Genealogy Chat

Shirley and Sylvia, I will certainly research this. Lots of my family were probably affected.

Thanks

Margaret

Hi Margaret


If you are researching the Cotton Famine in Oldham don't overlook the website www.spinningtheweb.org.uk it is so informative.


British History online typed into search is also very good.

Also, Project Guttenberg typed into search click on the online book catalogue then type in the area you are looking for in Title words, forget typing in the author.

You should then get some info up which you can click on. I find this a very good website.

Hope you do.

Shirley

Many of my dad's ancestors moved TO Oldham from a small village in Buckingham from about 1860 through the 1870s and 1880s to work in the cotton mills!

You will also find many other people from the same village or a nearby vilage, and many of them connected by marriage, also moved to Oldham .................... so the cotton famine didn't last long.




Margaret ......... the American Civil War caused a shortage of cotton in the UK as cotton was not harvested and sent over. So the Liverpool shippers went broke, and the cotton mills went on at least short time, if not shut down.


Then business boomed once again, and people were needed to run the machinery ...... until new and better machines put them out of work again!




I grew up in Oldham, and was there in the late 50s and 60s when they were closing all the mills down. I left the UK in 1967 .... but believe many of the mills all over the north are now "des res", in real estate terminology!!




sylvia

Well Shirley and Sue, I think this is a far more interesting aspect of family history than just finding names and dates.

But how do you know there was a cotton famine or TB?

Love

Margaret

A good idea, Shirley. It gives us ideas on why families migrate from their areas, diseases and wars. So many of my OH's family moved from rural areas to London obviously for work. Not only one member but quite often followed by siblings and eventually elderly parents. A few of my ancestors died at an early age due to TB and also infant mortality was rife.
Sue

Hello


My 3xGGrandfather Joseph medley with his 2nd wife Hannah or so I thought was his wife and children are on the 1861 census in Oldham Sally aged 11 is one their daughters. I thought they were married around 1850.

With a lot of help from member "Chrystal Tips" who found the marriage of Joseph and Hannah in Manchester Library dated 1864 I was able to continue my search.

I would urge everyone to do some social history for their families.

Around the early 1860s there was a cotton famine in Lancashire and many mills closed making people out of work and destitute.

I believe Joseph and Hannah were married in 1863 so they could claim poor relief. Sally died aged 14 in 1864 of Atrophy which is a wasting away of the body.

I have never found any of the family in the 1871, 1881, 1891 or 1901 censuses so I don't know what happened to them - yet.

I thought you might like to know there are good reasons to look at the social history and widen your searches for your ancestors.