HODGKINSON of WARRINGTON and TOXTETH PARK
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HODGKINSON of WARRINGTON and TOXTETH PARK The earliest Hodgkinson traced in the direct line is John Hodgkinson, who was a husbandman living at Rix[t]on township (Warrington), when he married Elizabeth Mather in 1748. John was perhaps a son either of Henry Hodgkinson, weaver and his wife Alice (baptised at Warrington in 1723); or of Adam Hodgkinson, carpenter and his wife Ellen (baptised there in 1727).1 John Hodgkinson and his wife Elizabeth Mather were the parents of Thomas Hodgkinson (1770–1837). Thomas Hodgkinson and his wife Mary were the parents of Thomas Mather Hodgkinson (1805–1878). Thomas Mather Hodgkinson and his wife Alice Sparkes were the parents of Mary Hodgkinson (1829–1903), who married Joseph Steel.2 Origins The surname Hodgkinson means ‛son of Roger’, derived from ‘Hodge’ (a pet form of Roger) and its diminutive, ‛Hodgkin’.3 Henry and Alice Hodgkinson and Adam and Ellen Hodgkinson were amongst those of the name living in Warrington in the 1720s. Henry (a weaver) may have married at Wigan in 1711 and Adam (a carpenter) to Ellen Pendlebury at Deane on 1 May 1711.4 Henry’s son John was baptised at Warrington on 23 May 1723 and Adam’s son John on 14 April 1727. Rixton John Hodgkinson was living at Rixton at the time of his marriage in 1748 and may therefore have been connected with the Hodgkinson family of Hollins Green, Rixton whose baptisms and burials appear in the incomplete registers of Hollinfare chapel, Rixton from 1705.5 By 1717 Peter Hodgkinson leased from Martha Clare (a Glazebrook widow) for £10 a cottage, ferryboat and toll for the life of his son Thomas, plus 14 years, and tenanted a farm in Glazebrook called The Boat House, let to Thomas Clare. There was also a small farm at Glazebrook leased to John Hodgkinson.6 Peter Hodgkinson, blacksmith of Hollins Green made his will on 16 December 1730, mentioning three sons (Peter, Henry the late William) and four daughters. Henry was to inherit the tenement at Hollins where his father had been living. The executors were to be his friends Thomas Royle of Rixton Hall, yoeman and Hamlett Clarke of Hollins Green, linen webster and the will was proved on 8 January 1732/3.7 Henry Hodgkinson, blacksmith of Hollins Green made his will on 16 May 1668, mentioning his wife Elizabeth, sons William, Charles and Joseph and a daughter Hannah Smith. Henry was buried at Hollinfare on 28 March 1773 and the will was proved on 3 April.8 An Aughton poor rate assessment of 1613 lists Gilbert Butler, paying 4s 3d.9 On 16 February 1619 the inventory of Henry Goore, yeoman of Lydiate listed debts of 1s 6d due to him from William Smith, 19s rent owed by Gilbert Butler and a debt of 3s 4d for ‘one mett barlie’ from Elnor Butler. There seems no instance of a John Hodgkinson at Hollins Green. One Thomas Hodgkinson, a Rixton webster married Mary Owen of Rixton by banns at Warrington on 3 February 1730/1. One William Hodgkinson, yeoman of Rixton took out a licence on 24 December 1749 to marry Margaret Johnson, spinster of Newton: the marriage took place at Warrington. 1 Henry Hodgkinson of Rixton was buried at Warrington in 1756, as was William (an ale seller, born c. 1756), who died on 1 April 1790, aged 34.10 Other Hodgkinsons of Bowdon, Cheshire (a parish adjacent to Rixton across the river Mersey) received marriage licences in the 1730s and 1740s (no wills). John Hodgkinson and Elizabeth Mather John Hodgkinson, who we have seen was perhaps the son of Henry (born 1723), or of Adam (born 1727) was a husbandman of Rix[t]on (Warrington) on 10 April 1748 when he took out a licence (supported by John Hall of Newton) to marry Elizabeth Mather of ‘Billinge in the parish of Winwick’ (sic, recte Wigan) at Wigan or at Burtonwood chapel (Warrington parish). The marriage took place at Wigan later that day. Elizabeth was the eldest child of Thomas Mather, yeoman and attorney of Billinge and of his wife Hannah: she was described in her father’s will made in 1744 as ‘sufficiently secured and fully satisfied ... out of Crow Lane Estate in Newton’.11 Newton-in-Makerfield John and Elizabeth Hodgkinson seem to have lived for at least the first eight years of their marriage at Newton-in-Makerfield (a chapelry of Winwick), where their first five children (all daughters) were baptised. These were Hannah (21 May 1749, born 10 May); Alice (23 September 1750, born 15 September); Betty (16 July 1752, born 2 July); Margaret (8 May 1755, born 21 April); Mary (30 September 1756, born 18 September).12 After Mary’s baptism in 1756 we lose track of the family’s movements for eight years and it may be that John Hodgkinson was working as a travelling weaver.13 A son Henry was born c. 1758. On 20 April 1760 ‘Peggy, daughter of John Hodgkinson’ was baptised at St John’s, Lancaster.14 Warrington John and Elizabeth Hodgkinson seem to have been living at Warrington from at least 24 January 1762, when Martha (1762–1827), daughter of John Hodgkinson, weaver and Elizabeth his wife was baptised there. Henry, son of John Hodgkinson, weaver and Elizabeth his wife was buried at Warrington on 6 March 1764, aged six. Peggy, daughter of John Hodgkinson, weaver and Elizabeth his wife was buried at Warrington on 29 April 1764, aged four. Of John and Elizabeth’s children, at least four survived to adulthood: these were their son Thomas, their unmarried daughter Martha, their daughter Mary Lowe and another daughter, the mother of Ellen Bailey. Great Sankey The family then began a strong connection with Great Sankey (a chapelry in ‘Farnworth side’ of Prescot parish, but immediately adjacent to Warrington). The eastern boundary of Great Sankey township was formed by the Sankey Brook as it passed through the settlement of Sankey Bridges. Everything immediately south and east of the Sankey Brook (including Atherton’s Quay and Bank Quay on the Mersey) lay in the hamlet of Little Sankey, which was a division of Warrington township. The Sankey Brook Navigation (later the St Helens Canal), passed through Sankey Bridges on its course to St Helens from Fiddlers Ferry on the Mersey. John and Elizabeth’s only surviving son Thomas was baptised at Great Sankey on 28 January 177015 and the connection was to last until the burial of Thomas’ only son Thomas Mather Hodgkinson, 108 years later.16 2 John Hodgkinson was buried at Sankey on 7 December 1789 and Betty Hodgkinson (probably John’s widow Elizabeth) on 20 March 1791.17 John and Elizabeth’s daughter Mary married Moses Lowe (by 1780) and another daughter one Bailey. Children were born to Moses Lowe, husbandman and his wife Mary: John (1781, buried at Warrington 1 March 1784); Thomas 1783, buried 11 June 1784; John (baptised 28 August 1785; Elizabeth (10 May 1789); Hannah (13 March 1791); Martha (1 September 1793, buried 27 April 1794,Moses now a ‛labourer’); Mary (8 October 1797, buried 22 January 1798). Moses Lowe, labourer (44) was buried at Warrington on 27 June 1798. We shall see that Mary Lowe was buried in 1840, aged 83. THOMAS HODGKINSON (1770–1837) Thomas Hodgkinson was baptised at Great Sankey on 28 January 1770, a son of John and Elizabeth Hodgkinson, beginning his family’s long connection with Sankey Chapel. Thomas married Mary (perhaps Mary Turton married to Thomas Hodgkinson by banns at Winwick on 13 September 1790).18 In 1867 (30 years after Thomas’ death) Thomas Mather Hodgkinson, marrying for the second time, described his father as a ‛yeoman’. Marrying for the third and fourth times in 1870 and 1871, Thomas junior called his father a ‛cotton spinner’. THOMAS MATHER HODGKINSON (1805–1878) THOMAS MATHER HODGKINSON, probably Thomas and Mary’s only child, was born at Great Sankey (where his family had lived for two generations) and baptised at Sankey Chapel on 27 January 1805. MARY HODGKINSON, probably Thomas Mather Hodgkinson’s mother, was buried at Sankey on 13 March 1810, when he was 10. The canal connection Sankey was a vital junction in the north-west’s great canal and river network, with links up the Irwell to Manchester, down the Mersey to Liverpool and via the Mersey to such canals as the Bridgewater and the Leeds and Liverpool; and to St Helens and its coalfield by the Sankey Navigation (St Helens Canal) in 1759. The complex canal, river and coastal system of north-west England produced a distinctive kind of barge, sometimes under and sail and sometimes (on the canals) pulled by horses. These barges were known as ‘flats’ and were to be seen throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on the Mersey and the Weaver and all over the extensive Lancashire and Cheshire canal system, carrying coal, salt and other cargoes. These barges were sailed by ‘flatmen’ with a skilled knowledge of the tides and of the workings of the locks. Thomas Mather Hodgkinson married a flatman’s daughter and then worked first as a carpenter at Atherton’s Quay on the Mersey and at Worsley on the Bridgewater Canal, before becoming a Liverpool shipwright. It seems most likely therefore that his connections with Warrington and Sankey relate directly to their strategic importance in the river and canal network of the north-west. The Mersey was naturally navigable from Liverpool to Warrington (formerly its lowest bridging point) and in 1736 the Mersey and Irwell Navigation connected Bank Quay at Warrington via eight locks with Manchester.