Introduction

With all family histories one gets a sense, after progressing back about 100 years or more, that there is a pivotal family group that forms the heart of the story about your ancestors. For me it is usually the family that provides a link between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries where the parents were born in the late eighteenth century and their children in the nineteenth. Thus it is that full use can be made of the excellent Victorian records that are available to us in the form of the census, civil registration, wills and probate records and many more. Their lives can usually be tracked in their entirety from cradle to grave and our own family's path can be viewed as descending from theirs.

In the case of my Schofield ancestors it is the family of Thomas and Hannah Schofield who lived in the Lancashire village of Edenfield. Thomas (1797-1879) and Hannah (1801-1849) married in 1820 and had twelve children of whom seven survived into adulthood. Their second surviving son, John, was my great great grandfather.

The first census that the family appears in is that for 1841 in which all the children that survived appear, apart from one who doesn't survive. The households are mostly not named so we know that Thomas and Hannah lived in Edenfield but not exactly where. Thomas' occupation was greengrocer so he would presumably have had a horse and cart for deliveries and possibly a shop.


A Thomas Schofield appears in the 1818 Directory of J Leigh as 'grocer etc' in Edenfield which may be the same person or possibly an older relative, but a Thomas Schofield, greengrocer, also appears in several later directories as well. 

In the 1841 census the following children are listed: Thos (20), John (15), Joshua (15), Mary (10), Ellen (10), James (5), Geo (4) and Richd (2) but the ages of the older children have all been rounded down to the nearest five, so Thos could have been between 20 and 25 and so on. They were all born in the county. Sadly Richard, the youngest, only survives to the age of eight years.

Thomas Schofield and Hannah Cunliffe had married in 1820 on the 9th January at St Mary's in Bury. St Mary's was the mother church for the area so, although there was a church in Edenfield, it was customary to marry in Bury and the children were usually baptised there also. As Edenfield was a Chapelry marriages could not be carried out there until the later part of the nineteenth century. On his marriage Thomas is described as a fulling miller as has this occupation for the birth of sons John and Joshua but on the birth of his daughter, Mary, he has become a carrier and by the time of the appearance of son James in 1834 he is a greengrocer.

Their eldest child Thomas was born out of wedlock and baptised as Thomas Cunliffe on the 6th December 1818. His mother Hannah was a weaver living in Edenfield and the reputed father was Thomas Scholfield. The next child, John, was baptised on the 23rd January 1820 just after the wedding, but sadly only survived to the following year when he was buried on the 16th July. The family continued to reside in Edenfield until Hannah died in 1849 and was buried in Edenfield Churchyard, Thomas, a widower, continued to live in Edenfield for the 1851 and 1861 censuses with a dwindling family until in 1861 there is just Thomas and his daughter, Mary (33), remaining. 

None of the children remained in Edenfield with their spouses and families for long and Thomas himself remarried in 1866 and moved to Rawtenstall.

There will be more of his story and of his children in the next post

Map of Edenfield in the nineteenth century - Market Place in the picture above was in the top left section of the map