Week 27: Solo #52Ancestors — Making Sense of it All

My husband and I have one child – a wonderful, caring, and generous son. Having one child isn’t all that unusual these days, but it was for our ancestors. My tree has many families with nine or more children. Even as recent at the 1960’s only children were unusual. Heck, I grew up in a family of five children and we were one of the smaller in our community.

For the longest time, I thought that my second great-grandfather might have been an only child. But that was only because I hadn’t spent enough time researching English church records. Parish registers are chock-full of good information and if you have the patience to figure out which churches your ancestors might have gone to the pay-off can be immense. It took me a while to get my mind wrapped around the differences between the civil jurisdictions and the ecclesiastical jurisdictions. It is made a tad more difficult because there can be a number of churches and chapelries in each parish and if your family was like mine, they didn’t stick to one place for their religious ceremonies. As an example, when my second great-grandfather, George Spencer, married Jane Buckley in 1844 the ceremony took place at St. Mary the Virgin in Bury, Lancashire.[1] However, when their son was baptized they went to the Chapelry in Holcombe, one of seven chapelries they could have chosen.[2]

Without getting too deep in the weeds, suffice it to say that the FamilySearch Wiki is your friend when trying to sort out what ecclesiastical jurisdictions you might need to search. For those of us with Lancashire ancestors, OnLine Parish Clerks database is a great free resource.[3]

The parish records told me that George’s father was a grocer and, sadly, I let it led me down the wrong path for a short while since I kept looking for siblings in the baptismal records whose father was a grocer. I soon found out that he wasn’t always a grocer. It wasn’t until later in his life that he went into the grocery business. From at least 1805 to 1821, he worked as a “calico printer.”

Now here’s something I bet you didn’t know: from 1721 to 1774, it was illegal to wear calico in England.[4] At the behest of the woolen and silk manufacturers, parliament prohibited the wearing of cotton cloth and then later the use of cotton for any purpose. One of the primary centers for calico printing at that time in England was London which saw riots over this law to the extent that some who wore calico had their clothing torn to pieces.[5] Yikes! By the time calico printing had fully reestablished in England, the manufacturing hub had migrated to Lancashire, where George Spencer plied that trade until he became a grocer.[6]

So back to those great English parish records. When I finally find George the calico printer, I track back to his first marriage, the children with that wife and then his second marriage and the children with that wife, include those from her first marriage. All in all, my third great-grandfather had twelve children and stepchildren. No wonder he quit the calico printing work (likely for someone else) and went into his own grocery business.[7] And my second great-grandfather? An only child no more.

[1] St. Mary, Bury, Lancashire, England, marriages, 1844-1845, page 123, Spencer-Buckley, 11 November 1844; digital image, “Manchester, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1930,”Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 10 July 2020); citing Anglican Parish Registers, Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester, England.

[2] Bishop’s Transcript, Holcombe, baptisms, 1840-1849, page 168 Edward Spencer, 23 March 1845; digital image, “Lancashire, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1911,” Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 10 July 2020); citing Lancashire Anglican Parish Registers, Preston, England. The four-month span between George and Jane’s marriage and the birth of their son is not lost on me.

[3] http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/indexp.html

[4] Parkunnel J. Thomas, “The Beginnings of Calico-Printing in England,” The English Historical Review 39 (1924): 201-217, specifically, 214; digital images Google Books (http://books.Google.com : accessed 9 July 2020).

[5] Ibid.

[6] G.N. Wright, M.A., Lancashire: its History, Legends, and Manufactures (London: Fisher, Son, & Co., 1841), 23; digital images Google Books (http://books.Google.com : accessed 9 July 2020).

[7] You can read more about George the grocer in 2019 Week 45: “Rich Man” of this blog.

“Calico printing” in Lancashire. Drawn by T. Allom, engraved by J. Carter (London) Fisher, Son & Co., 1835; digital image, G.N. Wright, M.A., Lancashire: its History, Legends, and Manufactures (London: Fisher, Son, & Co., 1841), 2… — “Calico printing” in Lancashire. Drawn by T. Allom, engraved by J. Carter (London) Fisher, Son & Co., 1835; digital image, G.N. Wright, M.A., *Lancashire: its History, Legends, and Manufactures* (London: Fisher, Son, & Co., 1841), 21; digital images *Google Books* (http://books.Google.com : accessed 9 July 2020).