LANCASHIRE FAMILY HISTORY AND HERALDRY SOCIETY

Rossendale Branch Newsletter March 2013

Research and Advice Sessions at Haslingden Library every Monday 5.30 – 8.30 pm
Note: the doors to Haslingden Library close at 7.30 pm.

and at Rawtenstall Library every Tuesday 1.30 – 3.30 pm

We may be able to do simple look-ups for distant members. When contacting us with an enquiry, please include your membership number

The LFHHS Resource Centre.

The Society’s Resource and Research Centre at 2 Straits, Oswaldtwistle, BB5 3LU is open every Thursday from 1.00pm – 5.00pm and 1st Saturday of each month 1.00pm..

New Subscription Rates

Don't Forget! Your Subscription Renewal is Due
For the past 9 years there has been no increase in the membership fees. However, due to increase running costs of the Society the membership fees will increase from January as follows:
Ordinary (UK): £14.00
Family (UK): £15.00
Pensioners and Students (UK): £12.00
Overseas: £16.00
All current members will have received a renewal form in their November “Lancashire” journal.

Standing Order Payments
If you have been paying by Standing Order you will have received a form to amend your banking details in the August journal.

Coming Events

Sunday 24th March

Local History Day, hosted by the Helmshore Local History Society at Haslingden Cricket Club. Starts 11.00 pm. Various local groups will have stalls. There will be two or three booksellers and refreshments will be available. Free entry.

The University of Central Lancashire Institute of Local and Family History, Preston PR1 2HE

Saturday 27th April 2013

Discovering the North-West in the National Archives.
Telephone: +44(0)1772 893053
Email: mail lfhistory@uclan.ac.uk

The LFHHS 40th Anniversary Celebrations 1973 – 2013

Saturday 14th September 2013
We are holding a Family History Fair at King George’s Hall Northgate Blackburn BB2 1AA. The day starts at 10.00 am until 4.00 pm.

Saturday 15th September 2013
The Rossendale Branch will be hosting the Society's Annual Dinner. Full details will be in your May edition of the LFHHS quarterly journal “Lancashire”.

Rosssendale News, Notes and Queries

Our heirloom evening was a great success. Our members brought a variety of artefacts ranging from a horseshoe to a prayer wheel which originated in Darjeeling. We also had a framed photograph of an ancestor, an framed illustration of a farmhouse, a 1905 German made toy train which contrasted with a home-made toy train dating from the early years WWII and the record of a marriage which took place in a German displaced persons camp at the end of war. It was a fascinating evening.

This month's article is from Stephen Howarth.

Calico Printer migrations: the Haworth and Davison Families

My 3xgeat grandfather Richard Haworth, journeyman calico printer, told the census enumerators in 1851 and 1861 that he was born in Rossendale. That poses a conundrum because although there were lots of calico printers at Loveclough after 1820, there are many more obvious places in Lancashire for a calico printer to have been born than Rossendale. However in this article I shall be dealing as much with the Davisons of Carlisle as with the Haworths who may or may not be from Rossendale.

Calico printers were clannish but rootless. The industry was the first part of the textile industry to adopt a modern capital intensive factory system with master calico printers employing large numbers of skilled operatives who moved around, hunting in packs, as firms took on and laid off workers.

Richard Haworth and Hannah Davison
For all that, Richard Haworth does not seem to have moved that much. He was born between June 1786 and April 1787 and his life and travels are a closed book until he married Hannah Davison at Bury St Mary’s on 22 April 1806 when he was ‘bachelor of this parish’. His occupation is not given, which is unusual for Bury at that period. His first son was born 15 October 1807 and baptised 5 December 1807 at Holcombe Emmanuel, when his occupation was printer and his abode Bury, which I take in this context to mean Bury Town. This suggests some past connection with Holcombe - otherwise why was the baptism not at St Mary’s? There was a son Joseph born 1809/10, probably also in Bury and then three daughters for whom Richard’s abode is Ramsbottom. By 1820 he is back in Bury and he remains there until sometime after 1841, when he was living in New St opposite Bury Ground in either the famous old apprentice house or in converted print shops. However by 1851 he is living in Red Row, between Horwich and Blackrod. I said that printers hunted in packs and that seems to have applied to marriage as well as work.

John Haworth and Ann Davison
Twelve years before Richard married Hannah Davison, John Haworth printer had married Ann Davison at Bury St Mary on 10 Nov 1794. John and Ann had moved to Carlisle by 1798 when their daughter Susannah was born, before returning to Ramsbottom in 1800 and then Bury Bridge. By 1841 he was living in Back Irwell Street round the corner from Richard, and his daughter Susannah and other relations were in New Street.
Unfortunately both John and Ann died before 1851, so there is no means of knowing whether John would have given his place of birth as Rossendale like Richard. The fact that he was buried at Holcombe after 20 or more years living in Bury Town suggests that he saw Ramsbottom as ‘home’. Anyone dealing with the Haworth family gets used to finding neighbours with the same surname but no close relationship. However I would take a lot of convincing that this was not a case of two related Lancashire Haworths marrying two related Carlisle Davisons. Finding the link is the hard part. There are no baptism entries in the Carlisle registers for either Ann or Hannah, so all there is to go on is the historical evidence of where the calico printing community was based in the period when John was living there. The 1798 baptism entry gives John Haworth as living at Rickersgate in Carlisle, next to the River Caldew – and there were two households of Davison calico printers – Robert and Jane (Lovat) and Joseph and Ann (Boustead) - living there at the time. It would stretch credulity beyond the limit that John and Ann Haworth were unrelated to one or both of these families. What I cannot tell is whether my Richard, who would have been 11 or 12 at the time, accompanied John to Carlisle. Did he meet Hannah there, or was theirs another match ‘made in Bury’? Migration went on in both directions. There must have been Davison calico printers in Lancashire in the early 1790s or Ann would not have been in Bury to marry John in 1794. However there are no signs of Davisons in Bury itself, and so that raises the prospect that if I can locate where the Davisons were based I might get a clue as to what Richard meant when he said Rossendale was his place of birth: a Davison family in Loveclough would be more than useful.

However if there were any there I have yet to find them. I have located a George Davison calico printer marrying Prudence Ashton in Blackburn in 1786, and he seems to have lived in Lower Darwen before moving to Chorley between 1800 and 1802 – both good calico printing locations. They used given names like George and Robert for their children which match the names of the Carlisle Davisons, but that is some way short of proving a connection.

Losh Family, Calico Printers - Lower Baxenden and Rising Bridge.

There is a further strong Davison calico printing migration linking Carlisle with Lancashire, this time with Rising Bridge between Baxenden and Haslingden. Mary Davison, a long standing member of the Rossendale Branch, has traced her line back to John Davison, calico printer born Carlisle in 1829 who by 1861 was married to Martha Coomby (also from a Carlisle printing family). Ten years earlier John was unmarried and ostensibly living as a lodger with Robert and Catherine Irving, both born Carlisle. However Catherine was in all probability John’s mother, and Robert Irving his stepfather.
Also lodging in the same house is Dixon Losh, ‘manager at print works’, and the significance of this really becomes apparent from the 1861 census which shows Watson Losh (uncle of Dixon) as a calico printer at Lower Baxenden employing 137 men and 7 women – a serious capitalist. The final piece in the jigsaw is that John’s mother Catherine was the daughter of Joseph Thompson and Ann Losh baptised 21 April 1805. The Losh family were one of the first generation of four calico firms set up in Carlisle along the Caldew in the period 1760 -1800, and unlike at least two of the others managed not to go bankrupt. Sadly I can find no reliable documentary evidence as to whether these Rising Bridge Davisons were closely related to the Chorley Davisons or to ‘my’ Ramsbottom family and that is where it rests for now.

What lessons can we draw from this potted Davison/ Haworth history? First, how fiendishly complicated family relationships and intermarriages were in the early nineteenth century. Second how much nearer we can now get to disentangling them compared with only ten years ago thanks to so many basic sources coming online. Third how difficult it can be to come up with 100% proof of very plausible hypotheses.
Stephen Howarth email Stehowarth@aol.com