A Farmer's Life: The Diary of James Higginson aged 57½ (part 2)

Read Part 1 of A Farmer's Life: The Diary of James Higginson aged 57½ here.

The diary covering 1817-19 gives us an insight into a particular 15 months in James Higginson’s life but what else do we know?  We can tell from his writing that he was educated.  His diary entries show that he employed several men, his financial dealings indicate he was reasonably well off (he loaned money to friends and received dividends), he was able to take time away from the farm to visit his brother who lived some distance away, and we know he liked to socialise, but we hold other sources that add more information.

At the time this diary was started, James and Mary would have been 57 and 42 years old and had been married for 17 years.  They had three sons, Charles, 16, who worked on the farm, Edward 11, and James, 7.  We know this because their marriage, their burials, and their children’s baptisms are in the parish registers for St Bartholomew, Barrow.

When James died in 1835 at the age of 75, he left everything to Mary.  We have his will which he signed just a few days before he died.  By then, the man who had written so neatly in the small notebook was too unwell to sign his name and could only make his mark.

We know that Mary continued at the farm until her death in 1861 as the Tithe Apportionment of 1839 lists her as Occupier.  Searching our Tithe Map site using her name will show you the extent of the land the Higginson’s farmed.

We also know that by 1851 her sons Charles and James no longer lived in the family home.  Census returns for 1851 and 1861 show that her middle son Edward still lived with her and helped run the farm.  In 1851 the household consists of: Mary, Farmer of 86 acres, Edward, Farmer’s son, plus a Dairymaid, Housemaid, Waggoner and Cowman.  The next census in 1861 was the year Mary died.  She was 86 years old and presumably needed more help running the household as her niece Alice Woodier is included as Housekeeper.  There was also a Dairymaid, Housemaid, Carter, Cow Boy (aged 14) and Stable Boy (aged 12).

The newspapers of the time help to flesh out events that James only mentions in passing such as the deaths of Princess Charlotte and Queen Charlotte, mentioned previously, giving us a taste of life in the early 19th century.

One particularly gruesome event was recorded briefly on Saturday 9th May 1818.  It came between a sentence about his cows and a note on the price of butter: ‘My wife & her Son James at Chester seeing the Two men to suffer’.  Hold on - what?  The Chester Courant of 12th May 1818 carries a report of the execution by hanging of 2 men, Abraham Rosthern and Isaac Moors.  Rosthern had stolen items from his employer, namely 7 pictures, 1 looking glass, 5 silver teaspoons, 1 pair of silver sugar tongs, a drinking horn, a quantity of jaconet muslin, gold thread and several other articles.  Moors had broken into a house and stolen various articles of linen and drapery.

The Courant reported that a great crowd came to watch the executions, estimating that 6000 people attended.  In amongst them were Mary Higginson and her youngest son James.  The parish records have James being born and baptised in August 1809, so in May 1818 he would only have been 8 years old!  Whether he was brought along as a form of entertainment or to terrify him into living an honest life, we’ll never know.

 

All of these items and more are available to view at Cheshire Record Office in Chester.

Monumental Inscriptions

A few months ago, whilst I was producing documents for customers in the searchroom, a customer ordered D5104 which the catalogue describes, accurately but somewhat drily, as “1 folder: Transcripts of monumental inscriptions made from tombs and printed sources, various Cheshire parishes, 17c-20c”

When I found the folder and opened it to check its contents it looked like hundreds of tiny typed copies of inscriptions in small bundles, each one held together by a paper clip.  Unsurprisingly, not all the paper clips were still in the right place. Using the description and numbers of items in each theme from the full paper catalogue that the customer had seen here http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/h/8005a51f-0e4c-4234-a3a4-361fd9eed21d it didn't take long to make sense of the jumbled slips, and present the customer with what she expected. To prevent this happening again and to make the experience of reading them a little less chaotic in future, we decided to copy the slips onto A4 sheets by theme, which gave us the chance to experience a little flavour of what lay within!

We’ll start with the benevolent Joseph Bleamire, Coachman, 1760 (buried in Barthomley):

Coachman to/JOHN CREWE Esq./left by his last Will and /Testament
the Sum of Sixty/Pounds the Interest of which/to be laid out
weekly in brown/Bread of the value of two/Pence per Loaf and to
be/distributed in the Parish Church of Barthomley/
every/ Sunday immediately after/morning Service to the Poor/of
the Township of Crewe.

Then, how about the somewhat productive Sir Henry Bunbury (17th Century, from Thornton-le-Moors):

He married two Wives: first Anne/by whom he had yssue 3 sonnes
And 6 daughters/and Martha by whom he had/yssue 7 sonnes and 3
daughters.

And the even more eye watering Lady Katherine Clegg from Heswall:

She was married on the 22nd July 1650 and died on the 26th
August 1666 aged 39. She bore 15 children, 13 sons and two
daughters.

Next how about poor Latitia Leyland, Born and Died October 1st 1837 in Cheadle:

Sweet Babe, she glanc’d into our world to see
A sample of our misery,
Then turn’d away her languid eye,
To drop a tear or two and die
The cup of life to her lips she press’d
Found the taste bitter and refus’d the rest.
Sweet Babe no more but Seraph now
Before the shrine behold her bow,
Adore the grace that brought her there
Without a wish – without a care,
That wash’d her soul in Calvary’s stream
That shorten’d life’s distressing dream.
Short pain – short grief – dear Babe was thine
Now joys eternal and divine.

If you’ve managed to compose yourself again after reading that one, we can return to issues of mind boggling productivity with Ann Barker of Middlewich:

Here lies Ann, Wife of Daniel
Barker, who died July 3, 1778,
Aged 77
Some have children and some have none,
But here lies the Mother of Twenty one
Time for reflection in Church Lawton where “it is said that an iron tombstone by the main gate of the churchyard bore the following inscription (long since illegible)”:
He was a brute of a husband and
led me a shocking life
Another desperately dispiriting pair now, firstly Martha Clark of Bidston who died in 1846, aged 21:
Nineteen years/a Maid/Two years a Wife./Nine days/a Mother/And
then /Departed Life.

Secondly, here is poor William Pownall of Mobberley who died in 1864, aged 20:

All you that stop this Stone to see
Pray think how sudden death took me
I in my youth God call’d away
Just before my wedding day

More happily, it is pleasing to discover that some lived just a little longer. Joseph Watson, ‘Park-keeper’ died in 1753, aged 104 and is buried in Disley:

He was Park Keeper to Mr Peter Leigh, at Lyme,
more than 64 years and was ye first
that Perfected the Art of Driving ye Stags.
Here lyeth also the body of Elizabeth his wife,
aged 94 years, to whom
he had been married 75 years.
Reader, take notice, the longest life is short.

A note is added stating “He was born at Mosley Common in Lancashire.  He claimed that he drank a gallon of malt liquor every day for sixty years”.  Five other centenarians are also recorded, although, sadly perhaps, their level of alcohol consumption isn’t.
If you are interested in Monumental Inscriptions in a more structured sense then please note that a search on our catalogue for that term lists over 400 items in total.  Please also be aware that we have a large collection of individual volumes on open access in the public searchroom  that each relate to a different Parish in the County.