LANCASHIRE FAMILY HISTORY AND HERALDRY SOCIETY

Rossendale Branch Newsletter December 2004

Happy Christmas to all our members.
Wednesday 1st December
Christmas Celebrations
By popular demand we will be having a Pie and Peas supper,
plus quizzes and excruciating mind games!
Our thanks to Kathleen Ashburner for all her efforts in putting on this event.

Coming Events

An exhibition is being planned for next September 2005 at Haslingden Library to be entitled -

The Irish in Haslingden (or Rossendale?)

If you have Irish ancestors, you might like to be thinking how you can participate.

Rossendale Census Indexes

In previous issues I have described the availability of our census indexes 1841 - 1861. This month I propose to explain the situation regarding the 1871 census.

These are all transcribed by Head of Household etc. and cover the following areas. All except for Haslingden and Edenfield have been microfilmed but some appear in the Society’s publications list under misleading headings. Here they are with correct headings:

Rossendale - Bacup and Whitworth area

RG10/4130 Spotland (Ancient parish of Rochdale) - Bacup, Tunstead, Brandwood. RG10/4131 Spotland - Bacup, Tunstead, Whitworth RG10/4132 Spotland - Whitworth and Facit

Rossendale - Newchurch

RG10/4133 Folios 1 -37 Spotland - Bacup (part of) Folios 38 -end Newchurch - Bacup (part of) RG 10/4134 Township of Newchurch - Bacup (part of) Stacksteads (Part) Newchurch village, Lumb, RG10/ 4135 Newchurch -Whitewell Bottom and Water. RG10/ 4136 Newchurch - Cloughfold, Rawtenstall (part)

Rossendale - (Higher and Lower Booths)

RG 10/4137 Higher Booths - Loveclough, Crawshawbooth, Lumb, Reedsholme; Lower Booths - Rawtenstall (part), RG 10/4138 - Rawtenstall (Part) Oakenhead Wood Henheads, Rising Bridge, Stone Fold. Cowpe with Lench - Cowpe, Lench, Newhall Hey, Waterfoot (part)

Edenfield

RG 10/ 4139 Tottington Higher End and Musbury.

Haslingden

RG10/4140 - Haslingden. RG 10/4141 - Haslingden, Henheads.

This is as near as I can get with the headings. By its very nature classification brings together certain things and separates others. Bacup was a separated township within Newchurch and Spotland Further End and not yet a Borough. Rawtenstall, similarly was just a township within Lower Booths.

1841 Census - Volunteer transcribers wanted.

For some time Wilf Day and Chris Pickup have been working on a full transcript of Newchurch in 1841.

It is a slow job, so any help you can give would be appreciated. We also need volunteers to transcribe the Spotland part of Bacup. For further information contact Wilf Day.

Rossendale Ancestry

Gaskell/ Ormerod/ Nuttall/ Tattersall

The one who was left behind

I started my family research in 1995; this came about because Bethel Baptist Chapel at Waterfoot was closing down. My mother (Constance Nuttall) and my father (Frank Tattersall) were married there in 1922, so this prompted me to look in the marriage registers. I also found the marriage of Alice, my mother’s older sister. Then I became more inquisitive.

My mother’s parents (Heyworth Nuttall and Elizabeth Alice Gaskell) had lived nearby on Millerbarn; had they also been married at Bethel? "Probably", I thought, but I was wrong. I had to obtain their marriage certificate; this showed that they had married at St. Peter’s in Haslingden.

I always knew we were related to Gaskell Felts (now Gaskell Plc, based at Accrington) and that the founder of the company was Tom Gaskell, a cousin of my grandmother, Elizabeth Gaskell. I knew that she had been brought up by her grandparents and with her uncle, James W. Gaskell, who was Tom’s father. James later lived next door to Elizabeth, so I expect that she pushed Tom out in his pram.

Since starting this research, I have found that Elizabeth’s father was Stephen Gaskell and her mother was Elizabeth Ann Ormerod, she had a brother George who was two years her senior and a brother James who was six years her junior.

I had followed Stephen on the censuses until 1881, at that time his family were split into three different households in Newchurch. Stephen was lodging with a Nuttall Family at Sissclough, his wife Elizabeth Ann was given as "Head of Household", at Moss Gap. She was living with her father, James Ormerod and two children, George aged 9 and James aged 1. My grandmother , Elizabeth Gaskell aged 7, was living with her grandparents Thomas and Sarah Gaskell.

I could not find any of them after that, except for my grandmother, I once asked her why she why she had been brought up by her grandparents? She told me that the rest of her family had gone to live in Canada.

Thanks to Jackie Ramsbottom, I now have a record of Stephen’s arrival in New York on the 19th of August 1881. WOW! I had looked for him over many years.

But, just think of my grandmother and how she must have felt at being the one left behind. Winifred Belcher.

email: w.belcher2@ntlworld.com

Missing Baptisms

I have attempted to reconstruct the families of the Rostrons that lived on the fells between Whitewell Bottom and Bacup in the second half of the 18th century. Anyone who has attempted such a task will be aware that the baptism registers for Newchurch have not survived from 1763 to 1796 inclusive, save for fragments 1778 - 1780, and the month of January for 1783.

Consequently the IGI is incomplete. The BTs however have survived, so one has to flog through the BTs making a manual extraction of baptisms and burials. This exercise on the Rostrons has thrown up a problem of missing baptisms. I would be interested to know whether members researching other surnames have found a similar problem. Two examples will surffice to illustrate my point.

The family of John Rostron, the elder of Brex, woollen weaver, is known from his will. He married Sarah Ramsbottom at Newchurch on 14 June 1762 and they had nine children; but only the first two John and George and their last child William were baptised at Newchurch. William was baptised after the family had been forced to visit the church to bury a child who had died in infancy.

It is a similar story with the family of James Rostron of Hewin Hill and Elizabeth Rishton married on 5 Aug. 1771 at Newchurch. The first entry in the BTs is for the burial of a child, James on 22 June 1781, a decade after their marriage. Only after James’s burial are there any baptisms: William in June 1782, James again in November 1785 and finally Edmund in May 1789. Richard did not leave a will but I have strong evidence that his son James had a brother Richard and possibly a brother John too.

I have searched the records of the Baptist chapels and of course Bacup St. John’s for the "missing baptisms" to no avail. Were the Rostrons simply an irreligious lot or have other members researching this period found a similar problem with other surnames.

Chris Rostron Pickup (member 7508)

1 Yew Tree Drive, Lostock, Bolton BL6 4DA

Email: c.pickup@ntlworld.com

Richard Holt of Loveclough

Bob Dobson has drawn my attention to an item in his latest catalogue of second-hand books. It is the 1840 copy will of Richard Holt of Loveclough, 1837. 2 large vellum sheets with registrar’s certificate and seal. £15 post free UK pay on receipt. For more information email: bobdobson@amserve.com Tel. 01253 89678

Rossendale Ancestry

Do you have Rossendale ancestors? Are you a member of the Society? If so, please let me have your story, or queries for this section of the newsletter