Adéle Emm - Tracing Your Trade & Craftsman Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians

Tracing Your Army Ancestors

Simon Fowler

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Robert Burlison

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

Rachel Bellerby

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Phil Tomaselli

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Keith Gregson

Tracing Your Black Country

Ancestors

Michael Pearson

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Vivien Teasdale

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Di Drummond

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Phil Tomaselli

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Stephen Wade

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Richard Brooks and Matthew Little

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Rosemary Wenzerul

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Gill Blanchard

Tracing Your Ancestors

Simon Fowler

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Mike Royden

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Ian Maxwell

Tracing British Battalions on the

Somme

Ray Westlake

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Stephen Wade

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Mark Crail

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Jonathan Oates

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Anthony Burton

Tracing Your Northern Irish

Ancestors

Ian Maxwell

Tracing Your Service Women

Ancestors

Mary Ingham

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Jane Cox

Tracing the Rifle Volunteers

Ray Westlake

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Stephen Wade

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Sue Wilkes

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Jonathan Brown

Tracing Your House History

Gill Blanchard

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Janice Tait and David Fletcher

Tracing Your Family History on the Internet

Chris Paton

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Michelle Higgs

Tracing Your Second World War

Ancestors

Phil Tomaselli

Tracing Your Channel Islands

Ancestors

Marie-Louise Backhurst

Tracing Great War Ancestors

DVD

Pen & Sword Digital & Battlefield History TV Ltd

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors: The First World War

Sarah Paterson

Tracing Your British Indian

Ancestors

Emma Jolly

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors

Simon Fowler

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Kathy Chater

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Michelle Higgs

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Jonathan Oates

Tracing Your Merchant Navy

Ancestors

Simon Wills

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

Sue Wilkes

Tracing Your Ancestors through

Death Records

Celia Heritage

Tracing Your West Country

Ancestors

Kirsty Gray

Tracing Your First World War

Ancestors

Simon Fowler

Tracing Your Army Ancestors

2nd Edition

Simon Fowler

Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet

Chris Paton

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Anthony Adolph

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Jonathan Oates

Dedication
For Pasqualle

*

First published in Great Britain in 2015
PEN & SWORD FAMI LY HI STORY
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS

Copyright Adle Emm, 2015

ISBN 978 1 47382 362 4
eISBN 9781473856240

The right of Adle Emm to be identified as Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Social History, Transport, True Crime, Claymore Press, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Wharncliffe.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact
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I started researching my family history at seventeen when I wondered where my silly (as I then thought) surname came from. In those days, decades before www.freebmd.org and online census records, you pulled down large, red tomes of birth, marriage and death registers from shelves in St Catherines House. Many of my forebears were agricultural labourers but, sprinkled liberally throughout, were butchers, bakers, shoemakers, coal merchants, drapers and ironmongers, some of whom made vast sums of money and retired to the suburbs, whilst others scraped a living into their seventies.

We all have someone in our family history who followed similar occupations; the butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker of nursery rhyme fame. This book is about their life, training and working conditions, as well as how to flesh out their lives from records, many of which are sparse and difficult to locate. People with money or lineage left records behind, but those living a hand-to-mouth existence following a trade or craft often didnt and therein lies the fun of the chase. Finding their name is exciting. Seeing their signature, as I did for my great-great-grandfather in an auctioneers 1838 account book is wondrous. A year later, aged thirty-eight, he was dead from inflammation of the brain, possibly meningitis, an illness which could carry us off even now. A bittersweet revelation.

Websites were correct at the time of writing. Either the photos came from family albums, for which I thank my ancestors, hoarders like myself, or I took them. The copyright remains with me. I must thank Nan Cawthorne, a fellow Emm and as indefatigable an Emm chaser as myself.

David Beasley, Librarian, Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths

Cambridgeshire Archives for permission to reproduce their archives

Katie Cavanagh, Stockport Hat Works. Photos of planking kettle, hatters bow and hatters blocks courtesy of the Stockport Hat Works and Stockport Metropolitan Museum

Nancy Cawthorne for her knowledge of the saddle and harness industry and fabulous suggestions

Simon Grant-Jones, blacksmith

Dr Miles Lambert, Senior Curator, Gallery of Costume, Manchester Art Gallery

The National Archives and British Library for researching and answering my strange questions

Geraint Parfitt, clogmaker

Rebecca Shawcross, Shoe Resources Officer, Northampton Museums and Art Gallery, for reading and revising . Any mistakes are mine

Robert Spurrett for reading through the manuscript and helpful suggestions.

Tinker, tailor, soldier sailor,
Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

(Traditional counting game)

The memory of our forebears occupations lingers on in surnames: Butcher, Baker, Thatcher, Potter, Carpenter, Smith, Cooper, Tailor et al are common not only in English, but also elsewhere. Bcker (baker), Schmidt (smith), Schneider (tailor) in German; Fournier (man of the oven), Boulanger (baker), Lefevre (iron smith) and Chevalier (knight) in France. Tailor has an equivalent in over twenty languages, to name a few: Krawiec/Kravitz in Polish, Darzi in Hindi and Urdu, Kleermaker in Dutch and Sastre in Spanish. Some surnames refer to trades and crafts which no longer exist: Tozer from combing and carding wool and Walker from fulling (cleaning wool for clothmaking). Occupational surnames appear in the fifty most common UK surnames as compiled by Dr Muhammad Adnam and Alistair Leak of University College London from the 2007 Electoral Register. Smith is first, Taylor (Tailor) fifth, Walker and Wright twelfth and thirteenth respectively.