The Cotterill family

Sarah Cotterill married James Timmins in 1872, at which point she joins our family line. She was 24 at the time, and did not have an occupation listed on the marriage certificate. She was illiterate and made her mark while James, the master whitesmith could read and write. Sarah was of course born too early to have benefitted from universal education which began in 1871, and families which could afford to send any of their children to school preferred the boys.

Sarah was born 14^th march 1849, and the address is given as Lyndon, West Bromwich. Her birth certificate also gives her mother’s maiden name as Tompkins, so we have another definite name to add to our story.

According to the 1871 census (Sarah’s last as a single woman) she lived at no 8 Stoney Lane West Bromwich with her parents Thomas, born 1811 and Hannah, born 1817. Thomas was a coal miner. It was a large family and Sarah had 9 siblings, although William Thomas Hannah and Rachael were not at home for the 1871 census.

Isaiah                    born 1838
William                 born 1839
Thomas                                born 1841
Hannah                                born 1844
Rachael                                born 1852
Enoch                    born 1853
James                   born 1855
Maria                    born1857
Job                         born 1858
Ann                        born 1861

Also on the 1871 census is Thomas Cotterill aged 3, described as Thomas Cotterill’s grandson. We know from the work that Mandy did on the Timmins family that this is Sarah’s son by James Timmins, who was born before their marriage on 28^th October 1867. His birth certificate states his father as James Timmins, a whitesmith. By the census of 1881 Sarah and James have married and Thomas is living with them. Mandy has been in touch with one of Thomas’ descendants who assured her that James was Thomas’ father and his early years were spent with the Timmins family. Thomas died on 13^th February 1948 and is buried in West Bromwich. Interestingly Dad has no recollection of him as one of his uncles.

For Sarah’s later story refer to the Timmins family history.

There are several variations on the spelling name Cotterill throughout the original documents, and I have stabilised on this one. Like so many in our story Cotterill is a name almost entirely confined to the Black Country in 1881, according to the National  Trust surnames database http://gbnames.publicprofiles.org . By 1981 it had spread to the East Midlands with small pockets in Yorkshire , Wales and Cornwall. It is very uncommon still in the south and north. The name derives from the Saxon word cotter which was a serf who held his cottage by labour service rather than by paying rent. There have been some prominent Cotterills in West Bromwich history including two mayors and the founder of the West Bromwich Building Society, but I can’t see a link between them and our Cotterills. There is also a Cotterill Street in West Bromwich.

At the time of the 1861 census Thomas was listed as a coal miner and the family was already living in Stoney Lane, where they stayed for the rest of Thomas’s life. At this time there was another Cotterill family living next door  - William, a miner, Susannah his wife, and their children Mary Ann, John Henry and Isaiah. This is in all probability Thomas and Hannah’s son William, who is not shown on the census with the rest of the family

In 1851 the family is living in Hargate Lane West Bromwich

I can’t find the family in the 1841 census  but this is not unusual. On later censuses Thomas, his wife Hannah and their eldest son Isaiah were all born in Darlaston, while the rest of the children were born in West Bromwich. This suggests that the family moved to West Bromwich between 1838 when Isaiah was born and 1841 when Thomas Jnr was born.

After Sarah’s marriage the rest of the family continued to live in Stoney Lane. By 1881 only Hannah, Job and Maria are at home and also there is their grandson George who is 2. He remains there in 1891, and by then Hannah has died.  Hannah died in 1886 of bronchitis aged 70. Also living with Thomas is his son Thomas, also described as a widower and Rachael who is a widow. Her married name is Lunn,

Thomas was still alive at the time of the 1901 census and at the age of 88 was still describing himself as a coal miner. Living with him, still at No 8 Stoney Lane, were his married daughter Maria and her husband John Whitehouse. Thomas’ grandson George, now 22 is also still living with them. Thomas Snr died in 1902, at home in Stoney Lane at the age of 91. By 1911 after Thomas Snr’s death another family is living at no 8 Stoney Lane and Maria and John Whitehouse are living next door at no 10

For the earlier lives of Thomas and Hannah, Going backwards to before registration, according to IGI Thomas Cotterill married Hannah Tompkinson on 13^th March 1836 in Walsall. The censuses have them both originating in Darlaston, but the dates and the names fit, (Tomkinson is near enough to Tompkinson for this to be a fit, I think).as again from IGI Thomas Cotterill was born on 25^th May 1813 and christened on 24^th November 1813 at St Lawrence Darlaston, while Hannah Tompkinson (or Tonkinson) was christened on 10^th May 1818 at St Lawrence Darlaston.

Thomas father was also Thomas Cotterill and his mother was Mary. Hannah’s parents were Joseph Tompkinson and Sarah. And the rest will have to wait until I can get to the records office.

Great grandmothers

The maternal line tends to be a bit sidelined in family history stories, so I plan to spend some time putting that right a little.

My grandmothers were Annie (Nancy) Morris, and Lily Gertrude (Gert) Timmins. I have photographs of each of them in their old age and I’ve written their stories.

This is Gert with her husband Walter Hamilton in a picture taken for their golden wedding

And this is Nancy with my cousin Diane Billingham

My four great grandmothers are a little bit shadier. On my paternal side Sarah Emily Mills was married to Joseph Hamilton and Sarah Cotterill married James Timmins. On my maternal side Ann Elizabeth Perry was presumably married to James Morris (we can’t find a marriage record), and Mary Ann Jasper was married to Thomas Billingham.

I’ve already written about the mysterious MIllses, so I’m going to stay with the paternal side and write up the Cotterill story about whom Mandy has already done a lot of research. Julia knows a lot about Ann Perry, but we know next to nothing about Mary Ann Jasper.  

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.