The Candlemas Blacksmith

I'm still grappling with the family of my grandfather's grandmother.  I started adding the results of my research to my family tree charts the other weekend, but soon realised just how many gaps there were left to fill.  I'm not so near the end of the task as I'd thought!  But it does mean that I have more tales to tell here.

Joseph Moor was born in the high summer of 1841 in the Durham village of Hetton le Hole.  He was the son of the unmarried Ann, and first appears in the census of 1851 living with his mother and his grandparents.  Grandfather Anthony was a 'Waggon man at pit'.  This meant that he worked with the waggons drawing coal, either on the surface or below ground.  Ten years later, at the age of 80, he was described as a 'Waggonway repairer'.  Joseph, now 19, was a 'Waggon guard'.  Thus far, the family had lived in Pittington, close to where Joseph had been born.  Ann had worked on the land in the early days to add to their income, but latterly was merely a housekeeper.

Mary Elizabeth Berry was born in Darlington in 1847, the first of six children, and was living in Great Aycliffe in 1861.  Her father, a Yorkshireman, had progressed from railway labourer to being a signalman at that time.  Mary and Joseph married in 1868 in Darlington and the census of 1871 found them living at Royal Oak, where Joseph, perhaps inspired by seeing his grandfather working with the iron fittings of those waggons or the tracks on which they were hauled, had established himself as a blacksmith.  Their son Joseph William had been born on Candlemas, exactly two months earlier.

This place, Royal Oak, presented me with a problem.  Was it a pub, where the child had been born? Was it a road or an area, perhaps of Darlington or Bishop Auckland?  No atlas or index referred to it.  Census after census, though, Joseph's birthplace was given as 'Royal Oak, Durham'. Fortunately, I have a present-day cousin living in the area who pointed me in the right direction.  Today, it is a tiny hamlet comprising only four or five houses, some in ruins.  Its location is where the old Roman road to Scotland, Dere Street, (now B6275) crosses the A68 running from Darlington up to Corbridge and onward to the border at Carter Bar.  There is a place-name; it's on the right-hand side of the B-road as it approaches the junction from the north, so it's not easily noticed.  The most amazing aspect of this, though, is that I actually passed through Royal Oak a number of times during my driving career ... but then, of course, I wouldn't have been looking out for it!

Joseph and his family didn't stay there long, however.  In 1872, they moved to Pocklington in east Yorkshire, where their daughter Mary was born.  The census of 1881 shows them in Market Street, by 1891 they had moved to Deans Lane, where Joseph William was his father's assistant and the 18-year-old Mary a dressmaker.  By 1901 the business was thriving; Mary had left home, and her place had been filled by a 20-year-old boarder, George Duggleby, who, like Joseph and his father, was also described as a blacksmith.  Ten years later, George had moved on and the business was then located in New Street; Joseph senior had retired, and he died later in 1911 at the age of 70.

Emma Burlingham was born in Wattisfield, Suffolk in 1878; her mother was Rosanna, the second wife of James Burlingham, my 3 x great-grandmother's eldest brother.  The family had moved to nearby Redgrave by 1891, where Rosanna and James died in 1898 and 1900 respectively.  Now making her own way in the world, Emma found herself a position in Bournemouth, where her sister Mary and family were already settled.  In 1901, she was a parlourmaid in the house of Robert Maunsell, a retired major in the militia. Robert was born in Canada and his wife and three eldest daughters in Ireland.  The household totalled fifteen altogether, with Emma accompanied 'below stairs' by a cook, housemaid, under-housemaid, children's maid and a nurse.

Maybe, as a country girl, Emma sought somewhere a little less busy.  By 1911 she was a housemaid in a staff of just four, with a cook, ladies' maid and kitchenmaid.  The only family member present at the census was the 30-year-old daughter, Evelyn Maud Calverley Rushton, of independent means.  This family home was Allerthorpe Hall, just two miles from Pocklington!  Needless to say, from time to time they would have dealings with the local blacksmith.

Joseph and Emma were married on 4th February 1913 at St Mary's church in Scarborough.  Joseph's mother died the following summer, and the couple settled eventually in the village of Nunburnholme, just four miles from Pocklington.  Joseph was still running his blacksmith's forge there in 1939, and died in 1943.  Emma died in the summer that the war ended; they had no children.