THE SCRIVENER

The Journal of Calderdale Family History Society Incorporating Halifax & District

Number 152 Autumn September2015 CALDERDALE FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY Incorporating HALIFAX and DISTRICT

Calderdale Family History Society was founded on the 7th March 1985. We aim • To encourage interest in, and assist with, research relevant to the study of fam- ily history in Halifax and the Calder valley. Our area • Covers the modern Calderdale Council established in 1975, which broadly cov- ers the same area as the Ancient Parish of Halifax, with the addition to the west of the township of Todmorden and Walsden. We do this by • Holding meetings, usually on the 4 th Thursday of each month (except August) in Halifax. • Publishing The Scrivener, a quarterly journal, in paper form for full members and on our website for internet members. Contact the Editor. • Hosting a website www.cfhsweb.com/web/, and a members’ forum. Contact the Webmaster. • Running a Research Room at Brighouse Library two half days a week for per- sonal research. Contact the Research Room co-ordinator. • Running projects to transcribe records relevant to members’ research. Contact the Projects Co-ordinator. • Publishing transcribed records. Contact the Publications Officer. • Providing an enquiry and search service from our records in the Research Room. Contact the Enquiry service Co-ordinator. • Maintaining a list of members’ interests by surname and dates of interest, which are available to members on the website. Each quarter new additions are pub- lished in The Scrivener . Contact the Members’ Interests Co-ordinator. • Maintaining an index of “Strays” (Calderdale people who appear in records else- where). Contact the Strays Co-ordinator. Membership • Is open to all family historians who have an interest in the area. Contact the Membership Secretary. • Annual subscriptions are £10.00 for UK individuals (£12.00 for family member- ship), £15/£17 for Overseas • Internet membership is £5.50/£7.50 which only provides information such as the journal on the Internet, but not on paper. • Subscriptions are due on the 1st of the month, on the anniversary of joining the Society (cheques made payable to CFHS.) and should be sent to the Treasurer. • Overseas payments must be made in sterling, drawn on a bank with a branch in the UK, by Sterling Money Order. • Membership subscriptions may be paid annually by Standing Order. • Credit Card payments for subscriptions and purchases of our publications may be made over the Internet via Genfair (www.genfair.co.uk). Contacting the Society • All correspondence requiring a reply must be accompanied by a S.A.E. or 2 recent I.R.C.’s [International Reply Coupons]. Contact the Secretary or appropri- ate officer. • The names, addresses and email contacts of the Society’s officers and co- ordinators appear inside the back cover of The Scrivener and on the Society’s website.

Page 2

CONTENTS

ARTICLES

COVER PICTURE 4 EDITORIAL 5 JANUARY TALK - THE WAYWARD WOMAN 6 DEAR DESCENDANT 12 FEBRUARY TALK - WAY MARKERS & HIGHWAYS 14 DNA CONNECTION: WALKER - JAGGER 20 CHURCH ATTENDANCE in WAKEFIELD & HALIFAX 22 CALDERDALE FAMILY HISTORY FORUM 28 ST MATTHEW’S CHURCHYARD - LIGHTCLIFFE 29 LT. ERIC LEARY - KILLED in ACTION 1915 36

GENERAL INFORMATION

USEFUL CONTACTS 44 FAMILY HISTORY FAIRS, etc 45 ANCIENT PARISH OF HALIFAX ~ Chapelries & Townships 48

CALDERDALE FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY NEWS

ABOUT CFHS 2 PROJECT UPDATES 12 ANNUAL AUDIT REPORT 21 MEMBERS’ INTERESTS & EMAIL ADDRESSES 35 IMPROVED SEARCHE & DATA FACILITIES for MEMBERS 39 NEW MEMBERS’ INTERESTS 42 AUTUMN MEETINGS 43 RESEARCH ROOM DETAILS 45 CFHS OFFICERS 46

PUBLICATION & SERVICES SUPPLEMENT P1- P4

Page 3 THE SCRIVENER Publication Dates Deadline Dates for Copy

WINTER 2015 (December) NOVEMBER 9th SPRING 2016 (March) FEBRUARY 15th SUMMER 2016 (June) MAY 2nd AUTUMN 2016 (September) AUGUST 16th

Please note that, due my other commitments, the copy date for the Sum- mer issue is earlier than previously. Editor.

Data Protection Act

As a “not for profit” organisation, we are not required to notify the Data Protec- tion Authorities in the UK regarding the holding of personal data. However you should know that we hold on the Society’s computer the personal data that you provide us. Furthermore we make this information available to other members for the purposes of following up “Members’ Interests”.

As part of this, those details are posted on our Members’ Only website, which, under certain circumstances, can be accessed by non-members. If you either do not want us to hold your details on our computer and/or you do not want your details made available to other members as described above, please con- tact our Membership Secretary by letter, or email at [email protected].

Insurance Exclusions The insurance which we hold for certain activities undertaken by members is limited to cover for members under 75 years of age. Consequently, any mem- ber over 75 who is concerned about taking part in specific Society activities should contact the Secretary for clarification.

FRONT COVER

The tower in St Matthew's Churchyard. The church itself was demolished in the 1970s and the tower is now owned and maintained by The Friends of Friend- less Churches. (See article on page 29) .

June 2015 issue. Error “St Paul’s, Stone Cross, Stainland” should read “St Paul’s Cross Stone, Stans- field” (or possibly Todmorden?) A reader wonders if there has been a confusion between Stansfield and Stainland.

Page 4 EDITORIAL

What did your ancestors do for a living? The main occupations in Calderdale for centuries seem to have been to do with the textile industry.

My dad was a roller coverer. When wool is spun into yarn for knitting or weav- ing, it is done by a process of gradually drawing out the wool and twisting it. The wool is drawn out between rollers, and my dad's job was to cover these rollers with leather. The spinning shed contained rows and rows of sets of roll- ers. The "donner" put bobbins of yarn onto the machine, and the “doffer” took them off at the other side after the yarn had gone through the rollers. You also had “ring twisters” and “cap spinners”, but I can’t remember what they did.

My great grandfather was a clogger. My dad told me that when your shoe soles wore out, you had them clogged. The clogger cut the uppers away from the soles, made a pair of wooden soles and nailed the uppers to them, and Bob's your uncle, you had a pair of clogs. But what happened when the uppers wore out?

You read people's occupations in the Census records, and sometimes you know what it means, and sometimes you don't. What, for example, is an engine tenter? I know about tenter hooks, for holding the cloth to the frame when it's being bleached, and tent makers, but engine tentering??

In 1775, The Rev. John Watson MA, in a book on the History & Antiquities of the Parish of Halifax, listed all the mills in the parish. These included, among the fulling mills, paper mills and corn mills, a handful of frizing mills. I can only guess that when they made blankets, this was where they made the surface frizzy. Anybody able to support or correct this conjecture?? Also, on the Halifax brook, Bankhouse, there was a “rasp” mill. Any ideas?

One of my ancestors was a rag grinder. They ground up the rags to make felt, for hats. Didn't waste anything, did they? And I believe they spread shoddy on the fields. I remember my mum separating the rags into cotton and woollen rags, and she sold them to the Pot man for sixpence a bundle. (The Pot man came down our street with his horse and cart, and sold, among other things, those big earthenware baking bowls. I still have a couple.)

Perhaps you could write an article for Scrivener about some interesting or un- usual occupation your ancestor had. Or tell us about some odd ones you have come across and found out what they actually were, or you haven't found out, and you need help.

Thanks to everyone who has already sent me an article!

Frances Stubbs ([email protected])

Page 5 January Talk - The Wayward Woman and her Brothers By Margaret Usher

Genealogy in my opinion is not just about when ones ancestors were born, married and died but what they did in the dash in between the birth and the death – you know that dash on tombstones?

There’s a lot to be done in between. Thinking about the changes my mother- in-law experienced between her birth in September 1890 and her death in March 1990 – she had just missed the telegram – it makes me realise how much more important it is to get a round view of what peoples lives were like, what difficulties they faced, what they achieved and what they left behind.

My grandparents bought a three piece suite in 1888 and I have just sold it to somebody living in Dubai of all places. I thought that was most remarkable. I have used that three piece suite all my life. My parents used that three piece suite all their lives and I asked my children if they wanted this and they said they had their own furniture. Miserable lot!

So where do you begin? Well you always begin from the known to the un- known. So here is my known. My mother married my father in Bradford Ca- thedral. It was quite a big wedding. They had their Wedding Breakfast as it was called then in Bradford Town Hall in the Banqueting Hall and they did that because my grandfather was the Superintendent of Bradford Town Hall. The Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress of Bradford were at the wedding. They signed my mother’s autograph book.

If I hadn’t done a spot of research on that I would not have known all the inns and outs of living in a flat in the Town Hall with your light and coals and rent free. But that didn’t mean that my grandfather was able to afford a house. When he retired, which was before be wanted to, because his wife died and it was a joint appointment so he had to retire too and so it was decided between his four surviving children that they would look after him and he would stay with them three months at a time. But he didn’t much care for uncle Jack’s wife and uncle Willie’s wife had got enough on with four girls without having her father-in-law as well, so he ended up living with us. He fitted in very well. He had been a butler before he had been the Superintended of the Town Hall and he could make wartime rations go much further than anyone else.

With the advent of the internet and the involvement of family history societies in the cataloguing and the indexing of central records, the recording and digi- tising of parish registers, there have been many changes in the way you can research your families. When I started, when I was ten, it was a question of asking the family and they withheld information which was not suitable for ten- year-old ears in their opinion. When I was older I used to go round different parts of the country, which is fine, except that whilst my father’s family for gen-

Page 6 erations were in Bradford, my great grandmother on my mother’s side was from Scotland and the man she “lived over the brush” with, came from Cam- bridgeshire and they met in Wakefield. My mother’s father came from the bor- der between England and Wales on Offa’s Dyke. So how on earth did all that lot meet up?

But now you can sit in front of your computer and do an awful lot of it in the comfort of your own home, but it’s no where near as exciting. We still have to go to the District Archives for some things and we no longer can get into the Registrars Office as easily. You can order things but you used to be able to have a six hour search there for a very small amount of money really and that was a lot better. But we still have to search through trade directories and em- ployment records and if someone in your family worked for the railways, they have a huge archive of the records of everybody who worked for them and they even recorded things like “admonished” or “reprimanded” or even “dismissed” and it doesn’t always say why.

Census records have a limited amount of accurate information. This is due to a lot of things. One of them is that the enumerators were not necessarily good at spelling. Some of them were very economical about the number of times they dipped their pen in the ink, which means that entries have faded. Some of them used very thick nibs so what when they are writing in those small spaces the letters merge into one another and some of them wrote so finely you couldn’t see it. And the other thing is of course that people give a name and when they say Hannah, a lot of them say Anna, so you don’t necessarily get the right pronunciation and spelling.

Edward Ripley’s family owned Ripley’s Dye Works in Princeville in Bradford, and they had this wonderful house, Bedstone House, in Shropshire, where my grandfather and my great-grandmother and my great-aunts and two of my great-uncles worked in the servants section. Bedstone House was built in 1882, and it is known as a calendar house. A calendar house is one which has 52 rooms, 365 windows, 12 chimneys and 7 external doors and I’m rather glad they didn’t mention the ones that are inside! The central hall has 52 stained glass windows showing the months of the year with the birds and the flowers and animals in season at those times, and it also has zodiac signs and the agricultural work done during those months. It’s not a modest establish- ment and it needed a lot of staff and some of my relatives supplied a lot of it!

My great-grandfather was called Alfred Kasben and he was born in Wickham in Cambridgeshire and moved to Burwell. Burwell had so many Kasbens living in it that they have got a lane there called Kasben Lane. In 1841 he came up to Wakefield following his older brother who was head gardener at the state of the art lunatic asylum in Wakefield. I’m not sure whether I should boast about these things you know. Alfred married Anne Shaw in 1843 and until recently I thought they only had one child, Arthur Albert who was born in 1847. In fact

Page 7 they had had Henrietta, born in November 1843, and Eliza in 1845. They did marry because Henrietta was already on the way which was quite normal in the 1840s. It seems there were an awful lot of six month pregnancies.

In 1851 only Arthur Albert was at home with his father. His mother wasn’t there but her 13-year-old sister was there looking after the toddler and I didn’t think anything of it until a few months back when I discovered Henrietta and Eliza existed, so I had to look around again. Anne had disappeared and I thought that she had died, but I couldn’t find a death certificate. In 1851 she is actually on the census record at her mother’s home. And then she disappears. I haven’t found any more trace of her and I am assuming that she found a brush and a man and they trotted off living “over the brush”. It was quite com- mon people didn’t make any noise about it because in Common Law it was a recognised form of legal marriage. There were no such things as divorces for ordinary people. You couldn’t afford an Act of Parliament to get rid of a man or a woman you didn’t like any more, so you did the brush act instead.

So Henrietta and Eliza weren’t with their father, they weren’t with their grand- mothers, or anywhere I could find. Eventually I found that Henrietta was looked after by her mother’s uncle Thomas Shaw who was already 50 years-of-age and unmarried and was a leather cutter in Pateley Bridge which is a long way off, and in the 1851 census I found them staying in Wakefield at the home of a boot and shoe maker with whom Thomas Shaw the leather cutter did busi- ness. Eliza lived with her mother’s oldest sister and in her late teens became a children’s nurse or a nanny in the family of a blanket manufacturer in Dews- bury and when she was 30 she married Abraham Broadbent a railway guard and they lived in Rastrick. You see it all comes around.

Alfred Kasben and Jessie Learmont met in Wakefield before 1857. Jessie was the daughter of Hugh Learmont and Elizabeth Telfer who married in Maxton in the Free Kirk. Free Kirk ministers were rather prone to admonish the congre- gation if they do anything like smile. He wrote in the parish register that Hugh Learmont and Elizabeth Telfer were getting married and he had two children born in bastardy. Hugh had been living in Merton, Berwickshire in an irregular marriage which was formalised in 1817 after he was admonished by the Free Kirk minister there, but when he got to Maxton he was quite wealthy and an established farmer and I don’t think the minister thought it was appropriate to admonish him publicly so he just wrote it in the book.

Jessie had been born in 1834 and she as already quite aware of things when her mother and her father got married so I suppose she didn’t really think that there was anything wrong with “living over the brush”. So by 1857 Jessie was installed in Wakefield as Alfred Kasben’s wife and she brought Arthur Albert up as her own child. Alfred Ernest was born in 1858 and he was followed by Tho- mas Hugh, Lillian, Jessie Brown Kasben (I have no idea where the Brown came from), Edith who was my grandmother, John Robert and William Ed-

Page 8 ward, so they had quite a string of children.

Arthur Albert was brought up by my great-grandmother Jessie, and he joined the Railway which was the “in thing” to be in then. He moved to Peterborough which was a good centre for the railway and he lived with his natural mother’s brother and worked with another brother on the railway, so it was obvious that they had kept in contact with the child all those years. He died at the age of 27 in 1874. I contacted Grantham Library to ask them if there had been a railway accident then and they said there hadn’t. Well a mile up the track from Gran- tham station there was a huge accident and that’s what he died in. He was the fireman on the express from Scotland to London. He was qualified to be an engine driver on branch lines but not on the express trains, so he was a fire- man on that. It was very foggy and the train was late and the local train from Boston to Grantham was also late and at Barkston Junction the branch line joins the main line and the local train came through and did not see the signal at red because of the fog. The signalman at the junction box went out with a red light. The engine driver tried to break and lose steam but he was going too fast and he went on to the main line just as the express came through. The express engine was catapulted into a field. The engine driver was thrown out and he was OK, but the engine went on its side, the boiler burst and my great- uncle was scalded, and he died next day. The railway officials looked after the widow and the children and when the boy was 17 he was a railway clerk and his sister was a school teacher’s assistant.

John Robert Kasben started working as a gardener at Bedstone House and then he joined the Oldham Borough Police Force on the 12th October 1894 as a Police Constable 3rd Class. On the 5th April the following year he was pro- moted to Police Constable 1st Class. This is food for thought! In 1896 in the February he passed his weights and measures exams which was for the posi- tion of Inspector of Weights and Measures and he was immediately made up to Sergeant because the position carried a Sergeant’s rank and pay. So less than two years after he had joined the police force be became a Sergeant. He’d got wings, hadn’t he, or a very long ladder? In December 1898 he was appointed Chief Constable of Grantham Borough Police in charge of the in- spection of Weights and Measures and the Police Force.

In about 1982 I took a photograph of John Robert Kasben into Grantham Po- lice Station and asked a very young policewoman if she had this photograph anywhere in the Station. She went to the back for rescue and someone with white hair came out and I showed him the photograph and I said that I be- lieved he was once the Chief Constable of Grantham. He told me that that was the coat of arms on his collar, so maybe he was, and what was his name. So I told him and said he knew about him. He told me his daughter was still living in the area, in Barrowby. Have you ever stood at someone’s door and asked them if this was a photograph of their father because if so, you are my mother’s cousin?

Page 9

She asked me in and we got on like a house on fire. She thought that great- grandmother could not have been “living over the brush” because she was far too respectable. There was a family legend that Jessie Brown Kasben had been taken advantage of by the son of the house of Ripley’ at Bedstone Court and that she was married quietly to the Head Gardener .

Now that sounds OK until you start looking at a few other facts, so keep an open mind. Jessie Brown Morgan, as she had now become, was in London in 1901 living with her daughter, Dorothy Jessie Morgan who had been born in 1899 in Bedford. I thought it was somebody’s mistake, but it wasn’t. I found her birth certificate with father’s name and occupation, and mother’s name, “a lady of independent means”. So you could obviously have an illegitimate child more satisfactorily if you had money, but Jessie didn’t have money, she was a gardener’s wife and she had been a laundry maid, so that didn’t really gell.

In 1901, she lived in Westminster in London in an enormous mansion with servants. It said she was married but there was no sign of any husband. I looked up the house in Bedford which had just been sold for £1.2 million. There was an aerial view of it; a big square building with a walled garden, an orangery, ornamental gardens, a sweeping drive.

So the legend, and Jessie is our family skeleton, our black sheep, our way- ward woman and her brothers. So whether her brothers benefited because of the trouble that she had got into as a laundry maid I still don’t know and I cer- tainly can’t prove it, but it makes a good story.

Between 1927 and 1933 my sisters remembered great-aunt Jessie helping granny at the kitchens in the Town Hall if they were having a banquet or a big event. So she must at some time have had a reversal of fortune. My sister also said that her surname was no longer Morgan but Stanley, but I can’t find a marriage for her. My sisters did not like great-aunt Jessie, they didn’t say why, but they just didn’t like her and that she was horrible and mean which I sup- pose that meant she didn’t let them do what they wanted.

In 1938 great-aunt Jessie was keeping house for John Robert Kasben in Gran- tham after his wife died. He had very strong views about people getting drunk and when he found that she had been buying alcohol at the pub, he said that she could not stay living with him if she continued because that brought disre- pute on his reputation as a Chief Constable. She continued, so he sold his house and moved into the Angel Hotel in Grantham and she wandered off and ended up in Bradford.

When I started my research in 1947 my sisters had said I could write to great- aunt Henrietta and I wondered who she was. It turned out she was my

Page 10 mother’s father’s sister living in California and I thought that was quite exciting, so I wrote to her and we had a wonderful correspondence for about two years and then she stopped writing. It wasn’t until I started on that bit of the family that I realised that the reason she had stopped writing was because she had died, but nobody had written to tell me.

But why didn’t my sisters tell me that great-aunt Jessie was living in Bradford when we were living in Shipley, 4 miles away, no distance whatsoever. So I asked them and my sister Janet said that they couldn’t have told me about her because she drank, so that was that.

Lastly, one of the other places to look at are autograph books, they were very popular years back. My mother had one. A lot of them had beautiful sketches in. And if you look at photograph albums, I am sure you have come across this, nobody names them. They all know who are in them, don’t they?

What I am trying to say tonight is that every family has a story. Sometimes it’s about somebody who has made a success of business; sometimes it is people who have started a business and expanded too quickly and have gone bust; sometimes it is people who have struggled through ill health, bad trading con- ditions and all sorts of other things, but as long as you bring in the local events as well as looking at the family you will find that you have a very rich and excit- ing history of your own family.

John Robert Kasben is perhaps the most successful in some ways but there are others, my father’s great-great-great-grandfather was a millwright and in 1846 he was working at a mill in Shipley and then moved to Salts Mill when it was built, and I have in my possession a very old book which was the bible for millwrights and it had every possible example of mathematical exercises to show how big a steam engine had to be to cover certain amounts of factory; how much expansion it would take; how much of this and all these calculations and the vocabulary in it is very, very complicated. Multi-syllable words and no allowance made for someone who was not well-educated. It’s obvious that my great-great-great-grandfather used it extensively because it’s falling apart and also that he was very proud of it because of the way he had written in the front, but we tend to think that work people in the mid19th century were not often educated, but my goodness me, I had to look up five out of six of the words on one page in the preface, never mind the rest of it where it got all mathematical.

We have to look at these with a very open mind and that we hope we know enough about other things to see how these people thrived.

Page 11 Dear Descendant,

I thought that you, in future years, would want to know your past, So I hoarded these mementos of a kind I thought would last.

I kept a book of autographs from late Victorian times Signed by all my ancestors with drawings, jokes and rhymes.

I kept a book of photographs I had from Uncle Jack, With names and dates and details neatly written on the back.

I kept a lot of letters in a shoe box, neatly tied, From lovers, soldiers, aged aunts; it was my joy and pride.

I kept my Grandma's Bible with the christenings written in. How was I to know my kids would chuck them in the bin?!

Ann Cestor

Project Updates.

There have been 2 sets of project work going on over the summer months - Stoney Royd Burial Registers & Square Chapel Monumental Inscriptions.

Stoney Royd Burial Registers.

You may remember, in the June Scrivener, that we were poised to release Stage 2 of this large project. I am happy to say that we published the CD & download files for the Stoney Royd Burials from 1892 to 1914 at the end of June. So these records are available to you, as members in a number of ways ;- - Purchase of the CD or in downloadable form for just £5. - Come along to the Research Room at Brighouse Library & look at all the detail there. - Using our improved "Members Only" free search facility on the Soci- ety website, get the full detail of any of the entries from our Search Coordinator. Exactly how to do this is described elsewhere in this journal.

After a well-earned break during July, our Transcription team are now well into Stage 3 of this project, which will take us from 1914 up to 1941. The aim is to try to complete this by the end of this year. To-date we are 48% of the way through the transcription stage.

Page 12

Square Chapel Monumental Inscriptions.

During the ground clearance in readiness for the new library on Winding Road in Halifax, 100 or so headstones were moved, on a temporary basis, to Stoney Royd. They were photographed by Council officials at the time & we used these photos to compile the Monumental Inscription records that we have pub- lished on MI3 CD under the heading of "Square Church".

It transpires that some of these were, in fact, out of the Square Chapel grave- yard, details of which are also published on MI3 CD. The result is that a few grave details have been duplicated.

As well as this, the photographs referred to earlier were not very well done, so a lot of the detail was obscured or missed off. Thanks to the combined ef- forts of Friends of Lister Lane, the Cemeteries Dept of Calderdale Council & your Society, the gravestones that were in temporary storage in Stoney Royd have been re-laid as a path at the bottom of Lister Lane Cemetery. These have been re-photographed & we are currently in the process of updating MI3 CD to :- - Remove the duplicate entries. - Complete the transcription on the deficient gravestone inscriptions.

It now seems possible that some of the gravestones in temporary storage (which were photographed by the Council), have not been transferred to Lister Lane & investigations into this are on-going. It is possible that some were broken & not able to be re-located.

Eventually, we hope that all the data we have on Square Church & Square Chapel graves will be as accurate as we can possibly make it. At that time, we will issue an updated CD.

If any member would like to join our Transcription team, we would welcome you with open arms - the more we have on the team, the quicker we can get through the project. You don't need to be local, as everything is done elec- tronically. Contact me on 01484-718576 or [email protected]

Peter Lord - Project Coordinator.

Page 13 February Talk - Way Markers and Highways in the West Riding By Jan Scrine

I am going to tell you a little bit about the Milestone Society and I am hoping to share a bit of enthusiasm with you.

Back in 2000 having moved here for work I was looking for something interest- ing to do and I thought about the Archaeological Society in this area. Well they were doing “posh” archaeology, excavating on the Continent and I thought that wasn’t me. Then I saw a tiny article in a magazine called Current Archaeology that said people were going to have a workshop about mile- stones.

I knew nothing about milestones so I thought I would go along. When I got there people had lots of pictures of milestones made of different materials, different shapes and sizes. I came back to Yorkshire, looked around and found that there are millions of the things around here.

The Society was setting up a steering committee so I said that I would find someone in every county to act as a link person and said I would be the link person for Yorkshire, because this was down in the Midlands and there were- n’t many people from Yorkshire there.

You can tell from my accent that I’m not local but I went to University and lived in Hull for quite a while and I had forgotten quite how far North Yorkshire goes – it goes well beyond Scarborough. One or two other people joined in and we have a very energetic lady who logs all the milestones in Yorkshire. She knows “their inside leg measurement!” She also does the ones in Scotland because she ran out of Yorkshire ones.

The first systematic road system in the country was done by the Romans, it was the military roads but there are a lot of subsidiary roads as well. You did- n’t just walk up the Great North Road and turn left across Watling Street and then up Breitling Street and the Romans actually marked their main routes with some sort of milestone. Quite often they are cylindrical. Sometimes they are other shapes. There is one in Slaithwaite in the Yorkshire Colne Valley in the back of the Manor House there, which has been used in television pro- grammes such as “Where the Heart is”. They probably weren’t inscribed with the mile distances. Quite a lot have got the name of the Emperor inscribed around the top, with all the things they have done, Great Caesar, this that and the other. And, of course, when you change Caesars that becomes obsolete so frequently you will find they have been reversed and recycled and you can find a different Caesar on the other end of it. There are a lot in Pontefract Mu- seum, York Museum.

They are measuring distances. If you know roughly how fast you are going,

Page 14 you can count the milestones and know where you are. The Roman mile was a thousand footsteps (demonstrates) so a thousand double steps like that and the Roman for a thousand was mille and that’s where we get the word mile from. So the Roman mile is 1,618 yards, so not quite the same as our statute mile. How many yards are there in our statute mile? 1,760. When I am doing this talk with children, they really don’t have a clue. So I say you are sixteen-year-olds and might be thinking of learning to drive. You are on the motorway and it says 800 yards to something or other. Oh we don’t look at that they said. So there you go.

So the Romans have the milestones and after the Romans have gone we don’t get any systematic road system until the 1700s and so routes developed to suit local needs and what’s our main product we want to shift around the Pennines? It’s wool. Now if you ask the children, they come up with all sorts of things and are quite amazed that it’s wool. So we need to shift wool around, not pizzas or bananas and we were shifting it either on people’s backs or on packhorses. If you want to go from Ireland to the Continent, you go up the Ribble to where the Calder starts and then you follow this path across through Todmorden, through Halifax, around through Dewsbury and out on to Wakefield and then on to the Humber.

On the typical track, or trod, we have a packhorse Holloway - the overtaking lane. The paved bit is called the causey – or the causeway. If you are in single file going up the causey, if you need to overtake or go the opposite way you go down in the Holloway which gets really muddy and rutted and potholed. Now who put those stones there? It wasn’t the packhorse stone fairy and it wasn’t the Druids and it wasn’t the Romans. Somebody has had to pay for these tracks.

Bloody Mary wanted money, she wanted taxes raised and she wanted to fight off various assaults on her throne. So like nowadays she wanted more trade and more commerce and you will pay more taxes. But the big thing that was holding us back in this country was the poor state of the highways - it still is. So she passed an Act in 1555 which said that the ordinary townships and parishes were responsible for the routes that passed through their areas. Now you can imagine how popular this was because if you live on a busy route, it’s the through traffic that’s wearing the surface away, it’s not your local traffic. It’s not you popping up to the church, going to the market or whatever you do locally. It’s passing traffic that’s coming over from Ireland to the Continent. Individuals had to spend five days a year working on the roads. Later it became seven days a year and this lasted right through the 1700s. If you were wealthier you could get out of it by paying another tax called the composition, levied at six- pence in the £1 on the value of your property. Sounds familiar? Rates, yes! - Sixpence in the £1 to pay for the roads, so you didn’t get out of it either way.

You’ve got to cross water. You have to cross on a bridge. The engineers

Page 15 amongst you will notice that the stones are pointed to break up the eddies and flows of the water. The one at Colden Clough, on the Long Causeway that runs across the Pennines, is just up from Hardcastle Crags. It is just two big slabs put across. Sometimes they are called Clattern Bridges and there are lots of different names for this type of bridge.

One of our members takes a packhorse around the country for charity and she said she couldn’t get over most of the packhorse bridges. For Health and Safety they have built up the parapets! There is one at Bingley where the bridge top has a wooden fence for Health and Safety. If you are on foot or not carrying much, you walk over the bridge. But if you have animals or wag- ons you go through the ford.

How do you find the way? Satnavs, maps and all these electronic things? But going back hundreds of years, how would you find the way? You would ask the locals and somebody would tell you to go left at the big tree or go right after the tall stone. What happens to trees? They get hit by lightening. So the trees are not very permanent and what happens to the stone? Well we are in Yorkshire, aren’t we? You take it away and build something with it. And so they are not very reliable indicators. You might get a local guide who is supposed to know the way. People will say, yes we know because we are going to be paid, but they wouldn’t have a clue. Alternatively they just might mug the traveller, so it wasn’t very useful having a local guide either. Be- cause if the terrain was like this, and the weather, it’s very hard to find your way if you don’t know it. There was a particular example back in the late 1600s which caught the public imagination. A lady set off to walk across the moors to spend Boxing Day with her sister. It was a 20 mile walk and she had her two small children with her. They lost their way and their bodies weren’t found until the snows melted in the Spring, huddled up in a small hollow. Now the Government needed people to travel and get around and so they did something about it. In 1697 they told the Justices of the Peace, who were the Local Authorities of their day, that they had to put up some sort of marker on paths across moorland and open land and where the tracks crossed. They made them of vernacular materials; stone, wood, metal. You didn’t have to inscribe on it, but you did have to ensure that there was a marker.

The one outside the church at Norland has got “to Ealand 2 miles” and “to Halifax 2 miles”. People say that the distances on these old milestones are all wrong. What it is, is that they are measured in long miles or country miles, because our statute mile, 1760 yards came in at the end of Good Queen Bess’s reign in 1690s, and we didn’t adopt it up here until right through into the 1800s. You had varying lengths of miles in different parts of the country. The long mile or the country mile is about seven fifths of a statute mile. You still hear the expression today, “he’s missed by a country mile”.

This one’s down at Sowerby Bridge and I’m sure you have driven past it

Page 16 many times and not noticed it – it’s by the traffic lights. It’s been partly re- painted and it’s got a nice pointed hand there with a cuff – miles Brighouse 6, Huddersfield 7, Dewsbury 13 and Wakefield 19 and on this side it says Halifax. You can sometimes tell the age of these things by the design of the cuffs on the pointy hands, because at certain times they show the buttons and that was fashionable at certain times.

This one is at Selendine Nook, on the Halifax Road coming out of Hudders- field. It has an Ordnance Survey height above sea level mark. You often found it on milestones, because milestones don’t get moved as much as gate- posts.

At this time they have got routes and it’s by road. So it’s Sheffield by road 9 miles, Bradfield by road 2 miles and there’s the Ordnance Survey mark again. And the reason we think they suddenly started using it was because of this particular gentleman. John Ogilby is a very interesting character. In the time of Charles II he

This local example at Southowram is very rare. It’s got Halifax road 4 miles, Leeds and Wakefield by road and again the miles (the distance by road, rather than across the moors, or across the fields). It is very rare to have the word road on a milestone. Previously the word road had meant get out of the way, get out of the road, or it meant a shipping lane like Cowes Road. And apparently it only occurs once in Shakespeare and it’s used to say get out of the way and apparently it is not used at all in the King James Bible. The old word was highways and what do we call the department nowadays that looks after the roads? – it’s the Highways Department. What do we call the thing that we drive on in the motorway? – it’s the carriageway. We are still using these old terms of highway, carriageway and so on.

We don’t get any systematic road systems until the 1700s and in the 1700s again the Government wants trade, and the Government wants tax. So what do we do? We privatise the road system. We have groups of local worthies who got together and formed Turnpike Trusts. Quite often these are the same people as the Justices of the Peace who were supposed to be keeping the roads in good condition anyway. So they get together and by Act of Parlia- ment for each separate road they actually do some maintenance and repair work. They are allowed to charge tolls and the tolls are extracted from the hap- less population at Toll Houses or Toll Bars and those barriers across the road are quite often spiked at the top to stop people on horses jumping over them. If you were a pedestrian you could go through for free. If you have a horse or a wagon you had to pay a toll.

Around here we call the thing across the road a toll bar but down south they call it a toll gate. Up here the gate is the thing we are walking on. We have Towngate and Kirkgate so the gate is the surface and not the barrier.

Page 17

This is a Table of Tolls to be taken at the bar. For every horse, mule or other beast drawing any wagon, cart, timber carriage or other carriage of a like de- scription whatever they may be called or known having the fellies (rim) of the wheel of the breadth of four and a half inches and less than six inches or hav- ing a deviation of more than a quarter of an inch on a flat surface, the sum of 4 pence and if the fellies of the wheels are more than six inches you pay only 3 pence. A wider wheel has a lower toll because it does less damage to the roads.

Victorian toll keepers are often widows with their children otherwise they would be starving because this was before we even had workhouses. She would have to go out on a cold wet night and have an argument with somebody as to how wide his wheels are. I imagine those women were as popular as traffic wardens are today.

It was very unpopular this toll business and there were riots. There were groups of guys who took it upon themselves to smash up the toll gates and they were known as the Sisters of Rebecca and they dressed up as ladies. So this lot are just smashing up private property and the Government doesn’t take a lot of interest until someone is killed. There’s a lady called Sarah Williams a Toll House Keeper down in Wales, she gets killed so they move in and the troops actually round up this mob. and transported them to Australia which probably suited them because there weren’t any toll pike roads in Australia at the time.

And we hear all about coaching. Late 1700s to about 1830 or 40, all these beautiful pictures on Christmas cards – doesn’t it look fun? If you were inside, it cost you the best part of a week’s wages just to travel from Hull to York. If you were on the top it was a little bit cheaper, but it was jolly cold, and if it was wet or you fell asleep and got hypothermia and fell off, it wouldn’t stop for you. Quite often the drivers were drunk; the coaches weren’t well-maintained, the wheels fell off; the horses bolted.

The Government said there really ought to be some markers on these Turn- pike roads, partly to show people where to go, direction and distance, partly though because if you were going any distance, how far can horses drag a coach. You actually changed your horses every ten to twelve miles at the Posting Inns. The horses went on down to the next and came back up on a later run with somebody else. And so the milestones showed the distances between the inns so that the rascally innkeepers couldn’t overcharge you. Good practical stuff.

Besides direction, distance and charging, you paid for your postage when it arrived, based on how far it had travelled.

Page 18 During World War II the Government made a directive saying the milestones and signposts had to be removed to baffle the Jerries. Now they did chip a few names off and there’s one in Ripponden opposite the Toll House Jewellery shop and you can see the names have been chipped off there. Most of them however, up here I suspect Yorkshire people would say if the Jerries come here we will give him a bloody nose, because a lot of ours were never re- moved.

Another really interesting character - Blind Jack of Knaresborough – he was blinded by smallpox when he was six, he was a very good musician and earned his keep going off with the Duke of Northumberland up for the Jacobite rebellion and on all sorts of other ventures, came back, eloped with a lady who was going to marry a rich gentleman, so it’s really worth looking into his life story. He did a bit of smuggling. He used to bring fish down from the coast in Scarborough and sell it in Leeds whilst it was still fresh. That’s quite a journey, isn’t it? Over land and it still takes quite a lot of time today to get up to Scar- borough from here, but he got it down probably with a few kegs of contraband underneath the fish, but he maintained that he could feel the surface through his horse’s hooves.

So when these Turnpike Trustees were asking who was going to build their roads, Jack said he would and he started to build a reputation for building road surfaces that he could feel what it was like. One of the first he built was the first Halifax Turnpike that went up along Lister Road behind Shibden Hall.

From the 1880s, most of the Turnpike trusts had gone broke and were wound up, but up here the West Riding County Council comes into operation and they decide that they will put new marker stones on all the roads and they are these cast iron things. About 600 were put up in the 1890s.

We do have interesting canal milestones. This one is at Hill Top at Cleckhea- ton. Its mate down at the bottom is very rusty with just two arms left. Some- body looks after this one but not the other one and if you have these arms remade in cast iron it can be £250 an arm.

You can look on Google Earth on our website and you can see all the mile- stones in the country displayed on pins there. So if you want to look where your local milestones are, you can actually find them on Google Earth on our website.

So you can look on our website, the Milestone Society, you can watch our videos on YouTube. You can find us on Facebook and you can follow up on Twitter at Stories in Stone. We work very hard to try and engage with the so- cial media with younger people.

And so that’s it from the Milestone Society.

Page 19 DNA CONNECTION: WALKER - JAGGER By Gary Muffley

My 3 rd great-grandfather William Jagger, born in 1781 in Southowram, was a genetic Walker. William received his surname from his unwed mother Mary Jagger (b. 1759). William’s father is unknown. However, William’s male-line descendant, my cousin Randy, has yDNA matches to multiple Walker- surnamed men. These men are in Walker Group 20 in this yDNA project: www.familytreedna.com/public/Walker%20DNA%20Project%20mtDNA% 20Results/default.aspx?section=yresults In Group 20, Kit # 352904 is from a probable descendant of Richard Walker, born 1555 in Birstall Parish. The man tested, and his brother, still live in that area, over 4 ½ centuries later. Any de- scendant of Walker of the Liversedge, Cleckheaton, and/or Birstall vicinity might be our genetic kin, as would some Jagger people of Southowram origin. Randy has a 59 of 67 STR (Short Tandem Repeats) yDNA markers match with the descendant of Richard Walker. Several men in Walker yDNA Group 20 live in America, and were unaware of a West Yorkshire connection until this latest data was available. Some West Yorkshire Walker men (not in Group 20) have shown yDNA haplogroups altogether unrelated to our line of interest.

William and Martha Wilkinson Jagger were the Most Recent Common Ances- tors for my cousin Chris and myself. Chris and I have an autosomal DNA (atDNA) match. Our shared chromosomal segments may have some trace from the unknown father of William, but probably not much further back in time, because of the limited generational reach of autosomal DNA. Chris’ an- cestor Elizabeth Jagger Dean was a sister of my ancestor John Jagger. Both were among the many children of William and Martha. According to Family Tree DNA calculations, Chris and I have a total of 48.62 centiMorgans of shared chromosomal segments, consistent with MRCAs at the level of 3 rd great-grandparents, thus providing genetic verification of our documented an- cestry. That is important. I have several examples where the documentation got it wrong, but genetic genealogy helped to correct the big picture. Auto- somal DNA testing is both informative and inexpensive, a major bargain in genetic genealogy. However, it is important to choose a testing company which provides links to matches, and not just ethnic admixture.

Chris’ autosomal DNA (atDNA) ethnic admixture shows some Scandinavian, despite his apparently all-British Isles heritage. Randy’s yDNA Haplogroup is I1-M253, a type particularly found in Scandinavia. However, analysis of values on key markers on Randy’s yDNA shows consistency with Clan AABA at www.goggo.com/terry/HaplogroupI1/ perhaps developed in Britain from a yDNA type which may have come from Scandinavia in Mesolithic times.

My own atDNA ethnic admixture may have a small Walker Scandinavian com- ponent, but my overall admixture picture is complicated by Swedish ancestry from my mother. To see what can be done with atDNA, go to

Page 20 www.gedmatch.com establish a free log-in, and look at my atDNA ID# F170106. The choices include searches for my genetic matches, multiple- persons comparisons, several ethnic admixture models, and comparisons with ancient DNA (samples from archaeological digs). I particularly like the Euro- genes K9b model, which adequately represents my tiny percentage of known Native American ancestry. This model is reportedly similar to National Geo- graphic Geno 2.0.

Feel free to contact me with comments or questions at GaryMuf- [email protected] Further DNA success stories may be found in my ancestral blogs, most being accessible from http://jaggerline.blogspot.com/ which site has periodic updates on the West Yorkshire Walker-Jagger research.

Gary Muffley CFHS Member 2580

Annual Audit Report April 2015

This is first time that such an audit has been carried out within the Calderdale Family History Society. As the Society is increasingly dependent on the use of computers for its day to day running, there has been a necessity to investigate, record and assess whether the databases held and the computer systems currently operated by all Society Officers are adequately supported by up to date software and hardware. These computer systems cover the areas of So- ciety Control Systems (including accounts, the Membership database, Scriv- ener production and website maintenance); Communications (including emails and email accounts, Minutes of meetings and talk transcriptions); the Re- search Room Database and Access Systems; and Sales Data and Systems (including the transcription index and publications).

In general, the audit has indicated that Officers using their own personal prop- erty are working with computer hardware purchased within the past five years and software which is up to date or still relatively practicable. However, one area for concern is the Research Room, which is directly under Society control and supported by items of computer hardware purchased by the Society ten years ago. As a result, an allowance of £950 has been made in this year’s Budget for the purchase of a new computer and supporting software for the Research Room. It has also been identified that other software used in main- taining the Research Room databases is no longer viable and a suitable re- placement will need to be sourced in the coming year.

One major concern and vital to safeguarding the integrity of the Society’s com- puter systems is to ensure there is adequate back up for all Officers. At pre- sent, most Officers are receiving support from one individual and in some cases there is no support at all. This matter needs to be addressed in the fore- seeable future .

Page 21 Church attendance in Wakefield and Halifax in 1851. By Alice Kingma Lee

Did our ancestors go to church, or not? If they went, was it a matter of social class and of where they lived? To which churches did the various classes go?

The answers to these questions can be found in the 1851 Religious Census of England and Wales. A popular abridgement was put on sale in 1854, attrac- tively priced at one shilling. Here we take a look at some statistics from the census and the comments by Horace Mann, the author. [1]

The middle-classes

Most middle and upper-class people in towns and countryside went to church in England in 1851. It was considered a social duty and also an important part of social life. See and be seen. The vast majority of these middle-classes be- longed to the Church of England, but many upcoming tradesmen from humble Non-Conformist backgrounds were rising to positions of consequence. Often these were from the sect known as the Independents, also called the Congre- gationalists. Edward Baines Senior, for example, was an Independent and became a man of consequence as editor of the newspaper the Leeds Mercury . [2].

The working-classes

The majority of working-class people in the countryside went to church. There was an established social order in rural England that had not changed for over 1000 years. The lord of the manor may have changed from a Saxon lord to a Norman lord after 1066, but, the hierarchical order of lord, tenant farmer and peasants had remained the same, with fixed expectations. In a small commu- nity, there were expected norms and going to church was one of them.

Large industrial towns and cities were completely new phenomena which cre- ated their own new social order. The Industrial Revolution had begun in ear- nest in the late 1700's and the movement of poor agricultural workers into the towns in search of work in factories had snowballed so fast that the estab- lished social norms had been turned on their head.

People were no longer living in a strict social order. They did not know their neighbours. They lived in overcrowded conditions, worked incredibly long hours and lived in a social scrabble for the basics that made the old norms completely irrelevant.

Most of the working poor in towns did not go to church, but if they did, they favoured the dissenting churches, especially those composed entirely of work- ing-class congregations [1] Page 94.

Page 22

Why didn't the urban working-classes go to church?

The Religious Census of 1851 asks this question and then answers its own question quite succinctly [1] Page 94. The author, Horace Mann, suggests that there were four reasons. The first was that the church was socially segregated and in short, the working man did not want to socialise with his masters and be put down socially on his day off. Mann suggests that the establishment of solely working-class congregations was a good idea.

“In several places too, among Dissenters, special services in halls and lectures are being held, intended wholly for the working class; and the success of such proceedings seems to prove that multitudes will readily frequent such places, where of course there is a total absence of all class distinction, who would never enter the exclusive-looking chapel.” [1] Page 94.

He had a point.

The second reason was that the so-called Christians with money were not doing enough to alleviate the distress of the poor. This is a very good point.

It is utterly fantastic to think that the mill and mine owners exploited their work- ers like slaves or animals and then went to church on Sunday and were holier than thou. Perhaps that is what our forebears also thought. God surely was favouring the rich and not the poor, so why bother?

Edward Baines, the dissenter and newspaper proprietor, campaigned against the Ten Hour Bill which sought to regulate working hours for the poor. He agreed that children's hours should be limited to 10 hours a day, but not adults.

“There are the strongest possible objections to any interference between the master and the workman.”

According to the Baptist Quarterly [2], (there is no date on this; frustratingly)

“such an outlook helped to alienate prosperous Dissenters from the working people and Baines lost a good deal of the influence that he had gained amongst poorer inhabitants by the support that he gave to factory owners on these issues.”

Hardly surprising.

Those philanthropists who instigated the largest schemes to help the poor were not associated with the church, either. The census points out, however,

Page 23 that it was vicars who were at the forefront of the majority of new small scale attempts to help.

Mann’s third reason was mistrust of the motives of the ministers. The poor seeing ministers as self-seeking, offering religious succour just to raise the congregation numbers and keep their jobs. This seems rather cynical, but maybe that is how it was viewed by some.

The fourth reason was very salient; that the over-crowded conditions were so bad that there was no point in trying to have better ideals or raise yourself up; high ideals could not realistically be met with a family of 10 living in a one- room slum.

“Better dwellings, therefore, for the labouring classes are suggested as a most essential aid and introduction to the labours of the Christian agent.” [1] Page 95.

Who did go to church then?

By the time of the Religious Census on Sunday 30 March 1851, the population of England was 17, 927,609 [1] Page 57. The powers that be were worried that the heaving, heathen masses were headed for eternal damnation because the population had surged to the new industrial centres faster than the Church of England could build churches there.

They devised the religious census of 1851 not just to count how many people went to church, but to see where new churches were needed. They wanted a breakdown of the whole population, into those able and those not able to go to church.

They wanted to know...

Who was able to go?

The assumption was that people ought go to church if there was a space avail- able, even if Mann considered that… “very many persons believe their duties to Sabbath attendance adequately discharged by one attendance....but such an extent of accommodation should be furnished that would utterly exclude any excuse for non-attendance' “ [1] Page59.

The excuses for non-attendance did not include freedom to do what you liked on your one day off a week from a 16 hour a day job that barely gave you enough money to rent one room for your family of 10; which is odd, as he has already given poverty as a reason for not going.

Page 24 A valid 'excuse' might be old age, infancy, or heaven forbid, actually working on the day of rest! Three million were thought to be children too young to rea- sonably attend church services. One million were considered to be too infirm or ill. [1] Page 58. Given our knowledge of the early age of death and the terri- ble state of public sanitation and public health, that figure seems low.

'Household duties' was a valid reason for non-attendance. It may seem odd that they didn't just lock the door and go, but, it was thought reasonable to suppose that one person for every household in England might be absent from church for this reason.

With the amount of people in the process of dying or giving birth at any one time, the household duties thing does start to make sense, although, I wonder why they wouldn't go to the evening service when the others came back. Any- way, this reason removes a whopping 3,398,039 people from the total popula- tion available for going to church.

This, with a vague estimate for those heathens working on a Sunday in public transport (reputed to be 6,000 men in London alone) and Sunday traders who could not go, left an available population of 10,609,013.[1] Page 59.

Something that was also relevant to the working classes was the number of free seats in church. Even in dissenting churches, the purchasing of seats at the front of the church by the wealthy was the main way that the churches ex- tracted money from their congregations, unlike today, when congregations give money via the offering at the end of the service. In short, if only the rub- bish seats were left and everyone there could see that you were in them, then it was embarrassing and humiliating to attend church in England and Wales.

Religious distribution

It may surprise you to know that in England and Wales in 1851 there were 35 different religious sects, including C of E [1] Page 7.

Twenty seven of these were said to be 'native' and nine 'foreign'. Within the foreign category, were Jews.[1] Jews had been in England for at least 1000 years, but were still outside the norm. Calvin and Luther were hardly English and their doctrines had only come across from Europe a few hundred years before, but, they were counted as 'native' to England and Wales.

The focus of the Religious Census was actually the surge in population to- wards the major industrial centres; London, Lancashire, Cheshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, but while they were at it, they surveyed the whole of England and Wales.

Page 25 Church of England v Non Conformists

Having got it into their heads that what the working poor needed was a place at a church on Sunday, the Establishment were determined to build enough churches in the right places. These were to be Church of England of course. The concern of the Establishment was that the C of E churches were now in the wrong places and if they didn't get in quickly, the Non-Conformists would snap up all of the labouring classes for their own and turn them against the secure social order in which the rich prospered. We must remember that in 1851, the French Revolution was not too distant a memory. What the dominant hegemony have always feared the most was dissent and revolution from the working classes.

West Riding

What about the West Riding then? In 1831, there were 287 places of worship in the West Riding. By 1851, there were 556. This actually outstripped the increase in population; that being 984,609 in 1831 and 1,325,495 twenty years later. [1]

So why were the Establishment worried?

Too many Non-Conformists. The statistics for the numbers of people who at- tended a church service on the 30th of March 1851 show starkly the prefer- ences of the labouring classes, although as we shall see, there were large differences in the preferences for particular sects within the county. As I am interested particularly the Manor of Wakefield, I looked first at Wakefield and Halifax.

Wakefield

Wakefield at the start of the 19th century was a wealthy cloth and grain dealing centre. As the century progressed, more coal mines were dug and steam mills were built. At the same time, the rural economy took a nosedive and prices rocketed, attracting immigrants from the countryside who could not get work elsewhere. [2]

In 1801, Wakefield had about 8,000 inhabitants, according to http:// freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~petyt/wakefieldhistory.htm By 1851, there were 22,065, so the population had not quite tripled in 50 years.

In 1851, from a population of 22,065 [1] Page 131, in Wakefield Borough, 7,784 attended a C of E service and 7,453 one of the Non-Conformist ser- vices. The population plateaued at this stage. In 1871, it was 22,173, almost

Page 26 identical to that of 1851. That means that a lot of people were dying, as people were still moving to the area.

Sunday school

Non-Conformist churches used their buildings for Sunday school in the after- noons [1] Page 78 and had church services in the morning and evening. Eve- ning services were often very well attended.

The totals given on the census for afternoon services include children at Sun- day school, who may not also have attended a church service. For poor chil- dren, Sunday school was the only form of education and the only chance to learn to read and write, so attendance was high.

It is a great shame that we do not have the Sunday school figures given sepa- rately, but, the figures shown for Non-Conformist church attendance in the afternoons being far lower than the morning and evening services, we can reasonably presume these to be the Sunday Schools or to include Sunday schools.

The guide at the beginning of the census says that if figures were returned exclusively saying 'Sunday school' for the afternoon sittings, they were disre- garded. Rather odd; but they wanted to record attendance at a church service. If a Sunday school was going on and there was also a church service in the building, then the Sunday school was included.

In Wakefield, a total of 15,237 attended church on census day, so allowing for babes in arms, those working on the Sunday and invalids staying away, a very high proportion of all of the 22,065 people in Wakefield of all social classes went to church.

I think this was because of the number of free seats in Wakefield's dissenting churches. In 1851 it was significant; 3,825 out of 5,502 seats in dissenting congregations were free.

Halifax

If we compare Wakefield to Halifax [1] Page 120, not far away in the same county, we see that out of a population of 33,582 in 1851, only 13,853 people went to church on that day. The population is significantly larger than Wake- field, by 10,000 people, but the church going attendance is smaller by 2,000. 5,650 attended C of E and 8,258 Non-Conformist churches.

Halifax town was significantly larger than Wakefield, but in Halifax, there are more people going to dissenting churches than to the C of E and by 1851 the churches of Halifax were not nearly keeping up with the influx of workers.

Page 27 In 1764, there were 1,272 people in Halifax town. In 1802, there were 8,886, in 1831 15,382 and by 1851, 33,000. There it is. The population had more than quadrupled in 50 years, far more than Wakefield and it had doubled in the 20 years from 1831 to 1851. Staggering. The number of Non-Conformist seats available free in Halifax in 1851 was 1,078 out of a total of 4,303. This is only a third of the number of free seats in Wakefield and I think this is the reason why so few working class people went to church in Halifax.

Study of the 1851 religious census gives a fascinating insight into what our ancestors did. There are detailed lists for all the major towns, so you can get detailed comparisons of social behaviour in each place. What is most interest- ing is going deeper into it; all the better to understand what life was like and why our ancestors made the choices that they did.

Alice Kingma Lee (2014).

References [1] ‘Religious Worship in England and Wales,’ 1851, by Horace Mann. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Commissioners% 27_churches_in_Yorkshire0

[2]. ‘Dissent in Urban Yorkshire 1800-1850’ R. W. Ram, Baptist Quarterly, (no date) http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/bq/22-1_003.pdf

Calderdale FHS Forum.

Several years ago, when I retired, I decided to research my family tree. Many of my older relatives had passed on, also on my wife’s side, they had also sadly gone in the same direction.

After going through the routine of B.M.D. I obtained a large amount of certifi- cates on both sides. But when it came to searching pre 1837,the parish regis- ters became a bit difficult.

My own family the Marstons I thought came from Devon as I was born there in 1936. However I soon found out that my father was born in Gibraltar, his father was a soldier on service out there, but he died shortly after my father’s birth.

Years later living in the Warwickshire area I learnt that the Marstons were from Nuneaton, Warwickshire.

Page 28

My wife was born in Coventry, her mother, born in Middlesbrough in 1894 proved to be the most interesting. This became my favourite search. Born Clara Elizabeth Howell, her parents lived in Halifax; they were in the Carriage Proprietors' business.

They were quite a large family, so Clara had a few brothers and sisters, in trying to document Clara’s life I tried to search her relatives. I have never traced any. I then decided to look for a family history society, near to Halifax. I joined the Calderdale fhs, hoping that I may find some Howells doing their family history.

Although the forum is in its early stages I think that when more members start to use it we will benefit. The Forum is well read; I have had a few emails and some good leads from the Forum. The Howell’s carriage was in a bad accident in Halifax in 1866. I received a reply from the Forum giving me details and contact at Leeds Library. They hold old copies of newspapers and will do a search. I got in touch and have received 2 copies of reports .

I have found that the Calderdale fhs Forum facility is very well designed, any problems are soon sorted and I look forward to using it, and look to help its users where I can.

The Calderdale fhs Forum is on the Society website. www.cfhsweb.com Log in as a member using your username & password. Click members area on bar at top of page. Click Forum from drop down menu. Select category, Click Research to make a topic or enquiry about family history. Click New Topic (highlighted in blue) Type and post.

Graham Marston. (3629)

St Matthew's Churchyard Lightcliffe - Burial ground.

(It wasn't until our Society developed a contact with The Friends of St. Mat- thews Churchyard, that we realised that there are 2 parallel sets of burial re- cords in existence for that church. The official church register records have been published by us on a CD for St. Matthews Lightcliffe. However, it ap- pears that there are a further set of records that refer to the old burial ground across the road from the church. We are working with Ian Philp of "The Friends" to compile these & to update our records & the relevant CD so that they contain all the records available.)

Page 29

St Matthew's Churchyard is situated on Wakefield Road opposite to the Sun Inn. It is about 400 m to the east of St Matthew's parish church.

There are records of a church building on the site from 1530 followed by East- field Chapel and then in 1775 by the church of which only the tower now stands. The church itself was demolished in the 1970s and the iconic tower is now owned and maintained by The Friends of Friendless Churches, a national charity based in London. Its mason, William Mallinson, is buried close by.

The churchyard is divided, like Gaul, into three parts. The front part nearest to Wakefield Road is the oldest and to a large extent has not been used since about 1870. It is now "closed" and is maintained by Calderdale Council. Only burials in family plots were allowed after its closure.

The central part was consecrated in 1867 and was used from then until about 1950 although there are some burials after that. The final part is the open and actively used burial ground at the north of the site.

The Friends of St Matthew's Churchyard was formed in late 2012 after an ap- peal for volunteers by Angela Monaghan. We are a community group working in partnership with the PCC at St Matthew's. We faced a daunting task with

Page 30 much of the middle ground completely overgrown with little sign of pathways, the odd headstone poking out of rose bay willow herb and brambles – the lat- ter something of an irony as in the early middle ages, apparently, brambles were planted near graves to keep sheep away!

Although the burial records don't start until the first decade of the 18 th century, there are ledger stones (the flat ones that cover a grave) dating from 1674 onwards. In the old part, where graves are marked, it is with millstone grit ledger stones together with a handful of chest tombs – we've had to explain to some passers-by that the bodies were underground and not in these tomb chests. Upright headstones don't appear in our churchyard until the middle of the 19 th century. Nor does “exotic” material such as granite and marble appear until a railway line came close to Lightcliffe in the middle of C19 to allow these materials to be brought in at a reasonable price – for some.

The old (closed) burial ground is nearest to Wakefield Road and surrounds the site of the former church. There was no plan for the burials and the records do not give a plot number – probably because in the early days everyone locally knew who was buried where. We have now developed a plan for those graves where there is still physical evidence and this is linked to our burial record for the period. We know that there are other ledger stones in this area but they are now several inches under turf. Over time a few of these will be partially uncovered, photographed, added to the plan and re-covered.

The reason that we know that there are at least 30 more ledger stones in this part of the churchyard is that they were legible in 1929 when Arthur Blackburn – a Wibsey resident – visited and wrote down many of the inscriptions. Over 900 and he did this in around 100 other churchyards in West Yorkshire! Not surprisingly he did miss a few and a further 30 have been added to his re- cords. Considering the size of the task, he was remarkably accurate. There are mistakes on some but often because individual numbers or characters were difficult to read. He also had hard views on the spelling of some sur- names for example all our Rastricks are Raistricks whatever is written on the memorial stone but he is forgiven these. Without him, much family detail would be missing especially on the ledger stones now under grass. His records, for St Matthew's churchyard, are contained in two bound ledgers in the parish church with copies at Bradford Central Library. We have also scanned them to make them more easily accessible and ready for transcription.

The central part, which was heavily overgrown, is now much clearer and we know where all existing memorial stones are. This area was laid out to a matrix plan and grave plots are recorded against most names in the parish records. We are in the process of clearing all of these, photographing and recording the information and making it all available with a time scale of around a further year. (we are now able to help enquiries from locally and much further afield and do so on a fairly frequent basis.)

Page 31 The new burial ground, which is still in use, was consecrated in the mid 1930s and, with few burials mainly from 1960 onwards, is easier to view.

So far The Friends have raised funding through grants and two successful concerts and have made significant steps towards tidying the churchyard. It looks much better in late winter and early spring before growth again takes over. We have removed many small trees that have self seeded, raised the crowns on some larger trees and cut down much of the undergrowth. We've begun to encourage wild life with bug hotels, log piles and bird boxes and in- volved local schools and the community in bat watches and bird box making.

The visible memorials in the closed part of the yard have been cleaned so that they can be read and recorded and this will be done again this summer so that they can be photographed.

We recently bid for Heritage Lottery Funding and have been successful. This will allow us, over two years, to restore the historical and environmental heri- tage. We will provide a noticeboard near the Wakefield Road entrance for no- tices on behalf of Friends, the parish and local community. Hopefully there will be seating on the site of the old nave where we think Ann Walker – Ann Lister's companion - was buried.

Working with the Council, we hope to turn a number of headstones which were dropped on their faces in the 1990s (for H&S reasons) so that they can be read and to restore, using some of our HLF grant, some fallen monuments. Our first priority will be for memorials to the dead of WW1, an example is shown here propped up by scaffolding and recording the deaths of two Berry sons killed in France.

Page 32 We are rapidly establishing the relevant records which will include the burial data from parish records (and we are very grateful for the transcription work that your Society had already done), Blackburn Register of Monumental In- scriptions (BRMI), plans of all known burial plots and a photographic record of all memorials. We are also developing an annotated version of the records which add details from the memorial stones to the formal burial records as there is often interesting additional family relationship information. Copies of most of our material is available in the family history room at Brighouse Li- brary.

Walking round any churchyard is a fascinating experience, at least for me. It is amazing what information is stored there. In a recent walk round the cemetery near Menai Bridge, all of the headstones were made of slate, it was surprising to see where the dead had lived – down to the house number and street name! However you can sometimes get a more detailed overview when read- ing the inscriptions in the comfort of your own home. Using BRMI for Lightcliffe the expected number of infant deaths is very clear but, perhaps surprisingly, the number of folk who died in their 80s or even 90s. Occupations are fairly rare but we have 6 priests, 3 headmasters, several landlords, vets, a black- smith, coopers, weavers and a number of soldiers. We now have 22 soldiers who died in WW1, some in a CWG, some buried with their families (including 3 recording 2 sons lost) and others remembered here but buried in France, in Flanders, Ypres and German West Africa. We also have 3 from the Crimean War, an officer who survived and two who died there including one who died at Scutari shortly after Florence Nightingale took over the hospital. The earliest soldier recorded is Joshua Guest who was in charge of the successful defence of Edinburgh Castle at the time of the Jacobite Rebellion. His family tomb is near to the main path into the churchyard and has a memorial high on a side wall in Westminster Abbey (shown here).

Page 33 There are some interesting epithets throughout the churchyard including refer- ence to an “indulgent father” which might have been a criticism in the Victorian era. We have a blacksmith “My anvil and hammer lie declined, my bellows too have lost their wind. My fire's extinguished and my forge decayed and in the dust my vice is laid. My coals are spent, my iron's gone. Last nail I drove, my work is done.”

A good number refer to illness and impending death: “A pale consumption gave the fatal blow. The stroke was certain but the effect was slow. 1785” and “Long in this world I've been in pain and all physicians were in vain till Christ, in mercy, gave me rest and called me hence where I am blest.”

Some are warnings: “Behold my friend and cast an eye Then go thy way, pre- pare to die, Repent with speed, make no delay I, in my prime, was called away. 1851” (He was 73...some prime!) and “ I little thought when I left home, my race was so near run. But ah alas death called me home. I never did return.”

Many reflect on the shortness of life with high infant mortality: “Ah, not in cru- elty, not in wrath, the reaper came that day, 'twas an angel visited this green earth and took the flower away.” or “An angel visited the green earth and took the flower away: 14 months.”

One of the saddest for me refers to poor Joanna who died in 1883 just 20 years old: “She longed to go home, she was weary here, She wrestled with sin for many a year, And if she had stayed she must still wrestle on, For the flesh would not rest till the spirit had gone.”

Often we get information about where people came from or where they are buried if not in Lightcliffe. The detail shows a surprisingly wide area in both cases. From northern Scotland and Cumbria, from the other side of the Penni- nes to Gomersall, Southowram, Norwood Green and other places closer to home. [apparently it was cheaper to be buried here than in St Anne's Southowram or St John's at Coley.] In more detail we can trace the family his- tory of the larger houses in the area such as Smith House and German House. We also have dedications to people who have lived locally and are buried far away and this includes one woman, twice widowed here who is buried in Ak- ron, Ohio home of Bridgestone Tires and a famous golf tournament.

Until we are able to make all of our records available on line, anyone looking for family information about burials at St Matthew's should contact Ian Philp at [email protected] who will do his best to help.

Page 34 Members' Interests & E-mail addresses.

About 18 months ago, we reviewed what personal details of members were made available to other members & tightened up our processes, to comply with the Data Protection Act.

At a recent meeting of the Yorkshire Group of FHSs, which 2 of your commit- tee attend, there was some concern expressed about Societies making E-Mail addresses of members available to others, on the internet.

As a result, we have looked at this again & strengthened the wording on some of our documents, particularly those that go out to new members. The result is that the following paragraph has been added to all documents on the subject of "Members' Interests" :-

Members using this facility should understand that their E-Mail ad- dresses will be made available to other Society members in this "Members' Only" section of the Society website.

We know that the subject of personal data is a sensitive one & we are very careful to ensure that all members' personal details are kept secure. How- ever, to use the Members' Interests system in a practical way, our members have to be able to contact each other. Our recent changes ensure that this must be done by E-Mail & so we only make E-mail addresses available against a member's name & no other detail. And, even then, this is only shown for a member who wishes to use the Members' Interests facility & any other member who wishes to view these has to be a registered Society mem- ber on our secure website.

I am writing this item, at the request of our Chairman, because we want all our members to be perfectly clear what personal information is made available to others, where it is so done & under what conditions.

If anyone has any concerns about this, please contact me, by E-mail at sys- [email protected] or ring me on 01484-718576.

Peter Lord - Systems Coordinator.

Page 35

Page 36

Page 37 Contributed by Mike Mansley

Why is it that we never think of researching our family history until we are getting on in years, and our parents and grandpar- ents, who knew a lot of it, are dead?

Of course, our children are not interested in our stories of by- gone years. They will regret it - just wait!

Page 38 Improved search & data facilities for Members.

You may remember reading in the March edition of the Scrivener that we have introduced a free search facility for members via the Transcription Index on the Society website www.cfhsweb.com

We also referred to this in an article in the June edition whilst talking about the new publication for Stoney Royd Cemetery burial transcriptions.

Now, thanks to the efforts of our Webmaster, Keith Pitchforth, we have im- proved the methods to allow you to get free searched information from our Search Coordinator. At the same time, we realised that many of you may not have experienced the use of the information that we publish on CD (and, increasingly, as a downloadable system) because your weren't sure how to use it. So we have put a sample system on our website, so that you can have a look at it.

The details of these 2 initiatives are :-

Improved Search Facility.

On the Society website www.cfhsweb.com, You need to log on with your User- name & password, as a member, and then go to the menu tab "Research/ Transcription Index". There, you can search for any name that interests you & get the results displayed to you - an example below :-

Page 39 If you find an entry for which you would like the full details, "click" on the "Record Details" entry (last column on the screen) & a fresh display will be shown

All you need to do then is to "click" on the button "Send Mail" and a request for that item will be sent to our Search Coordinator.

You will have a copy of the request E-Mailed to you &, within the next few days, our Search Coordinator will E-Mail the full transcribed results for that item to you. This will come as an attachment to the E-Mail, in .pdf format, looking like this

This method of obtaining search information from our databases is absolutely free, and is only available to members of our Society. Consequently, you need to be logged on with your Society Username to be able to do this.

Page 40 Sample Publication.

On our website, "click" on the menu item "Publications/Sample Publication" and you will be shown a screen explaining about how to look at a typical publi- cation from our Society. The beauty of the design is that, once you become familiar with navigating around one publication, you can handle any other, as they are all designed in the same way.

If you "click" on the link on the last line of the screen displayed, you will be taken into a sample publication which looks exactly like the content of one of our CDs or "downloads".

The only difference between this & the "real thing" is that the data displayed has been reduced so that only the 1st few pages of each type of data are dis- played. In addition, this sample does not have "Bookmarks" which the full system has.

You can access this via most types of equipment. It works best on a PC or MAC and perfectly adequately on a tablet. If you access it via a mobile phone, it works, but the downloading of the data is quite slow &, to be frank, the screen is too small to be able to view it all satisfactorily.

The only other limitation is that, on a tablet, you are unable to get the facility to "scroll" from page to page. However, on the CD or download, this facility works fine.

I hope that you will find these extra tools easy to use & that you will take ad- vantage of the benefits of your membership that these bring.

Peter Lord - Project Coordinator.

Officers’ email addresses

I note that on the Syllabus Card, email addresses are given as

.co.uk

Whereas in the Scrivener they are given as

.com

If you don’t seem to be getting through with one, try the other! We should get them rationalised in the end!

Editor

Page 41

New Members’ Interests

Surname Location County Known Know n Wanted Wanted Code From To From To AKROYD STAINLAND, ELLAND YKS 1800 1950 1600 2000 3661 ARMITAGE HUDDERSFIELD WRY 1871 Now Start 1871 1262 BRIER SOUTHOWRAM, WRY 1799 1950 Start Now 3680 SKIRCOAT, SOWERBY BRIDGE GOODALL HALIFAX WRY 1830 Now 1750 1900 2953 GRAYSHON LIVERSEDGE, ELLAND YKS 1800 1950 1600 2000 3661 HALL HALIFAX WRY 1850 Now 1103 ROTHERY HALIFAX WRY 1600 1841 2580 SINGLETON RISHWORTH, KING CROSS WRY 1820 1850 3680

TAYLOR STAINLAND, GREETLAND, WRY Start Now Start Now 3672 ELLAND WALKER SOUTHOWRAM WRY Start 1861 2580 WILSON HUDDRSFIELD WRY 1840 Now Start 1840 1262

New MI address list

3661, Mr D. Akroyd, [email protected] 3672, Mr S R, Taylor, [email protected] 3680, Mrs J, Smith, [email protected] 1103, Mrs. J., Oliver, [email protected] 2580, Dr.G.L., Muffley, [email protected] 2953, Ms.P.J., Denham, [email protected] 1262, Mr.J.M., Hardcastle, [email protected]

Page 42 HUDDERSFIELD & DISTRICT FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY The Root Cellar THE PLACE TO FIND YOUR ANCESTORS 35 Greens End Road, Meltham, Holmfirth HD9 5NW

We are Open Morning Afternoon Evening (1 st & 3 rd Th) Monday: 2 pm to 4.30 pm Tuesday: 2 pm to 4.30 pm Wednesday: 10 am to 12.30 pm 2 pm to 4.30 pm Thursday: 2 pm to 4.30 pm 7.30 pm to 10 pm (alt ) Saturday: 2 pm to 4.30 pm

No appointment necessary, just come along and carry out your research, seek ad- vice, explore our resources and speak to people with similar interests. Ring the Root Cellar 01484 859229 for information, or to make a booking. Booking is not essential but is recommended, especially if you are travelling a distance and

CALDERDALE FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY

2015 AUTUMN MEETINGS ~ Thursdays 7:30pm.

At The Shibden Room, North Bridge Leisure Centre

13th September Annual Day trip ~ to be arranged

24th September Allan Stuttard ~ ‘Did I see Marilyn’ (His time in the Duke of Wellington’s regi- ment serving in Korea)

22nd October Pat Osborne ~ ‘Queen Victoria - some surprising and lesser known facts.’

26th November Ruth Nettleton ~ ‘The Life of Peter Nettleton, her ancestor.’ (He emigrated to Melbourne Australia in 1848)

Page 43 USEFUL CONTACTS AND SOURCES FOR RESEARCHING WEST YORKSHIRE ANCESTORS

West Yorkshire Archive Service ~ www.archives.wyjs.org.uk (This can be a good place to start to access the West Yorkshire Archive Catalogue)

Calderdale District Archives, (Registers, BTs, Census, etc. etc.) Calderdale Central Library, Northgate House, Northgate, Hailfax HXI IUN Tel: +44 (0) 1422 392636 e-mail [email protected]

WYAS Headquarters, Newstead Road, Wakefield WFI 2DE (Registers, WRiding Regis- try of Deeds, Manorial Records etc.) Tel: +44 (0) 1924 305980 email : [email protected]

The Borthwick Institute ~ www.york.ac.uk/inst/bihr/ (Peculiar + PCY wills, BT's etc.) University of York, Heslington, YORK YO10 5DD Tel: +44 (0) 1904 321166 email ~ link on website

Calderdale Central Reference Library (address as above) Tel: +44 (0) 1422 392631 e- mail [email protected] ( local studies collection, newspapers, maps, trade directories, IGI, GRO indexes, census and parish register fiche, on-line Familysearch and Ancestry; research service offered).

Weaver to Web ~ www.calderdale.gov.uk/wtw/ The council maintains a website with a miscellany of information from the archives ( a wide range of photos, maps, census re- turns, parish registers, poll books, wills , etc., have been digitised to view online).

Malcolm Bull’s Calderdale Companion ~ http://www.calderdalecompanion.co.uk (Large collection of trivia, miscellaneous facts of people and places and other bits of local history about Halifax and Calderdale).

All the Parish records transcribed by the Society are available to search (for a fee) on FindMyPast.co.uk (In addition there are many other records available to search)

West Yorkshire Parish Registers have been put online (for a fee) by the West Yorkshire Archives Service which can be accessed on Ancestry.co.uk . ( Again, many other useful records, for a fee) www.familysearch.org (Thousands of records for free including the IGI and some census data). LDS Family History Centres are invaluable for 'distance research'. Check local telephone directories.

The National Archives ~ www.nationalarchives.gov.uk (a wealth of data arising from public records, including BMD’s, census and much much more). Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU Tel: +44 (0) 20 8876 www.direct.gov.uk/gro is the website of the general register office for everything con- cerning civil registration and to order certificates.

Consider subscribing to a periodical such as Family Tree Magazine or BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine. Online sites such as GenesReunited and LostCousins may help you find relatives researching the same family.

Page 44 LOCAL FAMILY HISTORY FAIRS etc Forthcoming Events of Interest :-

Great War Centenary Talks at Bankfield Museum, Halifax. museums.calderdale.gov.uk or phone 01422 352334

Huddersfield & District Family History Society Family & Local History Fair At Cathedral House, St Thomas’ Road, Huddersfield HD1 3LG Saturday 14th November 2015, 10.00 am - 4.00pm

Thurs/Sat 7/9th April 2016—Who Do You Think You Are Exhibition NEC Birmingham

There is a useful list of family history fairs around the country at:- http://www.familytreefolk.co.uk/page_10898.html

View our website at www.cfhsweb.com

and visit

Calderdale Family History Society’s

RESEARCH ROOM

Brighouse Library Rydings Park, Halifax Rd., Brighouse, HD6 2AF

Tuesdays 1:30pm to 4:30pm & Thursdays 10:00am to 1:00pm

Open to both Members & Non-Members

Facilities include :- • Searchable information on 4 computers. • Fiches for all Calderdale C of E churches. • 6 Internet terminals, with access to Ancestry.com (Note —now increased from original 4 terminals) • Wide range of books, journals, cuttings, etc.

For more information and bookings ring 07952-211986 during the hours given above.

Page 45 Calderdale Family History Society Incorporating Halifax and District

Officers and Co-ordinators of the Society

Officer and Name, Address and E-mail Tel. No.

President Mr. Barrie Crossley, 9, Victoria Terr., Delph Hill Road, Halifax, HX2 7ED e-mail - [email protected] 01422-366931

Chairman Mr. Clifford Drake, 22, Well Grove, Hove Edge, Brighouse, HD6 2LT e-mail - [email protected] 01484-714311

Secretary Mrs. Margaret Smith, 4 Rawson Avenue, Halifax, HX3 0JP e-mail - [email protected] 01422 -345164 Treasurer Mr. Peter Lord, 288 Halifax Road, Hove Edge, Brighouse, HD6 2PB e-mail - [email protected] 01484-718576

Membership Secretary Mrs. Susan Clarke, 33, Cumberland Ave., Fixby, Huddersfield, HD2 2JJ e-mail - [email protected] 01484–304426

Publications Officer (sales of books, CDs, etc.) Mrs. Joan Drake, 22, Well Grove, Hove Edge, Brighouse, HD6 2LT e-mail - [email protected] 01484-714311

Editor ~ Scrivener (for submission of articles, letters, etc.) Mrs.Frances Stubbs, Beech Trees, Hollybush Close, Potten End, Berkhamsted, HP4 2SN e-mail - [email protected] 01442-871847

Enquiry Service Co-ordinator (for research queries and search requests) Mrs. Susan Lord 288 Halifax Road, Hove Edge, Brighouse, HD6 2PB e-mail - [email protected] 01484 718576

Research Room Co-ordinator (for information about room at The Rydings) Vacant e-mail [email protected]

[RR Bookings and Information Tues pm/Thurs am 07952-211986]

Page 46

Officer and Name, Address and E-mail Tel. No.

Projects Co-ordinator Mr. Peter Lord, 288 Halifax Road, Hove Edge, Brighouse, HD6 2PB e-mail - [email protected] 01484 718576

Webmaster Mr. Keith Pitchforth, 10 Hallam Grange Road, Sheffield, S Yorks, S10 4BJ e-mail - [email protected] 0114-2307685

Strays Co-ordinator Mrs. Dorothy Hunt, Springfield House, Whitehall Green, Halifax, HX2 9UQ e-mail - [email protected]

Librarian Mrs. Anne Kirker, 356, Oldham Rd. Sowerby Bridge, Halifax HX6 4QU e-mail - [email protected] 01422 - 823966

Members’ Interests Co-ordinator Mr. Mike Hardcastle, Cedarwood, The Grange, Huddersfield Road, Brighouse, HD6 3RH e-mail - [email protected] 01484 715493

The Society's Home Web Page on the Internet is http://www.cfhsweb.com

Page 47 CHAPELRIES AND TOWNSHIPS OF THE ANCIENT PARISH OF HALIFAX

CHURCH/CHAPEL Registers begin BAP. MAR.** BUR. 1. COLEY St. John 1735 1745 1734 2. CROSS STONE St. Paul 1678 1837 1678 3. ELLAND St. Mary** 1559 1559 1559 4. HALIFAX St. James (inc St Mary Rhodes St 1953) 1832 1837 nk 5. HALIFAX St. John** 1538 1538 1538 6. HARTSHEAD St. Peter 1612 1612 1612 7. HEPTONSTALL St. Thomas** 1599 1593 1599 8. ILLINGWORTH St. Mary 1695 1697 1695 9. LIGHTCLIFFE St. Matthew 1703 1704 1704 10. LUDDENDEN St. Mary 1653 1661 1653 11. RASTRICK St. Matthew 1719 1839 1798 12. RIPPONDEN St. Bartholomew 1684 1686 1684 13. SCAMMONDEN WITH MILLHEAD St. Bartholomew 1746 1886 1746 14. SOUTHOWRAM St. Anne 1813 1838 1818 15. SOWERBY St. Peter 1668 1711 1643 16. SOWERBY BRIDGE Christ Church 1709 1730 1821 17. STAINLAND St. Andrew 1782 1844 1783 18. TODMORDEN St. Mary/Christ Church 1678 1669 1666 **Following Hardwicke’s Marriages Act of 1754, Banns and Marriages will only be found in the registers of these churches. After 1837 they lost their monopoly of marriages.

Page 48