Roebuck Street: a start

I’ve decided to digress a little and look at the history of Roebuck Street. It plays a large part in the Hamilton/Timmins part of the family history, and according to Dad the family owned extensive property in the street at one time. I’ve just looked ta the Land Registry site and it’s not available on a Sunday. What planet are these people living on.

What I know so far, from the Victoria County History, is that Roebuck Lane existed by the later 18th century  and probably much earlier. A house called the Roebuck at the north end existed in 1684 and was demolished c.1855.  Also at the top of Roebuck Lane, and on its western side, was a  house called Springfields.  By1795 it was the home of Archibald Kenrick.  After his death in 1835 his son Archibald lived there; it was rebuilt probably about that time. The younger Archibald was still living there in 1850, but it subsequently became the home of W. Bullock, an iron-founder like the Kenricks. By 1860 it had been bought by Thomas Bache Salter, and it remained the Salters' home until c. 1906. In 1970 it was the social club of G. Salter & Co. Ltd. By 1836 there was a large house to the south of Springfields called Oakley; it was owned by Timothy Kenrick, son of the elder Archibald Kenrick. It was demolished c. 1960. Roebuck Street was laid out as Park Village in the 1850s; by 1970, however, the street was given over to light industry. The area around Grove Crescent between Roebuck Lane and Roebuck Street was formerly occupied by the Grove and its 4-acre estate; the property was sold in 1892 and built over.

An ancient tree known as the Three Mile Oak formerly stood on the northside of the main road near the boundary; by the1830s it had disappeared, but the name was preserved by the near-by inn and toll-gate.

From: 'West Bromwich: The growth of the town', A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 17: Offlow hundred (part) (1976), pp. 4-11. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=36157  Date accessed: 22 April 2012.

No mention is made of Roebuck Street in Mary Willett’s “A History of West Bromwich, first published in 1882, but that is hardly surprising, as the book concentrates on the prominent families and large houses of the town, and does not mention the effects of the industrial revolution at all.

By 1911, the last point for which I currently have any data, the Hamiltons occupied no 17 (Gert & Walter), no 66 (Joseph  and Sarah Emily, and their younger children) and no 102 (Ernie & Gert). Joseph and Sarah Emily had been living at no 74 in 1891 and 41 in 1901. We moved into no 85 in the early 1950s and Arthur & Minnie with Brian and Alan also lived in the street but I can’t remember the number. I will have to ask Alan.

There’s a lot more to do looking at land ownership, directories etc.

Online sources

Perhaps it’s time to talk a little about online information sources.

Most family history amateurs start with subscribing to one of the main online subscription services. Find My Past, www.findmypast.co.uk Ancestry, http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ or The Genealogist http://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/.  All cover much the same main areas where you can find census returns from 1841 to 1911, register of births marriages and deaths from 1836 to present. As well as these they have extra sources

The one which I use, Find My Past www.findmypast.co.uk, costs £109.95 for a full year subscription, which includes censuses, births marriages and deaths, migration records, some parish records, extensive but not exhaustive military records and some specialist records. For example included is the Wiltshire Quarter Sessions Calendars from 1728 to 1859, which is unlikely ever to be of interest to me, but is exactly what someone else needs.

I chose Find My Past rather than anything else because at the time it was the first to have the 1911 census, and I’ve simply stuck with it since then. I would recommend that anyone starting out looks at each of them in detail before committing themselves.

But one of the most useful online sources for me is completely free. West Midlands Births marriages and Deaths http://www.westmidlandsbmd.org.uk/ does exactly what it says on the tin. All births, marriages and deaths registered in Sandwell, Dudley and Walsall between 1837 and 2002 are listed, together with their reference numbers for ordering original documents.

You can’t, of course get very far without getting hold of the original records of birth, marriages and deaths which give all sorts of clues in the search. But if you order them from one of the online subscription sources you will probably pay more than if you order them from the General Register Office. http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/. From Ancestry a birth certificate will £22.95, while direct from the GRO it is £9.25.

Black Country Trades

Every town in the Black Country had a specialist trade, and there were many that spanned the Black Country and Birmingham. Dad was a coachbuilder, who started work at the Birmingham Carriage Works right on the border of West Bromwich and Birmingham. His father Walter Hamilton also worked at the carriage works as an engineer. All of Dad’s six brothers had a different trade, but I don’t think any of the others worked at the carriage works.

The South Staffordshire Coalfield spreads right across the area, and Sandwell Colliery was at the bottom of Roebuck Street. The pit was long closed by the time we lived there but the 1911 census shows that most of the men living at the bottom end of the street  were miners. Great Grandfather Joseph Hamilton (Hamlet) was a mining engineers who worked at Sandwell Colliery, and his father Samuel Hamlet was also a mining engineer who died in a pit accident in Tipton in 1862.

But West Bromwich’s most famous trade was spring making. Our Timmins ancestors worked as whitesmiths at Salters Springs. The Salters website gives a brief history of spring making in the area. http://www.salterhousewares.com/salter_us/salter-history.

The Mills family were also whitesmiths over in Sedgley but don’t seem to have been involved in Spring making. In one census William Mills is described as a Fire Iron Maker employing 3 men and three boys.

As we move across to the west of the Black Country we find chainmaking – James Morris, nailmaking – the Billinghams and the Perrys, ironfounding – the Billinghams again.

Kidderminster was famous for carpet making, but our only contact with that is Mom, who worked briefly in a carpet factory at the beginning of the war. One Stourbridge industry , where, sadly, I can find no family connection, is glass making.

And the next Morris photograph is...

This is great grandfather James Morris the jeweller in his workshop. He looks to be in his early 60s to me so perhaps in the late 1920s. This fits with the date of the photograph of his father in my previous post and a lovely picture of Gladys Morris's wedding to William Rowlands, which was in 1926. Julia is busy trying to identify the bridesmaids, one of whom looks very like my cousin Geraldine, another great grandchild of James the Jeweller. it would make sense if the box of photographs that has been found all date to the same era. I'd love to know what Rosehannah looked like but I expect we never will.

James Morris the chainmaker

This is so exciting. Geoffrey Morris's nephew has found a box of family photos which his brother Noel seems to have collected. As he says, it's a real treasure trove. To start with he's sent us this photograph of James Morris the chainmaker at the age of 80 in 1920.

More mysterious Mills

I finally found the family in 1861, by doing an address search on their 1851 address and they are still there. Still in Dudley Road Sedgely but very badly transcribed

Mils	Elizabeth	Head	Married	1814	Labourer	Sedgley
Mils	Julia	Daughter	Unmarried	1837	Tailoress	Sedgley
Mils	Maxian	Daughter		1846	Tailoress	Sedgley
Mils	Thanya	Daughter		1846		Sedgley
Mils	Phobe	Daughter		1845		Sedgley
Mils	Hannah	Daughter		1854		Sedgley
Mils	Sarah	Daughter	Unmarried	1857		Sedgley

It is clear from the original however that Elizabeth is a laundress not a labourer and that her daughters’ names (especially if you already know) are Miriam, Thirza and Phoebe. Hannah and Sarah have obviously been born since the last census. So, is William dead, as implied by Elizabeth being “Head”, or is he away, as implied by her being “married”? I’m guessing the former, in whichcase he died some time after 1857 and before 1861.

By 1871 the family have left Dudley Road but I am now inclined to believe that they are somewhere in the area. Hannah is visiting the Saunders family in Nitte Place Dudley in 1871, which doesn’t help me locate them. (And John Saunders appears to be married to a Marian (Miriam?) not Julia. I can’t trace Elizabeth, Thirza or Sarah Emily in 1871, but we know that Sarah Emily married Joseph Hamilton in 1873 at St Edmund’s in Dudley and that Joseph lived in Tipton

IGI suggests that William Mills and Elizabeth Webb married in 1832 in Wolverhampton.

And until I can check back further in parish records this is as far as I can take the mysterious Mills family.

More on the Mills family

There is no sign so far of this family after 1851, but I do now think I have found the right family through a slightly tenuous link.

The Mills family was in Sedgley in 1851, at Dudley Road Sedgley. If I have the right family they are

William Mills	1811	Fire Iron Maker employing 3 men and three boys	Born Sedgley
Elizabeth Mills	1814	Wife	Born Sedgley
Mary Ann Mills	1834	Daughter - Tailoress	Born Sedgley
Julia Mills	1836	Daughter	Born Sedgley
Elizabeth Mills	1841	Daughter	Born Sedgley
Miram Mills	1844	Daughter	Born Sedgley
Thirza Mills	1845	Daughter	Born Sedgley
Phoebe Ann Mills	1849	Daughter	Born Sedgley

In 1841 this family is living at Sheepcot Wall Sedgley and William’s occupation is whitesmith

And my tenuous link is that Julia Mills married John Saunders in 1865, whose brother Alexander Saunders was a witness to the marriage of Sarah Emily Mills to Joseph Hamilton in 1873. Alexander, John and their father Richard were all whitesmiths, living in Dudley and are also missing from the 1861 and 1871 censuses. By 1880 Alexander has reappeared  and is single living with his parents at 40 High Street Dudley but Richard and the Mills family are still missing. Elizabeth turns up in the 1891 census as a widow living with Sarah Emily and Joseph in Roebuck Street.

Where did they all go?