Week 5 – 2020: So Far Away
While my family tree consists of mostly German and Irish, I do have one branch that is English and all are from the Greater Manchester area in Lancashire, specifically two parishes: St Mary the Virgin in Bury and St Mary the Virgin in Prestwich. When first researching this branch, I was confused by what exactly were “Bury” and “Prestwich.” Apparently, this confusion was justified as these names were used for townships and parishes. Bury also comprised two subdistricts and a district in Lancashire.[1]
The furthest back I have been able to trace with any sense of accuracy is to the marriage of my seventh great-grandparents Samuel Horsefield and Mary Seddon on 12 October 1697 at Prestwich (St. Mary). In looking through the church registers to find records on my Lancashire family, I am struck by the number of people whose surnames are the same as the parish or towns they are living in. I’ve seen last names such as Ramsbottom, Lancashire, Heywood, Prestwich, etc. And these are not lords or ladies, just regular town folk whose ancestors likely adopted the town name as their own to distinguish themselves from other Toms, Dicks, or Harrys. I find it interesting to see first-hand the rise of surnames in the world.
Some form of church has been on the site of the church of St. Mary the Virgin in Prestwich since before the 12th century. Completed about 1530, the current church building went through many renovations over the years.[2] Now part of the Church of England, St. Mary was originally Roman Catholic.[3] Records from Prestwich are available beginning in 1599. It had numerous “chapelries” in the smaller towns in the parish, such as Oldham, Little Heaton, Great Heaton, and Tonge.[4]
The main church in Bury (also St. Mary the Virgin) was built on the highest point in the center of the town. Church records for St. Mary date back to 971 A.D.[5] This St. Mary also had its companion chapelries of Edenfield, Heywood, Holcombe, Ramsbottom, Tottington Higher-End, Tottington Lower-End and, Walmersley.[6] The local chapelries were subsidiary places of worship, closer to the people than the main church and where services were held and many sacraments took place.[7]
Back to Samuel and Mary. They had four sons: Richard, John, William, and Jeremiah (my sixth great-grandfather). It is super great to have the baptismal records for them, but they don’t tell me much about the family. Later English church records identify the father’s occupation which helps in distinguishing one man from another. This is one of the reasons I haven’t been able to go back beyond Samuel and Mary – there are quite a few baptisms of people with the same name baptized at around the same time, living in the same area. As an example, when I search for Mary Seddon’s baptism in Lancashire during a ten-year period, I get nine results from two different databases.[8] Ugh.
When I got to my fifth great-grandfather, Robert Horsefield (Samuel and Mary’s grandson), I finally discover that his father, Jeremiah, was a weaver (1735).[9] The generations that follow were all involved in weaving, calico printing, or other jobs related to textile manufacturing. Not surprising, I’ve found that Lancashire was the heartland of the English textile industry.[10] Many of the “ground-breaking” weaving inventions were by Bury weavers. Things like the “Flying Shuttle” which “allowed cloth to be produced in wider bolts at twice the speed” was invented in 1733 by John Kay, a Bury weaver. [11]
[1] John Marius Wilson, “Bury,” Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72); digital image, A Vison of Britain Through Time (https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/descriptions/846150 : accessed 4 February 2020).
[2] FamilySearch Wiki, “Church of St Mary the Virgin, Prestwich,” rev. 09:47, 16 September 2019.
[3] When we were in London a couple of years ago, we took a tour of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a stunning Anglican cathedral. One of the exhibits in the basement showed the church from its beginnings in 604 A.D. to the present day. I was struck that the exhibit didn’t mention at all the change in its religious affiliation. Hmmm.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Wikipedia, “Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Bury,” rev. 08:24, 4 April 2019.
[6] I wanted to list all these names because they are so very English! FamilySearch Wiki, “Bury St Mary, Lancashire Genealogy Wiki,” rev. 13:03, 30 November 2019.
[7] FamilySearch Wiki, “Chapelry (England),” rev. 20:52, 25 December 2015.
[8] Family Search and OnLine Parish Clerks for the County of Lancashire.
[9] Bishop’s Transcript, Prestwich parish, 1599-1713, baptism of Robert Horsefield, 6 April 1735, unpaginated chronological entries; digital image, FamilySearch, “Bishop’s transcripts for Prestwich, 1599-1883,” (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6XK9-HL8?i=479&cat=367478 : accessed 5 February 2020), image 480 from FHL microfilm 004,007,121; citing Lancashire Record Office, Preston, England.
[10] Christine Goodier, MA, “The Lancashire Riots,” Lancaster Castle (https://www.lancastercastle.com/history-heritage/further-articles/the-lancashire-riots/ : accessed 5 February 2020).
[11] Ibid. John Kay is a local Bury hero with several pubs named after him and a memorial in the town center. Wikipedia, “John Kay (flying shuttle),” rev. 14:03, 3 February 2020.
St. Mary’s Church at Prestwich. Photographer, Ian Peacock, Wikimedia Commons, Prestwich, St. Mary’s Church, 06:35, 18 September 2019.
St. Mary’s Church at Bury. Photographer, Peter Downs, taken April 2018 (http://google.com : accessed 6 February 2020).