LANCASHIRE FAMILY HISTORY AND HERALDRY SOCIETY

Rossendale Branch Newsletter August 2003

Programme 2003

Wednesday 6th August

Research Evening

Wednesday 3rd September

Private William Tomlinson and the Opium Wars. - W. J. Taylor

Wednesday 1st October

Members Miscellany. (Short talks by members on a subject of their choice)

Wednesday 5th November

The Lancashire Cotton Famine (1862 - 1865) - Fred Holroyd.

Wednesday 4th December

Christmas Celebrations.

Coming Events

Saturday 13th September. The Great North Fair

Gateshead Stadium, Neilson Road, Gateshead

10.00 am - 4.30pm. adults £2.50, children free.

The new national event for Family Historians, supported by the History Channel and the 2003 Genealogy Project.

Saturday 8th November

The North West Family History Fair will be held this year at Manchester Velodrome.

Irish Ancestry Group Meetings at 2 The Straits, Oswaldtwistle.
20 September 2003
Advice & Research 1pm - 4.30pm
with a short talk on Griffiths Valuation at 2pm.

4 October 2003
Programme as above

At both meetings refreshments will be available.
There will be a contribution of £1.00 per person towards expenses. Any
surplus from meetings will be used to buy useful research additions to the
library holdings.

Numbers have to be limited. Please let Margaret Purcell know which afternoon you will attend.

Margaret Purcell, 128 Red Bank Rd., Bispham, Blackpool, Lancs., FY2 9DZ
Tel 01253 353909
E-mail mpursell@redbankmp.fsnet.co.uk

Civil Registration: Delivering Vital Change - Consultation Document

The General Register Office has now published the long awaited Consultation Document following on from the contentious White Paper "Civil Registration: delivering Vital change" which was published 18 months ago.

Naturally. the Federation of Family History Societies will be examining it carefully to see what concessions and relaxations may be have been made, following the many protests at some of the original proposals.

You can download a copy of the consultation document (PDF format) from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ registration/whitepaper/default.asp

Branch views on this paper will be forwarded by the Executive Committee to the Federation. Individual members are encouraged to respond.

Responses have to be in by 24th October.

Rossendale Ancestry

BRAMILL/ HEYES Childhood Memories.

Will Bramhill’s father (William Frank Bramhill) was born in Liverpool in January 1913, he came that same year to live in the Valley, Last month we published his early memories of life at Touch and Take, and Irwell Vale. We continue with his memories of Crawshawbooth, where he went to stay after his parents’ marriage broke up, probably towards the end of 1917.

CRAWSHAWBOOTH submitted by Will Bramhill.

".....The journey ended at a little house where Dad's Aunt Lizzie lived, probably at Reedsholme. She worked in a cotton mill and her husband Walter Heyes "showed me how to make beads from tightly-rolled Woodbine packets. Aunty Lizzie wore such a necklace."

Dad appears to have stayed with Lizzie and Walter for some time, and was firm friends with their son Jim. He also got up to mischief with a boy named Bert Cole, who lived next door, and Dad's punishment was Lizzie locking him in a cellar "for hours on end".

Dad writes: "I had happy days there too, I can remember going with Walter over the moors , sitting for hours looking down towards Rawtenstall or northwards at Crawshawbooth. The abject poverty of it all was hidden from the top of the moor. One could only see the smoking chimneys of the mills, but there was no beauty down there ... the workers had grey faces, pinched faces, few smiles. They wore clogs and shawls and worked a long week for little money, or faced the workhouse."

Dad can also remember going up to the mill with Uncle Walter's father, whom he called Granddad Heyes. Granddad allowed him to sit amid the roaring machines of a machine shop and he remembers being fascinated with the slap slap of the belts driving looms in the adjoining building. Granddad Heyes also let him fish in the stream adjacent to the mill, but it was so polluted, he never caught anything. Home for tea, and Grandma Heyes's house in Crawshawbooth was spotless; poverty had its mark here, too, for the only furniture was two chairs and a table, covered with clean newspaper at meal times; the grate was pitch black and the fender shone, but only on Sundays as it was protected by newspaper in between times.

Every Saturday, Dad had the job of taking scrap wood from Walter to Granddad Heyes, and he enjoyed this weekly chore, even when he was chased by a bull over a meadow to Crawshawbooth, when "fear gave my feet wings". He recalls having the sweetest cup of tea ever after that incident.

Dad’s time in the valley appears to have ended when Lizzie and Walter's marriage ran into problems or, at any rate, when she went to work in Liverpool. Walter looked after Dad and Jim for a time, before packing them on a train for Liverpool, where Dad went to stay with his mother's family.

So how does the story end? Towards the end of Dad's life, he died in 1977 and had lived in the South from 1946, I set out to find where Touch ‘n Tack actually was. We located it thanks to Lancashire Libraries ... beneath a roundabout on the A56.

Because of Dad’s folks poverty we knew little of his family. His father died in 1922, and the Bramhills were, by and large, a mystery. Without his book (sometimes colourful, possibly inaccurate) the ancestors of the early 1900s would be just names with no characters, no smiles, no frowns... It is a wonderful record to pass to my own sons.

I would urge others to ask elderly relatives to compile their own records of their lives, however mundane they think life has been. They should also get scribbling themselves....

You can contact Will at www.bramhill.net  

TRICKETT

Linda Tyler (#7416) is researching the Trickett family of Newchurch. She wonders whether anyone would be willing to share information. She is descended from William Trickett (born 1876) son of John (Stott) Trickett.

John was born in 1843, the son of Sarah Trickett.

In 1841, Sarah was living at Turnpike, Newchurch. She was listed as a "washerwoman" aged 35. At the same address were John and Mary Trickett, both given as aged 65, and two other sons of Sarah. These were James aged 7 (bapt. 1834 at St. Nicholas, Newchurch) and George aged 5 bapt. as George Stott Trickett in 1836.

Sarah never married. She died of TB, 27 June 1845 at Back Street, Newchurch.

It is 50 years since Linda left Rossendale, she now lives in the States. She would be grateful for any help in finding Sarah’s siblings.  email gootsy42@sbcglobal.net