Great Great Grandparents Part 1

Great Great Grandparents

Our great grandparents were born into the Georgian era but most of their adult life was spent in the Victorian era.  They would have seen a tremendous amount of change throughout their lives and many of them moved to more industrial areas to find work and thrive in the industries which were rapidly changing with technological innovation.  It becomes harder to find information about people before the advent of the general registration of births, marriages and deaths (1837) and before the national census started in 1841. Most of the information comes from parish records that are available online or at the local record offices we have visited. However there is probably more information available that we haven’t yet found. This may change as we find other resources to trace our families.  We also have no images of our great great grandparents although it is possible that there may be photographs of them somewhere.
This first blog gives information of four of our great grandparents from each side of the family

Crowther

Joseph Crowther (1820-1889)

Joseph was the son of Joseph (1786-?) and Betty Crowther, formerly Parkinson. Joseph Crowther Snr was a Slater. Joseph was a Cooper and also a Freeman of the City of Liverpool. Joseph had two siblings, Elizabeth b 1817 and James b 1812. Joseph married Eliizabeth Hitchmough in 1845 at St Brides Church in Liverpool. They lived in Blundell Street and later in Troughton Street in Liverpool until they moved with their family to Jarrow in the 1870s.

Liverpool Town Hall would have been a familiar sight for
Joseph as a Freeman of the city

Elizabeth Hitchmough (1823-1892)

Elizabeth was the daughter of Ralph Hitchmough (1798-1861) and Ellen Penketh (1796-1862). She was born in Hale in Lancashire. (Hale is now in Cheshire and is located close to Liverpool) The family lived in Mulberry Street in the East End of Liverpool.  Ralph was a cowkeeper and the family appears to have been reasonably affluent, having three servants in 1841. Ellen had a number of younger siblings:

John b 1824, who married Sarah Grears in 1848, was a policeman

Francis b 1826, a butcher in the 1851 census

Alice b 1827 married Stephen Kitching in 1848. Stephen had taken over the family business by the 1861 census.

Mary H b 1829 married Charles Chatham, a wood carver in July 1851

Ellen b 1831 married Thomas Williams in 1853.

Ralph b 1832 was apprenticed as a plumber in 1851.

Elizabeth Pratt (1828-1907)  and Thomas Slaughter (1815-1860)

Elizabeth was the daughter of Peter, a labourer, and Mary Pratt. Elizabeth married Thomas Slaughter in 1858 in Brighton, but it isn’t clear if Thomas (1815-1860) was Willliam Slaughter’s (1855-1925) father (and therefore our great great grandfather), since William's birth was registered under the name William Henry Pratt, with no father’s name on the certificate.
Thomas died in Brighton workhouse in 1860; the family must have been destitute since Elizabeth was in the workhouse with her youngest child Frederick Stephen in the 1861 census. Undoubtedly Elizabeth moved north because of the promise of employment for her sons in the coal mines of Durham. Elizabeth married for the second time in 1873 to William Wake (1813-1887), a widower and coal miner, eighteen years her senior.

 McAndrew

Edward McAndrew (1830-1870s)

Edward was born in Mayo in about 1830 and died sometime in the 1870s in the North East.  He lived in the All Saints area of Newcastle and in the 1871 census his occupation is given as Drainers Labourer.  

This early postcard of Newcastle shows the All Saints
area on the right of the picture

When his son Edward got married to Mary Paddon in 1878, his occupation was given as Labourer and he was deceased. We have so little information about him that it is difficult to trace him any further.

Mary Caulfield (1825-1901)

Mary was born in Co Mayo and lived in Newcastle for a time with her husband Edward McAndrew. She was widowed by 1878 and in the 1881 census she is staying with her son Edward and his family in Byker. She died in 1901 in Wallsend.

Early 1900s Map of the area of Devon around Exeter,
Crediton, Newton St Cyres and Poughill.

Thomas Burridge (1833-1919)

Thomas was the son of Thomas Burridge and Elizabeth Stuckey.  He was born in Poughill in Devon in 1833.  Thomas Snr died at the age of 38 in 1842.  The family was split up and Elizabeth is an agricultural labourer in the 1851 census with her daughter Jane but there is no sign of Thomas or his other siblings. They may well have been apprenticed to a farmer. In December 1854, Thomas married Elizabeth Voysey in Newton St Cyres, Devon.  They moved to Cornwall in the early 1860s and then to the North Durham area in the late 1860s.  Thomas had the following siblings

Mary b 1831

Elizabeth b 1839

Jane b 1842

Elizabeth Voysey (1830-1900). 

Elizabeth was the daughter of John Voysey (1796-1861) and Elizabeth Bowden (1799-1869).  She was born in 1830 in Puddington, Devon. Puddington is a small village in mid-Devon not far from Tiverton.  John was a Farm Labourer and the mortality rate of children in the area at this time was high; several of their children died young. The following siblings did reach adulthood.

Mary Ann b 1824 married James Kingslan in 1846

Harriet (1828-1873) ended her days in the workhouse at Crediton

Eliza b 1837 married James Bowden in 1856. Their daughter Emma Bowden was with Thomas and his family in Bowes Terrace, Lamesley, on the 1871 census.
Elizabeth married Thomas Burridge at Newton St Cyres in 1854.

The parish church of St Andrew's, Lamesley