought in each week for processing.

Cotton milling, along with factory-based woollen milling, came to Milnrow in the early 19th century. The damp climate and ready access to coal to run the engines that powered the mills made this region ideal for cotton milling. Multi-storied brick edifices with tall chimneys dotted the landscape. Long rows of new houses went up, many of them built by the mill owners, to accommodate the workers. The railway line arrived in Milnrow in 1863. Originally part of the Butterworth township in the Rochdale parish, Milnrow gained its own Urban District Council in 1894. By 1901 the population had grown to about 10,000 people.

Tram car in Dale Street, maybe c1910,
with one of the mills in the background*

John and Mary Ann Ward must have arrived during the 1890s, since they were there for the 1901 census. Were they simply born-and-bred Lancashire people yearning to be back in their own home county? Or did they have some other reason for moving to Milnrow? As is so often the case, I don't know the answer to that.

Their son Matthew, who had married in Rastrick in 1890, was already living in Milnrow when his wife Elizabeth gave birth to their second child, Annie, in June 1892. So it's possible that Matthew and Elizabeth moved to Milnrow first, and John, Mary Ann and the rest of the family followed.

The 1901 census suggests there were just as many cloggers and shoe makers in Milnrow as there had been in Littleborough, when John lived there in the 1880s. Despite this, he and his son Thomas (my grandfather) set up shop as cloggers in the main street, at 2 Dale Street. John's name appears at that address in the 1905 Kelly's Trade Directory. They apparently found enough work to keep the family settled in Milnrow. Various members of the family lived in the same house at 17 Clifton Street for at least four decades.

Dale St, Milnrow. This photo is from a later date,
but the Ward's shop must have been on this corner*.

St James parish church,
Milnrow*

When John died in 1905, Mary Ann and Thomas continued running the business, although they turned to repairing shoes and boots, as clog-wearing became less common. Despite some family disagreements, all of John and Mary Ann's children remained in Milnrow or its vicinity as adults. Many of their graves can be found in the graveyard around St James Church, including that of John, and Mary Ann, who died in 1916.

During World War 1, many men from Milnrow enlisted. The local war memorial shows that 144 of them never returned. John and Mary Ann's two older sons, John Willie and Matthew, were too old to join up. The youngest, Thomas, already in his thirties, probably thought he too would be overlooked. But he was enlisted, and sent to Mesopotamia as a member of the Royal Army Ordnance Corp. He did his training in Colchester, in Essex, which is where he met his future wife. That is where we will go to next in this series.

And since we are now leaving the clog-making Ward family of Lancashire, I thought I'd share this poem (in dialect) about clogs.

IT DIDN’T SEEM REET - Anon. 

Wen a fella cum walkin’ deawn eawr road,
‘Is clogs went "er—clatt, er—clatt."
An’ it struck mi, as Ah’d never knowed
A pair o’clogs t’seawnd like that.
Soo Ah waited wile ‘ee getten close,
Fer t’see wot wer th’matter,
Clogs doant "er—clatt, er—clatt" tha knows
Thi should guh "clatt—er, clatt—er!"
Ah thowt, "Just wen ‘as passes mi
Ah’ll ‘ev a looka’t’greawnd,
Cause Ah wer fair reet wonderin’
O’er th’reason feryon seawnd.
Sos wen ‘ee sad, "Nah then theer,"
Wen ‘ee passed mii’ th’ street,
Ah looked, an’ does ta know
Booath ‘is clogs wero’t’wrong feet.

*My thanks to Steve, owner of the wonderful Old Milnrow Pinterest board, for allowing me to use these photos.

Littleborough in Lancashire

The so-called Roman Road on Blackstone Edge near Littleborough.
Photo by Humphrey Bolton

Let's follow John and Mary Ward, as they leave Walton le Dale in the 1870s and move to Littleborough, close to the Lancashire border with West Yorkshire. How different they must have found this village in the hilly, sheep-grazing moorlands of the Pennines, to the flat farmland and market gardens around Walton le Dale, where they had both spent most of their lives.

Like Walton le Dale, Littleborough had been a quiet village until the 19th century. It was on a trade route that crossed the Pennines into Yorkshire, with the remains of an ancient road (once thought to be from Roman times) still visible in places on the moorland of Blackstone Edge. The main industry in the 18th century was woollen milling and weaving. Wool "pieces", woven on handlooms in people's homes in Littleborough and the nearby hamlets of Calderbrook, Smithybridge, and Summit, would be carried over the hills to the Piece Hall in Halifax, in Yorkshire, for sale.

Map of Littleborough and surrounds
from Vision of Britain 

Littleborough remained an important link in several trade routes as the industrial revolution got underway. In the early 1800s,  the Rochdale Canal, linking Sowerby Bridge in Yorkshire with Manchester in Lancashire, was completed. Littleborough became the site of one of the locks along the canal. A large reservoir, Hollingworth Lake, was constructed nearby to feed water into the canal, and this became something of a tourist attraction over time.

Hollingworth Lake
Own photo

In 1839 the first section of the new Manchester to Leeds railway was built as far as Littleborough. It was extended to Leeds by 1841. Soon the home-based woollen weavers were replaced by steam-powered mills and factories. By the late 1870s, when my great grandparents John and Mary Ann Ward moved to Littleborough, there were numerous cotton and woollen mills in the area, along with associated industries such as bleaching and dyeing, and the population was growing. By 1879 there were nine schools, many of them denominational, with over 1000 students between them.

I still have no clear idea why John and Mary Ann decided to move their family from Walton le Dale sometime between the birth of their fifth child, Edward, in 1874 and their sixth, Mary Ann, in 1877. Was it something to do with the depression in the cotton industry around Preston in the mid 1870's, the result of disputes between the employers and the operatives? Perhaps Littleborough was faring better economically.

Or could they have been trying to remove their family from the smallpox epidemic which struck Preston and surrounding areas in 1876? When she was three years old, Mary Ann had lost two older brothers in the same week, during what was probably an epidemic. She may have been keen to move her young family to a healthier place. Sadly, if that was their reason for moving, it was in vain. Their infant daughter Mary Ann and their seven-year-old son Richard died within days of each other in April 1879, probably from some type of infectious illness. They were buried in the graveyard near the church of St James, Calderbrook, just north of Littleborough.

This was close to where John and Mary Ann and their family were living. In the 1879 MacDonald's Directory, John was listed as a clogger, living in Caldermoor.  The 1881 census records their address as Crabtree Street (no longer in existence). John was just one of at least fifteen cloggers and bootmakers listed in the MacDonalds Directory who were living in the Littleborough area at the time.

Moving on again

John and Mary Ann had three further children born to them in Littleborough, after the deaths of Richard and baby Mary Ann - Fanny (1879), Thomas Henry (my grandfather, in 1882) and Henrietta in 1886. But Littleborough wouldn't remain their home for decades, as Walton le Dale had been for previous generations of the Wards. Sometime after Henrietta's birth they moved to Rastrick in Yorkshire, where they stayed only a short time, then settled in Milnrow, on the other side of Hollingworth Lake.

Again, there's nothing to indicate why they moved. John's widowed brother, Richard, married Elizabeth Clarkson, one of John and Mary's neighbours from Crabtree Street, in 1886. John was one of the witnesses at the wedding, so it seems unlikely this caused any sort of family conflict. Perhaps there simply wasn't enough work in Littleborough for so many cloggers. John and Mary's eldest son, John Willy, had most likely become a clogger and bootmaker by this time, since that was his profession in 1891.

Old mill by the Rochdale Canal, Littleborough
Photo by Tim Green from Bradford

By a series of co-incidences, my husband and I lived just outside Littleborough for a while in the 1980s, By then, the mills were no longer operating and many stood derelict, but it was still a thriving small town. We had no idea then that my father's family had ever lived there, although I was aware of their association with Milnrow.

As I've described before, one of our daughters was baptised in the same church as her great grandfather, Thomas Henry, even though we didn't realise it at the time. Hollingworth Lake was one of our favourite spots for Sunday afternoon walks, and the tow-path along the canal was the easiest and most pleasant way to push a pram to the shops.

Why did Matthew spurn his family?

Equitable Street, Milnrow. Matthew and his family
 lived at number 33 in 1911.

Most of the unsolved mysteries from my family tree involve "what" "when" or "who" questions. What was the relationship between James Beales and William Beales? When was Richard Ward born? Who brought up Harriet Whybrew? They're questions that, at least in theory, could be answered by finding the right records (if they exist).

But sometimes the question behind a mystery is "Why?" Why did someone suddenly move across the country, or across the world? Why did a child named James apparently take the name of his dead brother William as an adult?

Most of the time, these questions are unanswerable. I can make a guess, based on learning more about a person's background, the social conditions, and local customs at the time. But I can never really be certain. The people who could tell me the answers are long gone.

One such unanswerable "why?" involves my father's Uncle Matthew (born November 1867). Matthew was born in Walton le Dale in Lancashire, but in the late 1870's his parents John and Mary Ward moved with their family to Littleborough. Then for a short while in the early 1890s they lived in Rastrick in Yorkshire. By the late 1890s the whole family had settled in the village of Milnrow in Lancashire, where John was a bootmaker and clogger. Most of the children remained there after they married and had families of their own.

For most of his adult life Matthew was employed as a fellmonger. Fellmongering is a process in which the wool is chemically separated from sheep hides, and was an industry for which Milnrow was noted. The wool was used by the woollen mills for weaving flannel, while the hides were tanned for leather.

Matthew met and married his wife, Elizabeth Ann Brown, while the Ward family were living in  Rastrick. They had six daughters, the first born in Rastrick and the other five in Milnrow. The youngest, Edith, a twin to Esther, died in her first year of life. The rest of the family all lived to a great age. Matthew and Elizabeth themselves, along with their two married daughters, Doris and Esther, all lived past eighty. Their unmarried daughters, Maud, Annie and Clara, all lived beyond ninety. Perhaps that in itself is a bit of a mystery, but not the one I'm coming to.

My father recounts that when he was about eight or nine years old, Matthew and his family suddenly stopped all interaction with the rest of the family. The rift was apparently never healed. For the rest of his life, Matthew's family had no contact with the rest of the family, even though they continued to live in the same small village. Or so my Dad remembers it. He was too young at the time to know what caused this disruption, though he thinks it involved some sort of argument.

I can't find anything in the records to suggest why Matthew and his family would have suddenly cut themselves off from the rest of the family at this time (around the end of the 1930's). Could there have been an argument over property? Or was it something more personal?

At the time of the 1939 Register (which is now online on both Ancestry and FindMyPast) Matthew had retired from work. The three unmarried daughters, Maud, Annie and Clara, all in their forties, were living with Matthew and Elizabeth in a house at 17 Buckley Hill Lane, which was practically "shouting distance" from other members of the family. They had been living there for at least eighteen years according to the electoral rolls.

Matthew's wife Elizabeth died in 1946 and Matthew himself died in March 1949, in Milnrow. He left his property to his daughters, who eventually all moved to Morecombe on the coast. None of them appears to have had any children. Unless something unexpected turns up, it seems unlikely that we'll ever find out what caused the family to separate from the wider family as they did.

John Ward’s siblings

Recently I've been trying to trace what happened to the siblings of John Ward. While I don't have any great interest in extending the family tree sideways, I often find that information about siblings can be helpful in understanding the life of the person I'm focusing on.

Of Richard and Mary Ward’s nine children, four (William, Frances, Mary and Margaret) died in infancy, and were buried in Walton le Dale. The only remaining daughter, Ann (born about 1833) remained in and around Walton le Dale all of her life and in 1860 she married Thomas Gardner. As I've mentioned before, it seems likely that Thomas Gardner was the younger brother of Elizabeth (Betsy) Gardner who became Richard Ward’s second wife after the death of Mary. When the 1911 census was taken, Ann was still living in Walton le Dale, aged 78, in the home of her son Richard and daughter Margaret.

John Ward’s oldest brother, Thomas (born about 1832) was a joiner’s apprentice when he was 18, but later he worked as a railway guard in Salford. In 1857 at about the age of  25, he married Sarah Ann Surr, a 17 year old girl from Manchester. They were married at the cathedral in Manchester. They had three children, Fanny, Mary Ann (both born in Manchester) and Andrew, born in Walton le Dale. In 1861 they were living in Preston, but their stay in Preston may have been brief, as Sarah is recorded as having died in Salford at the age of 25 in April 1863.

In January 1865 Thomas remarried, to Lucy Mansley, nee Sharples, a widow. Perhaps they had known each other growing up, as Lucy was also born in Walton le Dale. Her father, Johnson Sharples, was a clogger there. Thomas and Lucy had a daughter, Margaret Ann, and in 1871 the couple were living with the four children in Hope Street, Salford. Lucy, Andrew and Margaret Ann were still living at the same address in Salford at the time of the 1881 census, but I haven’t been able to trace what became of Thomas. Presumably he died between the 1871 and 1881 census.

John’s second oldest brother, James, is much more elusive. The only definite references I can find to him are his baptism in Walton le Dale in 1837, and his residence with Richard and Mary in the 1841 and 1851 census. In 1851 he is described as a tailor’s apprentice, aged 14. A James Ward born in Walton le Dale appears in the 1881 census, married to Alice and with a son named Enoch and a daughter named Mary Alice. He is a painter and plumber. Despite the unusual name of his son, I haven’t been able to trace him back to the 1871 or 1861 census or forwards to 1891.

Fortunately the third of John’s surviving brothers, Richard, is much easier to follow. Like Thomas, he worked on the railways in Salford. He married Hannah Moss, from Eccles, in 1861 (the same year his father Richard married Betsy.) In 1871 they were living in Preston, where Richard was a railway guard. They had four children at this stage – John, Alfred, George and Sarah. Little Sarah died in Preston in 1873. By the time of the 1881 census the family had moved back to Salford, and had added Clara (born in Preston) and Bertha (born in Pendleton).

Hannah died sometime after 1881. In February 1886 the widowed Richard married  Elizabeth Clarkson, who was a 40 year old 'spinster' and one of John and Mary Ann’s neighbours from Crabtree Street. They married at Holy Trinity in Littleborough and John Ward was one of the witnesses at the wedding. Richard and Elizabeth had a daughter, Amy, born in Pendleton in December 1887. By the time of the 1891 census only 13 year old Bertha and 3 year old Amy were at home with the couple in Pendleton. By now Richard had become a railway inspector. He had retired by 1891 and he, Elizabeth and Amy had moved to Littleborough. Richard appears to have died and been buried at Calderbrook, above Littleborough, in 1911.

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.

Thomas Henry Ward

Name:			Thomas Henry WARD
Sex:			Male
Father:			John WARD (1842-1905)
Mother:			Mary Ann CRAGG (1843-1916)
Individual Facts
Birth			27 Dec 1882		Littleborough, Lancashire1–2
Residence			1891 (about age 9)		Lower Newlands, Rastrick, Yorkshire1
Occupation			1901 (about age 19)		Clog maker; Milnrow, Lancashire3
Census			1901 (about age 19)		17 Clifton St, Milnrow4
Occupation			1911 (about age 29)		Boot repairer; 17 Clifton St, Milnrow5
Census			Apr 1911 (about age 28)		17 Clifton St, Milnrow5
Death			1952 (about age 70)		Milnrow, Lancashire6
Marriages/Children
1. Rosina BEALES (1895-1972)
Marriage			1921 (about age 39)		Colchester, Essex7
Children			4

        1. 1891 census (UK).

        2. Lancashire bmd online.

        3. 1901 census (UK).

        4. 1901 census (UK), RG 13/3831.

        5. 1911 census (UK).

        6. familysearch.org.

        7. freebmd.org.uk.

More about Thomas Henry Ward:
Rememberance Day - Thomas Henry Ward
At last - a regiment for Thomas Henry Ward

John Ward (1842)

Name:			John WARD
Sex:			Male
Father:			Richard WARD (1809-1881)
Mother:			Mary BAINES (1815-1852)
Individual Facts
Birth			1842		Walton le Dale, Lancashire1–4
Census			1861 (about age 19)		2 Mansleys  Row, Walton le dale5
Occupation			1861 (about age 19)		Cloggers apprentice; Walton le Dale, Lancashire5
Census			1881 (about age 39)		Crabtree St, Littleborough, Blatchinworth with Calderbrook6
Census			1891 (about age 49)		Lower Newlands, Rastrick, Yorkshire1
Occupation			1891 (about age 49)		B  Clogger; Rastrick Yorkshire1
Death			1905 (about age 63)		Milnrow, Lancashire7
Marriages/Children
1. Mary Ann CRAGG (1843-1916)
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)

        1. 1891 census (UK).

        2. 1901 census (UK).

        3. Lancashire bmd online.

        4. Lancashire Online Parish Clerk project.

        5. 1861 census (UK).

        6. 1881 census (UK), RG11; Piece: 4120; Folio: 36; Page: 21.

        7. freebmd.org.uk.

More about John Ward:

John Ward's siblings
Happy and sad family events in Littleborough
John Ward, clogger