Mother's Day

Charlotte Randall Barker Adams

Since today is only a week since Mother's Day, it seems appropriate to post a history of Charlotte Randall who lived in Old Whittington Hill when grandpa stopped by to meet her for the first time.

Life of Charlotte Randall

           Charlotte Randall grew up in the area surrounding the city of Chesterfield, primarily in the Nether Moor - Furnace Hill part of Wingerworth Parish.  Furnace Hill was named after the ironworks that stood there from the late 1700s to the early 1800s (Edwards).  Her father, George Randall, worked variously as a coal miner and agricultural laborer.  He likely also assisted the gamekeeper at Wingerworth Hall (Marriage Cert.).  Charlotte’s mother Sarah [Twelves] who lived into her 70s may have taught Charlotte to sew, a skill that she utilized as a seamstress while still young. Her great-granddaughter Belva Hall Francom wrote, “As a young girl she was a seamstress in Wingerworth Hall.  This people were called gentry or the upper middle class.  Through association with the upper class she became refined and cultured.”  While this claim can not be documented, photographs show her dressed in elaborately pleated and ruffled dresses.   

          Charlotte was the third of eight children and the second daughter.  The Randalls were quite poor, receiving assistance from the parish church.  The entire family may never have lived together under one roof as Charlotte, 17, and her sisters Hannah,15, and Harriett,12, were all working outside the home as servants when the 1861 Census was recorded.  Harriett’s work may have resulted in the initial introduction of the young couple. Charlotte’s little sister was working as a house servant for the Crofts family in Sutton cum Duckmanton with Frederick’s two brothers, Charles and Edwin, who were carters and so she may have had an opportunity to meet their older brother.

          At age 17 Charlotte had moved to the village of Barlborough to live and work for the Cast family. Cast was a butcher and a farmer who hired her on as a dairymaid.  Charlotte never spoke about milking, herding or tending dairy cattle, although she did reminisce in her later years about sewing for the gentry at Wingerworth Hall.  Perhaps the work wasn’t to her liking, but undoubtedly she learned how to perform a good day’s labor.  As a young widow this experience stood her in good shape to do the labor of a cleaning or charwoman.  Since Barlborough is at least ten miles from her home in Furnace Hill in Wingerworth Parish it is easy to imagine Charlotte walking the distance, stopping at Duckmanton to rest and visit with her sister before walking on to her parents’ home.  She apparently lived for a time in Duckmanton (Obituary).

Wingerworth Hall, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England

           One thing that becomes apparent is that family stuck together and supported one another. Census records show that siblings in the Randall families lived with each other as adults. Family connections were strong between the Randall syblings as well as between the Barker and Randall families, a necessity in times of difficulty.  Charlotte’s older sister Mary Randall married Frederick’s older brother Henry Barker; two sisters married two brothers.  James Randall stood as witness when Mary and Henry were married.  Charlotte’s younger sister Hannah stood as witness when she and Frederick were married.  Hannah and her husband George Bown welcomed the youngest Randall daughter, Selina, to live in their home when she was 15 and after her father had died.  In that same year 1871 it is recorded in the census records that Hannah and George also had visiting with them their nephew George Barker, age 5, the son of Frederick and Charlotte - he appears to just be visiting as he show up in the same census living with his parents.  When Selina Randall married George Newton, they in turn, provided a home for her brother George, who at 29 was single and working as an engine tenter at the iron works.  It is recorded in the 1891 census that James Randall as a 52 year old widower took in the wife and daughters of his brother Jabez when Jabez found work in Whittington.  While in Whittington Jabez boarded with Selina and George.  Charlotte’s mother, Sarah, had outlived two husbands and at age 70 she is found living on Whittington Hill with one daughter, Hannah Bown, living on one side and another daughter, Selina Newton on the other side.  Down the road lived another daughter Charlotte Barker.   It appears that with small homes of 4 rooms or less, especially if finances required a family to take on a boarder, some children or even the father may be sent off to work or to live with a married sibling.  It must have sometimes been difficult to share close quarters but the families worked together to provide for each other.

             Children were born to the Frederick and Charlotte over the next few years.  Fred worked at several different occupations to support the family.  Both George and John were born in the  Wingerworth area where the couple took up residence after their wedding.  John’s birth certificate lists his father’s occupation as general laborer and at the birth of George two years later as gardener.  He was working as a farm laborer six years later when Jabez was born.  When George was married he is registered as a farmer.  A history written by a great-granddaughter states that “as a child he lived on a large farm in Bolsover.  He learned to handle horses while on the farm and later became a horse trainer.” (Francom) By the time Charlotte gave birth to Jabez they were located in Mosbro or Mosbrough  north of Chesterfield in Eckington Parish. 

            While in Mosbro two tragedies befell Charlotte.  Frederick was thrown from a horse he was breaking and suffered fatal injuries. “ The accident happened in the spring of 1874; he lived as an invalid until Sept. 1874 when he died in Mosbro, Derbyshire, England. With three children younger than John at home, Charlotte had to find a way to make money.  “She made money taking in roomers”(Francom). The next few years were undoubtedly trying ones for Charlotte and her children.  Within eight years, however, another heartbreaking incident occurred.  In 1876 she moved to Whittington to live where she worked as a cleaning or charwoman (Birth Cert.). Soon afterward Jabez who was only six years old was injured, suffering burns on his abdomen, chest, neck, and arms.  Because water was heated on a stove, it is possible that he pulled scalding water over onto himself or a similar situation.  According to the death certificate he died with his mother in attendance in December of 1877 after bearing the pain for 14 days.  It must have seemed like the pain couldn’t be handled but Charlotte had a baby boy, Edgar to take care of.  Fortunately, she also had John, George and Annie Alice to share her grief. 

Charlotte and George Adams family.

           Charlotte must have developed a supportive friendship with George Adams about this time, also, as indicated by a photograph in which Annie Alice is identified as the young girl and the boy is probably Edgar. The 1881 Census of Whittington shows that John, 18, and George, 15, had been working as coal miners to assist their mother.  Annie Alice was listed as a scholar.  George and Charlotte were married in 1882.  This event took place in Sheffield, Yorkshire, but they return to Whittington where Charlotte had been living. Adams had been a bachelor until he married at the age of 32 into a ready-made family.  Of this union a son, Joseph Harry was born in 1884 and welcomed by the older brothers and sister.  After John and Edgar moved individually to the United States, a correspondence with Joe was maintained.  

            John boarded a steamship in 1882 to travel to Utah where he took up coal mining once again in order to save money to send for his sweetheart, Rose Bacon.  Members of the Mormon Church, they lived in Wyoming for a time and then moved back to Utah where they raised eight children to adulthood and buried four.  At times John had to board away from home to work the coal mines, at others he was able to find work as a city maintenance worker, a brickyard part-owner/foreman, or constable.

           

            George was able to find employment away from the coal mines.  By 1887 he had married Mary Jane Owen and was working as a wagon builder.  In the 1891 Census he was found, again, hewing coal, but when John’s son, Jack Barker, visited England in 1925 he was a bobby or policeman. George and Mary Jane had five children, the first two born in Nottinghamshire and the last three in Yorkshire. 

            Annie married Frank E. Beresforde who also worked as a miner or colliery laborer.  They had one child who was born in Whittington where they continued to live close to Charlotte.

            Edgar married Lilian May Hewett and they followed John to America where they lived with he and Rose for a time until they were settled.  He was a good carpenter and also worked with John in the brickyards loading brick.  They raised six children, the first being born in Whittington, Derbyshire, the second and third in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, and the last four in Utah. 

                                                                                   

            Joe moved with his wife, Jess, and son, Geoffrey, to North Wales where he was a furnace manager in an iron-works plant (Adams).

Old Whittington Hill

             George Adams was to remain Charlotte’s companion into old age where they still lived on Whittington Hill in Old Whittington when her grandson, Jack Barker came to visit in the mid 1920s.  Of that occasion he wrote,

When I met her in 1925 at 56 Old Whittington Hill near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, she was a little old lady about 85 years old.  I would go out and buy fish and chips and we would play dominos while eating the fish and chips.  Her husband, George Adams, was an old man about 80 years old. . . 

When I found 56 Old Whittington Hill, I knocked on the door.  It was in the morning and Grandpa Adams was still in bed.  Grandma went over to the stairway and called him.  She said, "Come on, old foggy, it is time to get up."   After a while he came paddling down the stairs into the kitchen.  Grandma told him I was John's boy from America.  He was glad to see me and I spent some time telling him about America.  He was very glad to listen to me talk.  I went to the golf course with him to watch them play golf.  We spent a lot of time at the golf course. . . 

Charlotte outlived her second husband.  At age 86 she wrote a letter to her granddaughter, Mahala Barker Hall, in which she stated that she was very lonely after his death. 

Note: 

The photograph of Wingerworth Hall is from a postcard. It was originally found on the Chesterfield Forum.

Family History Puzzle

Fitting the Puzzle Pieces Together

Unlike some of my ancestral lines, the Barkers and Bacons came to the States later in our history. As a result, we have many unidentified cousins in the UK yet to be found. Little by little, however, we are making connections. This blog is created to share what we know in order to find those lost cousins. Our John and Rose would have wanted it this way.

As a teenager I attended Barker reunions in mostly held in Kaysville, Utah, because this is where John Edwin Barker and Rose Hannah Bacon established their home. My grandpa, John E. Barker, Jr., and his siblings gathered with their families to honor ancestors and heritage. With the last of the children of those siblings now dwindling to just a few cousins, it is time to share our memories to a wider group, the descendents of Charlotte Barker Chapman, Annie Alice Barker Weaver, Mahala Eliza Barker Hall, Lucy Ann Barker Curtwright, Luella Barker Robinson, George Frederick Barker, John Edwin Barker, Jr., and Ruth Winona Barker Williams.

For many years Belva Hall Francom and Viola Chapman McEwen were foremost in dedicating their time to researching family history. They did so without the benefit of computers, Internet, databases, blogs, e-mail and other digital methods of storage and communication. They did it by traveling to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints genealogical center in Salt Lake City, combing the catalog for books and films, and corresponding by postal mail with genealogists and church archivists in England to collect data. At the passing of Belva, Vickie Prows and I obtained the generous of permission of the Francoms to photocopy her records. By the time Viola died, the LDS Church was in the infancy states of Family Search and her work was put online by her son David. To these dear ladies we owe a debt of gratitude.

As I began my own original research in the 1970s, I spread before me the work of both ladies. There were wills, church and civil records along with family group sheets that did not entirely fit together. The family's last verified names were John Barker christened 13 August, 1732, in Bolsover, Derbyshire, England, and his wife Mary Bell who were married 26 May 1757.  Viola had compiled a general history of Barkers in the Derbyshire area. She also distributed a family group sheet of John Barker born about 1706 and his wife Anne Barker born about 1710 including their children John Barker (1732), Elizabeth Barker (1736), and Anne Barker (1744). Belva had painstakingly typed her searches including the transcripts of Bolsover wills taken from microfilmed copies of the originals for Elizabeth Barker, 11 October, 1849; John Barker, 12 October, 1812; Francis Barker, 22 April, 1790; Francis Barker, 23 May, 1766; John Barker, 12 April, 1810; Margaret Barker, 28 April, 1814. While some of the puzzle pieces fit, others did not.

I continued to do family history work over the decades. A lingering feeling that the wills fit into the family of John (1732) Barker kept bring me back to examine them only to be driven away each time in greater confusion. Having joined the Derbyshire Family History Society, I came in contact and began corresponding with Mike Spathaky in 1991 who had compiled a Bolsover surname database largely from Bolsover Court and other land records.This database is now found on the Genuki site. In one letter Mike stated, "Barker is clearly the most common surname in Bolsover in the seventeenth century...This is why wills, where they exist, provide so much better evidence of relationships across generations than parish registers, especially where there are several people of the same name around."

In frustration I dumped all my records on Mike in the hope that someone more familiar with Bolsover and its people could look at the data with a fresh eye. A short time later and with utter delight I opened up an envelope from England to find a neatly handwritten pedigree of my Barker line. It appeared that John (Mary Bell) Barker who we thought to be the son of John and Anne Barker was really the son of Francis and Mary Barker. The John Barker christened in 1732 found on Viola's group sheet was  All the pieces fit together but in a different order than originally thought. Until the time that the wills fit our pieces together, the family had produced family group sheets using only church records. Because Barker in great numbers lived in the Bolsover area over hundreds of years, only wills could pull together the correct ones. For this vision I am beholden to Mike. Now, through the wills we see that wills at Shittlewoodside  and Coppice in the farm at  Woodside Coppice which Viola had researched. When I visited Bolsover with my sister and brother-in-law, Amy and Brent, I was able to take a picture of the farmland previously owned and cultivated by our ancestors
.

Looking towards Woodside c1990s

Undoubtedly the earlier John (abt 1706) and Anne Barker (1710) married in April 1727 with children John, Elizabeth and Ann, are indeed our people as well. Perhaps they are the descendents of Humphrey Barker and Hannah Cantrill. Mike's records show that Derbyshire was teeming with Barkers.Both John Barker lines are found on the Family Search web site. My brother, John, and I have in recent years been attempting to put together related Barker family group sheets mainly from other wills. We have been privileged to see that temple work has also been done for these side lines as we feel they are cousins of one degree or another.

Barkers of Bolsover

Barker Farms 1600 to 2000

            Barkers for generations have farmed the land. It’s intriguing to believe that love of the land may have been inherited from ancestors who first worked Derbyshire manor farms in the sixteenth century. Perhaps this trait explains why my father, while serving as an elementary school principal in Utah for forty years, insisted on also maintaining a cherry orchard, hay fields and a few animals. Are other Barker descendants around the world tending rose gardens or vegetable plots as evidence to those who tailed in medieval times?  

            The name Barker is one of the most common names in Bolsover in the 1600s. Manor court records of Bolsover and Clowne now collected in the Nottingham Records Office list many references. In 1658 on April 12 Edward Barker and Humphrey Barker of Clowne were fined 2 pence for not appearing at the Leet. Edward, Nicholas and Thomas Barker were each assessed 4 pence for breaking the assize of ale. On April 9, 1683 Edward was again fined at court, 4 pence for encroaching with a house and yard on the Lord's wests and 4 pence for encroaching on Shittlewood Coon. While others on the records such as Henry, Peter, Richard, Robert,  Thomas and William Barker were named for the offenses of not appearing at court or being party to a neighborhood dispute, Edward seems to have been repeatedly building without permission. During the 1683 Leet he and George Hall paid 2d apiece for stairs. His offenses must not have been too serious, however. As recorded in the diary of Benjamin Grainger of Bolsover which preserved by the Derbyshire Archeological Natural History Society, Edward was appointed Thirdborough for Bolsover, an officer of the court, in 1694.

            The men mentioned in the seventeenth century Leet and Baron Court records may have been sons of Thomas (cl520), George (cl530) or Peter (cl540) who left wills in Bolsover during the period 1569 to 161o. George Barker's will written September 8, 1599 in the eighth year of the reign "of our most gracious Queen Elizabeth", states that he is a yoeman of Oxroft in the county of Derby. He leaves to his sons the following: Nicholas - one great gun, John - one cow, and Edward - one cow. To Alice, his wife, he leaves the "use /of / the farm possessed by me during her life". Among the goods and chattels inventoried at his death in November of that same year are four oxen, four kynne, one sow and eight pigs, corn and hay at the house, coverlettes, mattresses, sheets and other linens. The sum and total came to 36 pounds, 3 shillings, 8 pence.

Looking over a hedge to Oxcroft. c1990s

            Oxcroft, an the northern edge of Bolsover parish, was a separate manor from Bolsover. It belonged to the Dukes of Devonshire whereas Bolsover Manor was in the hands of the Dukes of Portland (earlier Dukes of Newcastle). Both lines descended from Bess of Hardwick. A map of Oxcroft Manor made by William Senior for the first Duke of Devonshire in 1611 names seven tenants residing on croft or close. They are listed as John Barker, Humphrey Barker, Francis Barker among others. The name Henry Barker also occurs on a separate survey. Presumably these are the same men or sons of those found in earlier court records. Crofters were farmers who rented sections of their lord's large estate. 

Oxcroft 1611 Map now in the possession of the present Duke of Devonshire located at Chatsworth.

             My direct ancestry can be traced to Humphrey Barker and Hannah Cantrill married June 2, 1668 in neighboring Ashover Parish, Derbyshire. Parish records describe them as Humphrey of Dicklant and Hannah of Baslow. The couple were parents of a family of ten children born from 1669 to 1692 in the same parish. We trace their son, Francis (1692), back in Bolsover from a will left in 1766 which lists a wife, Mary, and two surviving sons, Francis (1727) and John (cl730). The sons inherited two farms at Coppice and Woodside respectively, the last by way of the father's late sister, Patience Godley. 

            The first son, Francis (1727), married Margaret Pass September 12, 1759 in Bolsover. They died without issue. Francis will directs that after the death of his “loving wife” all goods and tenant rights to the farm at Coppice go to “my nephew, John Barker (1765), now living with me”. By the time Margaret dies in 1814 the nephew, John, is also deceased so she wills her estate to John's wife, Elizabeth, with the instructions:  “... after the decease of the said, Elizabeth Barker, I give and bequeath the same ... unto John Barker the only son of my late nephew”.

 

Bolsover Parish Churchyard c1990s

            The second son of Francis Barker Sr., John (cl730), married Mary Bell May 26, 1757 in Bolsover. This couple also were parents to ten children, five females and five males.  Because the heirs of this son, John (1765), were to inherit the Coppice farm from his Uncle Francis as detailed above, the second farm at Shittlewood Side was entrusted to a spinster daughter, Elizabeth (1774). In his will dated October 12, 1812 the father states, “I, John Barker of Shittlewood Side in the parish of Bolsover in the county of Derby and diocese of Litchfield and Coventry, farmer,...give and bequeath to each of my four daughters ... the legacy or sum of twenty_five pounds. Also, I give and bequeath to my grandson, John Barker, son of my late son, John Barker of Coppice deceased, the sum of two guineas ... Also, I give and bequeath ... to my daughter, Elizabeth Barker ... whereas /she/ hath greatly assisted me in the management of the farm I now occupy under His Grace the Duke of Portland ... the whole of the tenant right ...”

            As proven by wills, farms in the Bolsover area were tended by Barker farmers both male and female for generations. My great-great grandfather, Frederick John Barker, was born December 12, 1837 in Bolsover Parish, the sixth of fourteen children. Although history does not detail the reason why, he, as did other generations, eventually moved from the farms that in previous times had been managed as part of privileged estates. Farming, however, was still in his blood. At his death at the age of 37 the certificate lists his occupation as farm laborer. He died in Mosbro, Eckington of fever which tradition states resulted from an accident with a horse. His son, my great grandfather, moved as a young man to America, first to Wyoming and then to Utah. He worked as a coal miner but something green must have stirred the spirit, reaching down the centuries; he always maintained a garden plot and chickens. Three generations later my brothers, his great grandsons own a plant nursery in the town of Fruit Heights.

Nursery produce: hanging baskets, Mountain Road, Fruit Heights, Utah. 2012.

Note: This article written by Fawn Barker Morgan was originally published in the Derbyshire Family History Society newsletter c1990s.