Lancasters of Pateley Bridge

By Christopher Wright

The author set out to create a family tree of his maternal ancestors and relations but discovered much more than a list of names and dates. This history of the remarkable Lancaster family, descendants of John Lancaster and Jane King of Pateley Bridge, Yorkshire, is rich in biographical detail. What shines through in these stories is their stoicism in the face of adversity, their close family ties and love for each other, their optimism and endless striving to create a better life for themselves and their communities. They 'upped sticks' from Pateley Bridge and moved to the industrial West Riding, to the United States of America, to Belgium and to Australia. They took risks, followed their rainbows and made what they could of their opportunities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Wright
• Release date: Jan 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310378515

Christopher Wright

Chris Wright is a qualified accountant and Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) with over 30 years’ experience providing financial and IT advisory and risk management services. He worked for 16 years at KPMG, where he managed a number of IT due diligence reviews and was head of information risk training in the UK. He has also worked in a wide range of industry sectors including oil and gas, small and medium enterprises, public sector, aviation and travel. 

Book preview

LANCASTERS OF PATELEY BRIDGE

Christopher Wright

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 Christopher Wright

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior written permission of the author. Christopher Wright asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Website: Lancasters of Pateley Bridge

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Joseph Wilkinson Lancaster

Chapter 3. Joseph Lancaster

Chapter 4. Lancasters in America

Descendants of John Lancaster and Jane King

Acknowledgements

Further Information

CHAPTER 1. Introduction

What’s What?

This is the story of the Lancaster family, important for me because I have been researching my family history for fifty years. I have a personal interest in it: I am a part of it. What I have discovered about my maternal ancestors is something that future generations may wish to retain, something that neither names and dates in a family tree nor memorial stones in a cemetery will relate. The lives of the people who emerged out of old documents, archives and oddments of family memorabilia deserve to be remembered. For current and future generations of the family, this story is about knowing who they are, for we all carry with us some similarity to our forebears, passed down through our genes or traits learned from our parents. For others, it may serve to provide another perspective on history.

I was born in my mother’s family home at 22 Merton Road, Bradford, Yorkshire. My mother was a Lancaster. The house had belonged to my grandfather and, before him, to my great-grandfather. The family was not wealthy but neither was it poor. These ancestors had been white-collar workers and managers of small businesses. In social terms, they were lower middle class. Home ownership was something to be proud of and worked for. My parents married three months after my grandfather died. It made sense to live in his large, old house (with my grandmother and aunt), at least temporarily, until they could buy their own home.

22 Merton Road. The girl at the gate is my mother Winnie.

Except from the outside, I do not remember no. 22. My parents moved out and into their own house at Carrbottom Road, Little Horton, before I was two years old. One of my first memories is of being taken to see the new house before we moved in. It was a small, inner terraced house, situated half way along a long road that was unmade, with potholes and rocks here, there and everywhere. In the kitchen at the back was a black range – a coal fire with an oven next to it. But it was a fairly modern house with two rooms downstairs, plus a pantry (in the days before refrigerators were common), and upstairs a bathroom, two small bedrooms and a box room.

When my parents moved out of no. 22, they left just my Auntie Renie and my grandmother living there. So they moved out as well. Auntie Renie bought a bungalow at the top of Hutton Road, less than a hundred yards away from our house at Carrbottom Road, and my grandmother went to live with her there. Living so close by meant that we saw a lot of them. Grannie was the matriarch of the family, housekeeper to Auntie Renie, and occasional child-minder to my brother, Andrew, and me.

Grannie Lancaster -in about 1945 in the back yard of her sister Blanche Brear's house.

Both of my grandfathers had died before I was born. My paternal grandfather, Fred Wright, had died in 1940 of prostate cancer at the age of 58. My father, Jack, was only 17 years old at the time. When I was growing up, my father’s mother, Mary Ann, lived with my father’s eldest sister, Edith, at Cliffe Road, near Peel Park, on the other side of town. We would catch the trolley bus and visit her occasionally at the weekend, often at my Uncle Bill’s house at Barmouth Terrace in the same area. (I only learned this much later in life. For many years I believed that Grannie Wright lived with Uncle Bill.)

In 1957, when I was just 8, Grannie Wright died. I remember going with my father to visit her in hospital at Bierley just before she died. We walked to the end of Carrbottom Road at Bankfoot, past my school and then along Rooley Lane. From there we strolled across the fields to Bierley Hospital. (The fields are no longer there. Instead there is a wide strip of tarmac: the M606 motorway.) I was not allowed onto the hospital ward to see her and had to stand outside and wait. Children were not allowed on the wards.

My father stayed in touch with his two sisters and we crossed town to see them every so often, but the family to which we were closest was my mother’s.

I remember the bungalow at Hutton Road well. It was the penultimate one in a terrace at the top of the road. There was a steep set of concrete steps up to the front door, an internal door just behind it, and a ‘sausage’ of cloth material to keep the draughts from coming in under the door. From the hall, the sitting room was on the left and Grannie’s bedroom was on the right.

The author with grandmother Emily at Hutton Road.

The sitting room had a curved bay window. There was an open fire in the chimney breast on the wall opposite the door. In the alcove to the right of the fire was a large bookcase, where I would find my favourite books, in particular large volumes of David Copperfield and The Pickwick Papers and a black-and-white book of photographs of Austria with text in unintelligible German script. On the wall to the right of the door was a large oil painting, which took up most of the wall, depicting a rugby match. Behind the door was a coal scuttle. In the opposite corner by the window was a large, highly polished wooden cabinet with sliding doors, which encased Auntie Renie’s television set.

At the back of the house were Auntie Renie’s bedroom, the bathroom and, adjacent to the sitting room, the day-to-day living room. There was a large range in there, which Grannie used for baking scones, cakes, pies and all manner of wonderful food. She was a great cook. There was a hob for boiling the kettle over the coals. To the right of the fireplace was an alcove that had been made into a cupboard for plates and crockery, with drawers underneath, where the cutlery and other household oddments were kept. Next to that was the door to the scullery, which had a ceiling that sloped from the door almost to the floor, so you could walk in upright only so far. The scullery was very narrow and contained a pot sink on the right under a tiny window and the gas and electric meters on the left by the door. In the living room were a table, chairs and a sideboard, on which was an old black Bakelite telephone (on a party line shared with the neighbours next door). Above the sideboard, on the wall, was a cuckoo clock – a memento from Switzerland. On the sideboard was a large photographic portrait of my grandfather, Joseph Wilkinson Lancaster, wearing a waistcoat with a watch chain. He looked friendly – but important and a little intimidating. I hadn’t known him but I was curious to know more.

The back garden had an apple tree in it and a lawn rising up a slope to a flower border and fence at the top. There was a garden path made out of hexagonal concrete slabs of a rough, gritty texture. At a very young age, I remember Grannie giving me the job of digging out the moss from between the paving stones with an old kitchen knife. At the end of the scullery outside was a shed. Grannie used to call it the air-raid shelter. It was in fact an Anderson shelter, made out of corrugated metal sheets bent over in an arch with brick walls at each end. It contained all sorts of interesting old hardware in tin boxes.

Beyond the garden was a piece of spare ground that had not been built on, where we lit a bonfire every 5 November, had firework displays and ate plot toffee, potatoes baked in the fire and parkin. From the spare ground we could follow the snickets between the houses and emerge just across the road from our house.

One or two evenings every week, my brother, Andrew, and I would visit Grannie around teatime and ask to watch television. Not many households had a television and we were keen to watch our favourite programmes – The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, Ivanhoe, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin and Tales of Wells Fargo. (Saturday evenings were a treat; the whole family would watch The Adventures of Robin Hood, Dixon of Dock Green and the Billy Cotton Band Show – less appealing to us youngsters but worth watching to be able to stay up late.)

L–R back row: Murial, Renie, Laurie and Winnie. Front row: the author, Grannie Lancaster, Irene and Andrew at Hutton Road.

Auntie Renie would arrive home from work as the weekday children’s TV programmes ended. One of her work colleagues, Mr. Bowles, brought her home in his big black car. She would alight and Andrew and I would climb in to be given a short ride down Hutton Road before running back up the hill.

From this you will gather that the Lancaster home was a very important part of our childhood and made us feel closer to that family than to the Wright family on the other side of town. We lived nearby and were on hand when other relatives visited. At Christmas, there would always be a gathering. At some point in the year, my mother’s brother, Jack, and his family would come home from Nigeria, where Jack was general manager of Niger Motors. Her sister Dot would come to see Grannie when she and her husband Ron and family came home from the Far East and later Jamaica. Auntie Jessie would often call in her Morris Minor (she lived at Horton Bank Top and later Oakworth, near Keighley). Uncle Laurie, his wife Murial and their daughter Irene would sometimes come to visit from Hull. Hutton Road was a centre for our closely knit family and we met our cousins there on a fairly regular basis. But you can tell that the family had already started to migrate away from Bradford by this time.

Auntie Renie used to talk to me about the family and would particularly mention other names such as Frank, Alfred, Harry, Ernest and Arthur. At the time, the names meant little to me and I was never quite sure who was who, or how more distant cousins were related. I was told that my grandfather’s family had come from Pateley Bridge, but who had come from there to Bradford, and when, was not at all clear. But, in spite of the incoherence, the bare bones of the story had been implanted in my brain.

Later in life, those names and stories would come back to me and I became curious to know about the history of the Lancasters. That was many years after I had started genealogy as a hobby in the 1960s. For some reason, I was at first intent on finding out about my paternal ancestry and ignored my mother’s side of the tree. It was a costly mistake. I missed so many opportunities to hear and record the memories of those around me. By the time I returned to the Lancasters, it was too late and most of them had passed away. My mother provided some information and importantly the family photographs and some precious keepsakes. My Uncle Jack was interested in his ancestry and had had some work done on the family tree by a researcher. (I later discovered that it was, unfortunately, crucially wrong and largely worthless.) They both helped me a great deal to start with but they were both from the younger end of the family and did not know a great deal themselves. My grandfather was 55 when my mother was born. Her own memories of the wider family and its older members were somewhat sketchy, especially given that she was in her eighties when I began to investigate the Lancasters properly.

So who were these Lancasters? What were they like? What events and experiences made them who they were? How did ‘my’ Lancasters come to live in Bradford? And where else were their descendants now?

The narrative begins with an account of the life of my mother’s father, Joseph Wilkinson Lancaster. As this includes his upbringing and details of his parents, the book then moves on to an account of the life of Joe’s grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, Joseph Lancaster, followed by the story of his siblings and their descendants.

Of course, this structure means that brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and their respective spouses will inevitably intrude into the accounts of the main ‘characters’ and need to be placed in the tree. If the reader gets lost, there is a list of descendants at the back of the book.

Family history can be fascinating. It tells us something about ourselves – or at least we imagine that it does. We identify with family. They are like us – or at least we think they are. The attachment is emotional. It stems from common experiences, common values, common physiology perhaps – nature and nurture intertwined. We identify with our ancestors. We are our ancestors in a very real sense. Different in some degree, similar to an extent, re-modelled material, a re-mix of past generations.

There is mystery in family history. The known and the knowable are limited. Memory dies with us unless it is written down or recorded in some other way. Records are scarce. The past becomes obscure all too quickly. But there is a thread that binds us to that obscure world that we want to know about. Even the little that remains is worth preserving and celebrating.

We genealogists often wonder whether we will find something amazing in our family trees, whether great deeds, a part played in world history, a connection to the rich and famous, or a shameful event and a skeleton in a cupboard. There is a little of everything in this story – adventures, scandals, horrors, triumphs and disasters – but what makes it special is the insight that it provides into unique lives and times. They were all children of their age, subject to forces beyond their control yet contributing in some measure to the flow of history.

Who’s Who?

The last time I counted there were nearly 5,000 people in the Lancaster family tree. Trying to visualise how they are all related is not an easy task, especially when many of them have the same or similar names. Family trees have been included throughout the book to help the reader identify who’s who.

The first three generations of the pedigree of my mother, Winifred Mary Lancaster, look like this. Each generation has a separate row, spouses are linked horizontally and there are lines joining children to their parents.

A pedigree of this sort only tells us a certain amount about a family. It does not tell us how many siblings a person had, or how many cousins. To show a family more fully, a list of descendants may be given, such as this one for James Alfred Lancaster and his wife, Eliza Matilda Wilkinson. Each generation is indented by one column.

James Alfred Lancaster* (1845–1907)

& Eliza Matilda Wilkinson (1847–1886)

m. 18 Nov 1866, Bradford, St. Peter (Bradford Cathedral)

| _ _ _ _ _ Ann Elizabeth Lancaster (1867–1879)

| _ _ _ _ _ Joseph Wilkinson Lancaster* (1869–1948)

| _ _ _ _ _ & Emily Maud Newell (1872–1914)

| _ _ _ _ _ m. 19 Jun 1896, Bradford, St. Andrew

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ William Cyril Lancaster (1897–1917)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Elsie Irene Lancaster (1906–1991)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Joseph Laurence Lancaster (1911–1979)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Muriel May Lidgett (1914–1975)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 1 Mar 1941, Hull

| _ _ _ _ _ Joseph Wilkinson Lancaster* (1869–1948)

| _ _ _ _ _ & Emily Arnett (1885–1963)

| _ _ _ _ _ m. 16 Feb 1916, Listerhills Chapel, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Jessie Lancaster (1916–1989)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Donald Whitaker (1914–2015)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 8 Jul 1944, Horton Lane Congregational Chapel, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Dorothy Lancaster (1918–1979)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Ronald G Sivey (1920–2011)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. Dec 1941, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Jack Lancaster* (1920–2011)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Kathleen Rutley

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Jack Lancaster* (1920–2011)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Norah Gossop Long

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Winifred Mary Lancaster (1924–2008)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Jack Wright (1922–2009)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 15 May 1948, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ Albert Ernest Lancaster (1870–1937)

| _ _ _ _ _ & Gertrude Miriam Turner (1875–1943)

| _ _ _ _ _ m. 12 Sep 1900, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Sidney Lancaster (1901–1989)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Rose Emma Hallam (1903–1984)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. Apr–Jun 1927, Exeter, Devon

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Evelyn Lancaster (1904–1986)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Frederick Freeman Ellis (1898–1946)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 22 Aug 1929, Salem Congregational Church, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Gordon Lancaster (1906–1980)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Kathleen Blair (1912–1987)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 24 Nov 1934, Salem Congregational Church, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Mary Lancaster (1908–1986)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Edmund Phillip Hartley (1905–1966)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 24 Jun 1932, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Dora Lancaster (1910–1978)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Albert Lancaster (1916–1945)

| _ _ _ _ _ Alfred Lancaster (1872–1956)

| _ _ _ _ _ & Sarah Jane Bentley (1875–1958)

| _ _ _ _ _ m. 14 Apr 1894, Bradford, St. Peter (Bradford Cathedral)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Charles Alfred Raymond Lancaster (1894–1956)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Elsie Hodgson (1893–)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 22 May 1918, Ovenden, St. George, Halifax

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Doris Hilda May Lancaster* (1896–1983)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Clarence Butterfield (1894–1925)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 21 May 1925, Great Horton, St. John, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Doris Hilda May Lancaster* (1896–1983)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Edward Wilman (1895–1951)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 17 Sep 1930, Lidget Green, St. Wilfred, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Nina Bentley Lancaster (1899–1982)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Frederick Norman Schofield (1899–1953)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 12 Aug 1922, Great Horton, St. John, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Dudley Bentley Lancaster (1906–1992)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Nellie Sarah Greaves (1907–2002)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. Apr–Jun 1938, Horncastle, Lincolnshire

| _ _ _ _ _ Francis Charles Lancaster (1874–1945)

| _ _ _ _ _ & Mabel Villiers (1876–1936)

| _ _ _ _ _ m. 29 Sep 1900, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Harold Lancaster (1902–1967)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Louisa Whittaker-Collinge (1906–1995)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Francis Reginald Lancaster (1904–1978)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Agnes Jean (Nancy) Millar (1914–2010)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 6 Dec 1941, Highgate, Middlesex

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Marjorie Lancaster (1906–1991)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & William George Luff (1906–1977)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ John Wilfred Lancaster (1907–1967)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Adrienne Caesens (1905–1998)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 1936, Brussels, Belgium

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Albert Geoffrey Lancaster (1909–1991)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Edna Carter

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. Sep 1950, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Constance Lancaster (1915–1996)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & William Duthoit Whitley (1908–1968)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 1938

| _ _ _ _ _ Arthur Lancaster (1877–1954)

| _ _ _ _ _ & Annie Bland (~1877–1967)

| _ _ _ _ _ m. Dec 1904, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Herbert Lancaster (1905–1929)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ James Alfred Lancaster (1907–1935)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Jessie Lancaster (1908–1983)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & John Robert Bartle (1908–1988)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 7 Sep 1935, Buttershaw, St. Paul, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Edna Mollie Lancaster (1915–2002)

| _ _ _ _ _ Mary Ethel Lancaster (1878–1943)

| _ _ _ _ _ & James Nicholls (1878–1969)

| _ _ _ _ _ m. 11 Apr 1905

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ William Alfred Ronald Nicholls (1907–1974)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Kenneth Nicholls (1908–)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Phyllis M Nicholls (1915–)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Arthur K Smith (1914–)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. Sep 1939, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ Harry Lancaster (1881–1941)

| _ _ _ _ _ & Annie Mabel Smith (1883–1952)

| _ _ _ _ _ m. 16 Sep 1908

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Katharine Marion Lancaster (1909–2003)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & James Fowlds Mason (1906–1995)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. Apr–Jun 1932, Keighley

| _ _ _ _ _ Edith Lancaster (1883–1940)

| _ _ _ _ _ & John Leonard Atkinson (1875–1955)

| _ _ _ _ _ m. 14 Dec 1910, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Arthur Atkinson (~1911–)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Jean

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ James Atkinson (1913–2003)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Mona Booth (1923–2006)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 29 Nov 1941, Wharfedale

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Jack Atkinson (1914–1997)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & Margaret King

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Margaret Atkinson (1920–2013)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ & James Gaunt (1904–1984)

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ m. 3 Sep 1948, Wharfedale

| _ _ _ _ _ Jessie Matilda Lancaster (1886–1944)

| _ _ _ _ _ & William Henry Chappells (1885–1958)

| _ _ _ _ _ m. 24 Apr 1918, Bradford

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Doreen M. Chappells

| _ _ _ _ _ | _ _ _ _ _ Nancy B. Chappells

James Alfred Lancaster* (1845–1907)

& Mary Wilkinson (1845–1924)

Occasionally, it may be helpful to show a relationship between two people without showing all the family members. For example, this chart shows the relationship between my mother and Frederick Hirst. Mary and James Alfred were sister and brother. Frederick and Joseph were first cousins. Winifred (my mother) was Frederick’s first cousin once removed. In this chart, the earliest generation can be found on the left and the latest on the right.

Notes on Descendant Outline Trees

Data relating to living persons has been omitted from the trees. Where a date of death is unknown and the person was born within the last hundred years, that person has been treated as living.

The names of spouses are preceded by ‘&’.

Where there is more than one marriage, the name has an asterisk * and is repeated with the name of the second spouse after all the descendants of the earlier marriage have been listed.

‘~’ means ‘about’.

Where a month or months and a year are included for a marriage without a specific date, this means that the date of registration was within the relevant month or quarter of that year.

Names are usually as found on the birth certificate (or record of baptism) but sometimes may differ in the light of later records or known usage.

Genealogy is not an exact science. Sometimes approximations and guesses have to be made. It can be a matter of probability rather than hard information. Remember that a record may be a fact but the truth may be something else. Records may be wrong and, the more times a record is copied, the more wrong it can get.

If you find an error or an omission, help me put it right by visiting lancasterwright.com.

Where’s Where?

To avoid too much repetition, places in this book can be assumed to be in Yorkshire, England, unless another county, US state or country is mentioned. Boundaries change over time. The last major re-organisation of UK local government boundaries took place in 1974, when the three Yorkshire Ridings (West, East and North) were abolished as administrative units.

The West Riding included most of industrial Yorkshire from the steel and heavy-engineering towns of Sheffield and Doncaster in the south to the conglomeration of towns in the west that manufactured woollen textiles (Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury and all in between), and northwards to the rural Yorkshire Dales (e.g. Airedale, Wharfedale and Nidderdale).

Association of British Counties map of Yorkshire.

Ringed: left – Listerhills Congregational Chapel; middle – Cavendish Street; right – Chesham Street. Alan Godfrey Maps – Bradford 1906.

Continuation of map above: Merton Road. Alan Godfrey Maps – Bradford 1906.

Go to Table of Contents

CHAPTER 2. Joseph Wilkinson Lancaster

Joseph Wilkinson Lancaster.

So who was the man in the portrait on Grannie Lancaster’s