⇐ Part 1.

James Ridgway, husband and father

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

— The Village Blacksmith, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published 1840.

James fathered six children in all. His first wife Ann née Jones bore him two daughters and three sons before her death, when aged just 39, on 6 March 1846. Those children were Harriet Ridgway (baptised 30 September 1838), Ellen (baptised 16 February 1840), William (baptised 17 October 1841), George (born in 1843, but no baptism record found), and James junior (baptised 26 January 1845).

None of these five children remained in Waters Upton. William did not stray far: like his father he became a blacksmith, but in a move which was the complete opposite of that made by James, after a spell of smithing at Ollerton (1861 census ⇗) he settled in Ercall Magna parish (1871 ⇗, 1881 ⇗, 1891 ⇗ and 1901 ⇗ censuses). William married ⇗ Emma Lawley, a daughter of fellow blacksmith Henry Lawley and his wife Jane, who I mentioned in Part 1 of this article. I did promise that I would return to them!

Ellen’s various jobs in service are took her to Staffordshire (1861 census ⇗), Yorkshire (1871 census ⇗), and quite possibly other parts of the country too (I have yet to find her on the 1881 census), before she returned to Shropshire and, like her brother William, settled in Ercall Magna (1891 ⇗, 1901 ⇗ and 1911 ⇗ censuses). Ellen did not marry. Her sister Harriet on the other hand wed ⇗ coach builder Richard Denchfield at Edgbaston, Warwickshire, on 24 May 1868, and lived with him at Balsall Heath (1871 ⇗, 1881 ⇗, 1891 ⇗, 1901 ⇗ and 1911 ⇗ censuses).

The Ridgway siblings who moved the furthest however were without doubt George and James junior, who emigrated to New Zealand and became farmers (a story for another time perhaps).

Some five and half years after the loss of his first wife, James Ridgway married ⇗ Harriet Mayne Knot, daughter of cooper Richard Knott, at Birmingham St Phillips on 3 November 1851. James stated that he was living in Bull Street at the time, but that was likely only a short term residence purely for the purposes of the nuptials.

Ridgway and Knott: Keeping it in the family

Harriet, incidentally, was James’s sister-in-law, his younger brother George Ridgway having wed ⇗ Harriet’s younger sister Elizabeth Mayne Knott on 29 December 1846, also at Birmingham St Phillips. George, whose baptism at Waters Upton on 30 May 1824 I have already mentioned, followed James’s example and became a blacksmith like their father, but he remained in Cold Hatton (1851 ⇗, 1861 ⇗, 1871 ⇗, 1881 ⇗ and 1891 ⇗ censuses).

I wonder how much of a surprise it was when Harriet discovered that she was pregnant and due to give birth to her first child at the age of 42. Charles John Ridgway was baptised at Waters Upton on 15 Apr 1855, and as we have seen he remained with his parents and entered the family business. He was enumerated as John Ridgway, a 16-year-old blacksmith’s assistant, when the 1871 census was taken, and as a fully-fledged blacksmith (26 and still known as John) ten years later in 1881.

Another Ridgway family was also living in Waters Upton in 1881, headed by 26-year-old Alfred Ridgway. Alfred was James and Harriet’s nephew and (Charles) John’s double first cousin, a son of George Ridgway and Elizabeth, née Knott. He was a wheelwright, so it is entirely possible that he worked in conjunction with his uncle James and cousin Charles John at the Waters Upton Smithy. Like his uncle, after settling in Waters Upton he stayed there until he died. He appeared on the 1891 census as a wheelwright once more, but the censuses of 1901, 1911 and 1921 show that he had broadened his business and became a carpenter and wheelwright.

The 1921 census showed that Alfred was then living at 8 Waters Upton. An entry in the National Probate Calendar for 1925 ⇗ shows that he continued to reside at the same address up to his death (on 2 August that year). His wife Sarah Ann, née Woolley, survived him and was still living at Number 8 when the 1939 Register was taken on 29 September 1939. She lived right through the Second World War before following her late husband to grave on Christmas Eve 1945.

Carry On Smithing: Charles John Ridgway takes over

James Ridgway, blacksmith to the people of Waters Upton from at least 1837,  died on 24 February 1890 aged 78. Did he carry on smithing right to the end? In 1887 he was named as the occupier of “A FREEHOLD HOUSE and BLACKSMITH’S SHOP, with Garden and Appurtenances, situate in the Sandholes, in the village of Waters Upton” when these properties were once again put up for sale by auction. So it is entirely possible that he was still toiling at the forge in his mid-70s. On the other hand, it is perhaps also possible that as the senior Ridgway the occupancy of these properties would still have been under his name even if he had retired.

On James’s death, if not a little before, Charles John Ridgway took over the ‘family business’ and supported his widowed mother Harriet, who lived with him until her own passing on 21 March 1903 at the grand old age of 90.

Under the name John Ridgway, he appeared in the 1891 census and in trade directories for 1891 and 1895 as the blacksmith of Waters Upton. He was not always the only blacksmith in the village during that period. An inquest held at Waters Upton in 1890 (about which I will shortly post an article) received evidence from, amongst others, Walter Welsh who began his short statement by saying “I am a blacksmith, and live at Waters Upton.” I suspect he was working at the Ridgway smithy, but had not been doing so for very long as he was not enumerated in the parish on the 1891 census. (He may have been the 22-year-old Walter G Welch living with his parents and a sister at Marbury in Cheshire when that census was taken; both he and his father were blacksmiths.)

By census time in 1901 Charles had reclaimed his original forename, being enumerated as Charles J Ridgway. And having reclaimed his birth name, for the most part he kept it. He was plain John in Kelly’s Directory of 1905, but appeared as Charles John Ridgway, blacksmith, in the directories of 1909, 1913, 1917 and 1922, and on the 1911 and 1921 censuses. Did he actually retire, or did he keep working to the end? He died, unmarried, at the age of 68, on 11 February 1924, leaving effects valued at £1803 19s 10d. I think it is fair to conclude that the Ridgway ‘Vulcans’ of Waters Upton lived long and prospered.

Toiling,–rejoicing,–sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.

— The Village Blacksmith, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published 1840.

Tools of the trade

At the time when I published this article in 2020, my searches of the British Newspaper Archive ⇗ have not produced any newspaper reports relating to the Ridgway blacksmithing business in Waters Upton. I had however found items relating to blacksmiths in Shropshire more generally, including the fact that when established rural smiths advertised for men to work for them, they tended to look for those who were “steady”, “used to country work”, and a “good shoer” or a “good nailer on”.

Since 2020, additions to the BNA have enabled me to find advertisements placed by the Ridgways of Waters Upton. James, in 1882, wanted “a steady Man, for the country; must be a good shoer, and one used to the implement trade preferred.” (Charles) John, when advertising for a young man to work for him in 1889, did not include any requirements regarding experience. In 1891 however, he stated that he wanted a young man who was “a good shoer. and used to country work.” He had identical requirements in 1899, 1903, and in 1919 (when he sought a “steady Man” rather than a young one).

I have still not found any references to the tools used by of Waters Upton Vulcans, so the notice I found relating to a sale by auction elsewhere in Shropshire, in 1884, is still the next best thing. The sale consisted of “a Capital Lot of BLACKSMITHS’ TOOLS (in good condition), excellent anvil (nearly new), 4cwt. 1qr. 15lbs; Pair of 36in. Bellows (with frame and piping), 4 Blacksmiths’ Vices, &c., 75 dozen new Horse Shoes (various), a 3ft, 6in. Grindstone and frame, Drilling Machines, and other useful lots.” (Wellington Journal, 12 April 1884, page 1.)

Postscript: After the Ridgways

Kelly’s Directories for 1926, 1929, 1934, 1937 and 1941 show that the successor to Charles John Ridgway as blacksmith of Waters Upton was John Leech. The 1939 Register provides more details: John H Leech, born 6 August 1897, occupation “Shoeing & General Smith” was living with his wife and children at 4 Hanford Terrace in Waters Upton. A native of Shrewsbury, by 1911 John Henry Leech was living with his parents and siblings in the parish of Stanton on Hine Heath. Aged 13, he was an apprentice wheelwright. Maybe he switched masters after that and became an apprentice to a blacksmith, or perhaps as a wheelwright he picked up metal working skills which stood him in good stead when he later turned his hand to shoeing and smithing. He died on 3 January 1982, his death being registered in Shrewsbury Registration District, and was buried at Waters Upton.

I ended the original version of this article with questions regarding John Leech and the final decades of the blacksmith trade in Waters Upton, and concluded by saying there was: “still more to find out before I can close the book on the blacksmiths of Waters Upton.” With information that has come to light since then I have answers to some of my questions, and possibly enough material for “Blacksmiths in Waters Upton – Part 3!”

Updated Feb 2026.

Picture credits. Blacksmith in his smithy: From an 1885 edition of Longfellow’s The Village Blacksmith; taken from the British Library Flickr photostream ⇗, no known copyright restrictions. Gravestones of Ridgway family members at Waters Upton: Both photos by the author.

On now to the second of the two extended groups of Waters Uptonians with kinship connections.

Titley, Atcherley, Wase, Dickin, Icke, Griffiths, Harper, Shakeshaft, and Gregory connections

These are the relatives and others who were linked in one way or another to 14 year old Thomas Titley, living in household 27 in 1841 with his father John Titley (and a servant, Mary Griffiths, regarding whom I will say more shortly). The first sub-group of these people are those to whom Thomas was related (however remotely) through his late mother Mary Titley née Atcherley (who was also my 2x great grandmother).

Here we see these Waters Upton residents:

• Mary Atcherley’s maternal aunt Charlotte Shuker (née Wase) in household 25 with her husband Thomas Shuker (who was of independent means) and a servant. Whether these Shukers were related to William, Alice and Thomas of household 26 I do not know, but what a coincidence if they weren’t!
• Mary’s maternal aunt Elizabeth Dickin (née Wase), widow of John Dickin, in household 2 with her son and daughter John Dickin (a landowner and farmer with 7 servants, one of whom – John Pidgeon – appears later in this article) and Ann Dickin, neither of whom were married.
• Mary’s first cousin John Atcherley, a tailor, the sole occupant of household 7.
• Mary’s first cousin Robert Atcherley, an agricultural labourer, the only denizen of household 37.
• The parents-in-law of Mary’s brother Robert Atcherley, William Icke and Eleanor (née Icke, almost certainly a relative of her husband) in household 41, a public house, with their son, Mary’s brother-in-law, Robert Icke, and three servants.

The second sub-group of Thomas Titley’s kin are those related to him through his father John.

In this, our final chart, the following are shown:

• John Titley’s brother-in-law James Gregory in household 34, with his widowed mother Elizabeth Gregory née Hughes, wife Sarah (née Davies), and children Emma, Sarah, James, Elizabeth and Mary (plus servant Samuel Allen, who we will see again soon).
• John’s paternal aunt Jane Harper née Titley in household 3, with husband William Harper and children Charles and George. I am not aware of any connection between these Harpers and those of household 8 (William, wife Martha, and children Elizabeth and Sarah).
• John’s uncle William Griffiths, widower of John’s paternal aunt Lydia, in household 35 with granddaughter Lydia Titley (age 15), married daughter Jane Shakeshaft, son-in-law John Shakeshaft, and their daughter Elizabeth (plus a guest, Samuel Harrison, who does not appear to have been a relative). There was also one other person in this household, who was definitely a relative – I will return to her later!
• In the Titley’s own home the aforementioned servant was John’s first cousin Mary Griffiths; a daughter of William Griffiths and (unmarried) mother of Lydia Griffiths.

That’s a group of 30 people spread across 9 households (2, 3, 7, 25, 27, 34, 35, 37 and 41) with varying degrees of kinship between them. And if the Elizabeth Matthews (1747–1818) who married Joseph Titley was related to the Sarah Matthews (1766–1815) who wed William Pascall (see Part 1 of this article), this group would link up with the first one. That’s an intriguing possibility as it would give us a single group of 65 people (out of a total of 226) across 19 household (out of 41)!

Less complex connections

Having looked at the more tangled trees, let’s move on to the less complicated cases of kinship within and across households. Mary Worrall for instance, a resident of household 24 with Joseph and Martha Wilks (or Wilkes), was that couple’s granddaughter through their daughter Elizabeth Wilkes (wife of James Worrall), who was not resident in the parish.

Elizabeth Pickin, wife of John Pickin in household 36, was the daughter of Thomas and Ann Felton, who lived close by in household 33.

As we have seen, some of the young servants of Waters Upton were children of families living in other households in the parish; two more examples follow. First, residing with farmer John Dickin in household 2, was teenager John Pidgeon whose family was living in household 19. The young Pidgeon had evidently flown the nest but settled not far away. Incidentally, William Cowley, part of the Pidgeon household in 1841, was the pre-marital son of William Pidgeon’s wife Martha, née Cowley.

Another servant of interest is 11-year-old Samuel Allen, who in 1841 was ensconced with tailor James Gregory and family in household 34. Despite his seemingly low status, Samuel appears to have been a member of the agricultural Allens who farmed in the neighbouring parish of Ercall Magna. Specifically, it looks like his parents were Samuel (a farmer at Cotwall in 1841 and a retailer of wines and spirits in 1851) and Emma. If this was the case, farmer Charles Allen in household 11 was, I believe, Samuel’s paternal uncle.

William Pritchard was, along with the Morris family, an occupant of household 38. He was a son of Ann Morris, formerly Pritchard, née Jackson, born between her marriages to Messrs Pritchard and Morris.

Another child born out of wedlock was two-year-old James Andrews, enumerated in household 31 with the Cureton family, was, not surprisingly, the son of Deborah Andrews, aged 25 or more, who was also a member of that household. Like his mum, James he was born in Suffolk – but who was his father? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I call William Howard, living in household 41 with the Icke family. I’m going beyond the 1841 census with my evidence here, but what the heck: William Howard went on to marry Deborah Andrews, and by 1851 James Andrews had become James Howard. I put it you that on the balance of probabilities, William was the father of James.

Connected, or not?

There were several people enumerated on the 1841 census at Waters Upton whose surnames suggest the possibility of connections with others, which I have not yet been able to verify (or dismiss). The Harpers, the Lloyds and the Shukers I have already mentioned, but there were also the Williamses, some of whom coincidentally had a connection with the Lloyds who appeared at the end of Part 1 of this article. Was John Williams of household 23 related to Sarah Lloyd, formerly Edge, née Williams in household 12 or servants Charles Williams (in household 41) or Emma Williams (in household 28), or any of the latter to each other? The frequency with which the surname occurs makes the question less than straightforward to resolve, but in time I may have an answer.

In conclusion

More than half of the households in Waters Upton at the time of the 1841 census had at least one occupant related in some way to one or more occupants of another household. This leaves the following households inhabited by people with no confirmed links to others in the parish: 1 (Corfield family and servants), 5 (Anslow family), 9 (Edwards family & guests), 8 (Browns and servant), 9 (Evans), 10 (Dodd family), 14 (Woodhouse family and guests), 15 (Davies family), 23 (Williams / Lloyd family), 24 (Wilkes family), 26 (Shuker family), 28 (Tudor family and guest), 30 (Moore family), 32 (Ridgway family), 38 (Morris family), 39 (Bennett family).

Just one more thing …

… as TV detective Columbo used to say. I said I would return to another person in the household of William Griffiths. She features in this genealogical version of Only Connect, but I left her off the relevant family tree chart. Her name was Elizabeth Griffiths and she was the daughter of teenager Lydia Griffiths, the granddaughter of Mary Griffiths (John Titley’s servant), and the great granddaughter of William. This made her a first cousin twice removed from John Titley and a second cousin once removed from John’s son Thomas Titley. But she also had another, closer relationship to the two Titleys – and therein lies a story which requires a separate article.

Picture credit: Photo of Connect 4 game by Wikimedia Commons contributor Popperipopp; modified, used and made available for re-use under a Creative Commons licence.

One element of the research I carried out for my two-part article Analysis: The 1841 census of Waters Upton was further work on my Waters Upton family tree at Ancestry. ‘Forest’ might actually be a better word than ‘tree’ in this situation however, given that what I have established is in fact a collection of numerous separate trees growing in one place. As I traced the roots of those trees more deeply however, some of them began to merge. Quite a few of those trees were not ‘separate’ after all.

In adding people to the Waters Upton ‘forest’ my primary goal was to link other records to them besides the census and so find information vital to establishing who they were – their identities. For example, where and when were they born? This is not always easy to establish even for those enumerated on the more detailed censuses of England and Wales taken from 1851 onwards, due in part to inaccuracies in the information supplied, recorded, and transcribed. In the case of the 1841 census we have different levels of vagueness to contend with too, particularly with regard to places of birth. In most cases however, I have overcome these problems in respect of the Waters Uptonians of 1841. As a result, my analysis of that year’s census includes the geographic origins of the parishioners.

Another important component of each individual’s identity is how they are related – through blood or marriage – to others. So for each person in my Waters Upton ‘forest’ an important task was to find and link them with their parents, any siblings and, where applicable, spouses and children. Again the limitations of the 1841 census adds to the workload here, as relationships between the ‘head’ of each household and other residents were not recorded, and neither was marital status. Thankfully in the course of my research other records have cleared up any doubts, in most cases but certainly not in all.

There remains a sizeable minority of people on the 1841 census of Waters Upton whose full identities are still unknown to me (because I have not so far managed to track them down in other records), some of whom might yet turn out to be related to one or more of their fellow parishioners. These include many of the young servants and also boarders / lodgers (particularly those with high-frequency surnames) who were living away from their immediate families.

In one case even the ‘head’ of a household (household 8) has eluded me: I have yet to discover who 40 (or so) year old farmer John Brown was, and I don’t know whether the younger Elizabeth Brown enumerated with him was his wife or his sister.

Confirmed – and complex – connections

Returning to the people whose identities and families I have established, as my work on them progressed a number of families became larger in size and/or multi-generational and/or connected to other families. Consequently some of those families were split between two or more households, and more and more distant and complex relationships between some of the people present in the parish in 1841 became apparent.

I’ll begin my exploration of all these links with the largest of two extensive groups of connected people, for whom I have prepared family tree charts to make their kinships clearer. In both cases I have picked one person as the centre of the ‘web’, and I have also split the groups down into two further sub-groups to make things a little easier.

Pascall, Matthews, Austin, Woolley and Lloyd connections

Mary Woolley, née Pascall, was enumerated in household 21 on the 1841 census of Waters Upton along with her husband Robert Woolley, her unmarried sister Sarah Pascall, and a servant (Emma Juckes, unrelated as far as I know).

It appears that Robert and Mary had no children, but there were lots of people in the parish to whom they were linked – by blood, marriage, and more tenuous connections. Here is the first sub-group of those people.

This family tree chart (like the others illustrating this article) does not show every member of the families shown, just those connected to Mary Woolley née Pascall (and each other) who were residing in Waters Upton parish in 1841 (names in boxes with a blue background) plus the immediate ancestors from whom those relatives were descended. In addition to Mary, her husband and her sister we can see:

• Mary Woolley’s maternal uncle John Matthews, sharing household 22 with his daughter (Mary’s first cousin) Jane Austin née Matthews, Jane’s husband Edward Austin, and that couple’s children Eliza, John and Elizabeth Austin.
• John Matthew’s son Thomas Matthews in household 20 with his wife Sarah (née Evans) and their children John, Thomas and William.
• John Matthew’s son William Matthews in household 16 with his wife Ann (née Hobson) and their infant daughter Elizabeth.
• Mary Woolley’s maternal uncle Thomas Matthews in household 17 with his wife Sarah (née Davies) and their son William.

The second sub-group of people are connected to Mary Woolley – some quite loosely! – through her husband Robert.

In this tree we have the following:

• Mary Woolley’s sister-in-law Harriet Woolley (née Edge), widow of William Woolley, in household 40 with her children Robert, Thomas and Sarah.
• Harriet Woolley’s 9 year old son Levi in household 11, where he was working for farmer Samuel Allen as a servant.
• Harriet Woolley’s son Samuel (age 14) in household 13, another farmer’s servant who was employed by Thomas Whitfield.
• Harriet Woolley’s son James in household 29, with his wife Elizabeth (née Millington) and their children Jessie Jane and Mary.
• Harriet Woolley’s twice-widowed mother Sarah Lloyd, formerly Edge, née Williams in household 12 with her step-daughter Azillah Lloyd, Zillah’s husband Thomas Lloyd (who may or may not have been related), their children William and Goshen, plus two other Lloyds (Thomas and William, both in their 20s) whose relationship to the others I have yet to determine. Similarly, at this point I don’t know whether, or how, any of these Lloyds were connected to those with that surname in households 4 (Elizabeth, Joseph and Harriet), 23 (Joseph, Elizabeth and William, children of Ann Williams, formerly Lloyd, née Taylor) and 41 (Mary).

In total, that’s 35 people spread across 10 households (11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 29 and 40) who had links to each other.

> On to Part 2.

Employment

Work in Waters Upton: who was engaged in it, what types of employment were there, and – in the case of jobs ‘in service’ – who provided that work, in 1841? These are questions I set out to answer by analysing data from the census.

Employment rates for those enumerated on the 1841 census at Waters Upton, broken down by age and sex.

It is readily apparent from the chart above that gender and age were major factors determining whether or not you were in employment – as recorded by the census – in early Victorian Waters Upton. You were highly unlikely to be working if aged under 10 whatever your gender – unless you were a 9-year-old boy named Levi Woolley, in which case you were employed as a servant by farmer Charles Allen.

In the age group 10-19, between 40 and 50% of both males and females were in work, with a slightly higher proportion of females (though this difference may not be statistically significant). From age 20 upwards there were sharp differences between the sexes in their rates of employment. 81% of men (17 out of 21) aged 20-29 and 100% of men aged 30+ were earning a crust in one way or another, with one Thomas Shuker (aged between 70 and 74, and of independent means) being the sole exception.

For women, rates of employment (employment in fields deemed worthy of inclusion on the census at any rate) began to fall once the age of 20 was reached. Not by much at first – from 47.6% (10 out of 21) in the age group 10-19, to 44.4% (8 out of 18) in the 20-29 range – but then down to 23.1% (3 out of 13) at 30-39 and less than 20% from 40 to 59. None of the 7 women aged 60 or more who were enumerated at Waters Upton in 1841 (2 of whom were, like Mr Shuker, of independent means) were employed.

Marriage and motherhood no doubt played a large part in the different rate of adult employment for women compared with men. You can bet your life however that many of those apparently unemployed women were working very hard indeed, and not just bringing up the children and carrying out ‘domestic duties’ or ‘household work’. With regard to the wives of farmers, for example, Joseph Plymley in his General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire (published 1813) quoted a Mr Price as saying:

[In] the farm-houses, there seems to be a greater exertion of industry than I have remarked in most other counties. Besides brewing, baking, providing for the family, where workmen are maintained in the house, and managing the dairy, the farmer’s wife, with the assistance of her maid-servants, in the evenings, at spare hours, carries on a little manufacture, and gets up a piece of linen cloth for sale, every year. [Page 123]

Types of employment in which those enumerated on the 1841 census at Waters Upton were engaged. The area of the chart taken up by each type equates to the percentage of those 94 people in employment who were engaged in them. With numbers and percentages shown for each type.

This chart provides a broad overview of the types of work in which the working population of Waters Upton (41.6% of the total) was engaged in 1841. Just over a third of all of those in work were servants, a type of employment I will explore in more detail shortly.

The next most ‘popular’ fields of employment were, each giving work to slightly more than a quarter of the working population, were the humble and ubiquitous agricultural labourer, and what I have called ‘trades’. Both of these areas of work were male-dominated, to the almost total exclusion of women – the only women working in either of them being Ann Morris, who like her husband William was recorded as an ‘Ag Lab’.

A breakdown of the numbers engaged in the various occupations included in ‘trades’.

The trades, as I have termed them, included a variety of different occupations. The majority of these were skilled or semi-skilled and would earn their practitioners a place in the lists of trades people in the county directories which became increasingly popular during the Victorian era. Clustering these occupations together in this way certainly makes for a much less cluttered employment types chart!

6 men in Waters Upton were described as farmers on the 1841 census, a ‘field’ of employment (pun intended) very much limited by the small size of the parish. The remaining workers were 3 dressmakers (all female, ages given as 15, 20 and 35), a schoolmistress (the widowed Harriet Woolley), and the parish clergyman William Corfield (who could in fact be considered as a farmer, as his position brought with it some 35 acres of farmland for his use).

Employers of the servants enumerated on the 1841 census of Waters Upton. Each of the smallest segments on the outer ring represents one servant employed by an employer, with the larger segments in proportion.

I said I would return to the servants, and here we see who employed them. The majority worked for the parish’s farmers, those identified as farmers 1 through to 5 being: John Dickin (7 servants), Thomas Whitfield (also 7), Thomas Matthews (3), Charles Allen (2, including the above-mentioned Levi Woolley), and John Brown (1 servant) respectively. Honorary farmer William Corfield, the Rector, employed 6 servants, who were probably divided between domestic and farming services. A further 6 servants were in the employ of 5 of the parishioners who were engaged in trades, including both publicans. Finally, in the inevitable ‘Other’ category, man of (independent) means Thomas Shuker employed 14-year-old Staffordshire-born Mary Pritchard to assist in the household he occupied with his wife Charlotte.

Numbers of servants on the 1841 census at Waters Upton, broken down by age and sex.

Finally in this section, a closer look at servants which provides information of some relevance to the employment rates (for females in particular) in the age groups of 10-19 and 20-29, and also to migration in those age groups.

All but 5 of Waters Upton’s servants in 1841 fell into the 20 year age range of 10-29. Of the 10 females aged 10-19 who were employed – none of whom were born in the parish – 9 were servants, and all but 1 of the 8 women in the 20-29 age group – only 1 of whom was born in the parish – were also servants.

The situation for males was rather different, with 9 out of 14 working 10-19-year-olds employed as servants (5 of the 14, of whom 2 were servants, were born in the parish), and only 3 of 17 working 20-29-year-olds (6 of the 17, only 1 of whom was a servant, were born in the parish).

All of which leads us quite neatly on to…

1841 to ’51 – who were the ‘remainers’?

(Maybe I should have given this section a more scientific-sounding title like ‘Residential fidelity’?)

Percentages of various categories of people enumerated on the 1841 census at Waters Upton, who were also enumerated in the parish on the 1851 census. ‘Parents’ I defined as those who, whether married or single, had children aged under 20 at home with them.

As my 1841 census abstract includes links to the 1851 abstract for those who were also present at Waters Upton on the latter census, it was an easy task for me to identify the ‘remainers’ (or in some cases perhaps, to borrow an expression from family historian John Titford, the ‘bounce-backers’) and add that information to my 1841 census spreadsheet. And then to analyse the data to see if there were any factors which made people enumerated in 1841 more or less likely than on average to remain, or return…

As you can see, the average percentage of all residents of 1841 who were also present in 1851 was 37.2%. Of the 15 categories of people from 1841 which I looked at, there were several for which there was no significant difference from that overall rate of ‘remaining’. These were: sex (male or female), age under 10 in 1841 (only a slightly higher likelihood of remaining), working as an agricultural labourer in 1841 (just slightly more likely to remain), employed (regardless of employment type) in 1841 and single adult in 1841 (both of the latter giving a slightly lower likelihood of remaining).

Natives of Waters Upton who were present in the parish in 1841 were rather more likely to remain (6% more than the average), while those who were married, or parents, were significantly more likely to enumerated there again in 1851 (many people in the former group would also have fallen into the latter). The ‘remain rate’ for these categories (50% and 52.8%) was very similar to that for the 30+ age group (see next) – a category with which there was likely to have been a fair degree of overlap.

Those aged 30+ in 1841 were significantly more likely to stay (53.2% in this category remained), perhaps because many of them had by that age established strong ‘roots’ – such as ties of kinship and/or security of employment – in the community. I have not divided this category further in the chart above because I found very little difference between the various 10-year age groups within it.

Those aged from 10 to 29 in 1841 on the other hand were significantly less likely to remain, with 20-29-year-olds showing even less attachment than the 10-19-year-olds. People in both of these groups were, I suspect, more likely to leave to take up work elsewhere and, particularly in the 20-29 age group, to join marriage partners and raise a family in a location which could accommodate them.

Regarding work, we have already seen that being employed in itself made a person less (but not significantly less) likely to remain, while being an ‘ag lab’ only very slightly raised a person’s chances of staying. Employment in certain other categories did however make a significant difference, with those engaged in trades much more likely to remain. The same goes for farmers, although with only 6 of them in the parish that conclusion can only be accepted with caution (if just one more had left, their remain-rate would have dropped to 33.3%).

Of all the categories I have examined, servants were the least likely to stay in the parish – just 12.1% of those enumerated in 1841 were still in Waters Upton (as servants or otherwise) ten years later!

Introduction

The census is not just for genealogy and family history, it’s for local history too – including the specialised form of local history known as one-place studies. In the UK, a decennial national census began in 1801. The information recorded was rather limited in the first few decades (that is, up to 1831). Furthermore, with relatively few exceptions, the enumerators’ schedules from those censuses have not survived and we are left with collated summaries of the data collected.

The census of 1841 was the first which aimed to record every person, by name, in every household (along with their age, sex, occupation and – to a limited extent – their place of birth). It is also the earliest census for which the enumerators’ schedules have been retained. The information it recorded – as you will see in my 1841 census abstract – was not as detailed as in the censuses which followed, but genealogical research can add much of what was missed. Having carried out that research, and having analysed it with the aid of a trusty Excel spreadsheet, I now present what I have learned about the community of Waters Upton at the first census of the Victorian era.

Population

The population of Waters Upton parish as recorded in the national census of England and Wales at 10-yearly intervals from 1801 to 1961 (with the 1939 National Identity Register filling in for the cancelled census of 1941). Based on official figures taken from A Vision of Britain Through Time, with the exception of those for 1841 (adjusted by me, see below), 1861 and 1871 (my own figures as they are not given by the aforementioned source), and 1939 (derived by me from the National Identity Register).

As you can see, the population of Waters Upton in 1841 (even though I have lowered it by 2 from the official figure of 228) is the highest recorded in the 160 year period from 1801 to 1961. Hopefully when I analyse later censuses, this will shed some light on why that was – a random ‘baby boom’ in the 1830s?

The proportion of males and females in Waters Upton in 1841. Of the 226 people enumerated in Waters Upton in 1841, 121 (53.5%) were male and 105 (46.5%) were female.

The bias towards males shown here is in contrast to the national figures: females have predominated in all census years (in 1841 the census of England and Wales showed a national split of 48.85% males and 51.15% females). Was this contrast the result of Waters Upton being a rural parish, with greater employment opportunities for men? Or was it perhaps an artefact resulting from a random fluctuation in a very small population unit? Perhaps it was a little of both. In Shropshire as a whole the male/female split in 1841 was almost equal (49.9% males / 50.1% females), while in Ercall Magna (Waters Upton’s larger, but still rural, neighbour) it was 50.9%/49.1% and in Shrewsbury St Chad (predominantly urban) it was 45.2%/54.8%. (Percentages based on figures from A Vision of Britain Through Time – Male and Female totals for England and Wales, Shropshire, Ercall Magna, Shrewsbury St Chad).

A population pyramid (or age-sex pyramid) diagram showing the population of Waters Upton in 1841 split by age and sex. Yes, I know it’s usual to display the males on the left!

Dividing a population of just 226 people into a chart with 34 categories (17 age groups split into male and female) has made a rather ragged Christmas tree instead of a pyramid! But as a friend and former work colleague of mine would say, it is what it is. Reducing the number of categories should smooth things out a little, so here is a funnel chart displaying the age categories alone (with a dark green colour to ensure the Christmas tree effect is not entirely lost):

Apart from some obvious fluctuations from the broad trend, the chart has a wide base and narrow top. This is indicative of a population with high birth and death rates (according to The Data Visualisation Catalogue), which was probably the case at the beginning of the Victorian era generally and not just in Waters Upton.

Of course, population size and structure in any given area is affected not just by birth and death rates, but also by rates of immigration and emigration. These factors – especially emigration – would certainly have been at play in Waters Upton, a small, rural parish with very limited scope to support an increased population.

Immigration

The geographic origins of the people enumerated on the 1841 census at Waters Upton. This not an analysis which can be performed by reference to that year’s census alone, as it only recorded whether or not people were born in the county in which they were then living (or, if born outside of England and Wales: Scotland, Ireland, or ‘Foreign Parts’). However through genealogical research I have established with reasonable certainty the birthplaces (to at least parish level) of 179 of the 226 people enumerated at Waters Upton. Identification of those born in the parish, by reference to baptism records, was relatively easy but some may have been missed. ‘Other local parishes’ are those within a radius of about 7 miles (or thereabouts) from Waters Upton: Hodnet, Stoke on Tern, Great Bolas, Childs Ercall, Hinstock, Chetwynd, Edgmond, Longford, Lilleshall, Kinnersley, Preston, Eyton, Wombridge, Wellington, Wrockwardine, Longden on Tern, Withington, Rodington, Ercall Magna, Shawbury and Stanton on Hine Heath. It is likely that a fair proportion of those whose births I have assigned to ‘elsewhere in Shropshire’ were in fact born in one of the ‘other local parishes’ just listed.

As you can see, in 1841 close to half of the people enumerated in Waters Upton were born in the parish. This does not necessarily mean that they had lived all their lives in the parish up to that point, but I suspect many (especially the younger ones) would have done. The rest came almost exclusively from elsewhere in Shropshire, with about half of them (in reality, probably at least two thirds) from the local parishes listed above. This indicates both immigration to and emigration from the parish, with incomers originating from the local area or further afield within Shropshire. Just 5 people were born outside of the county: 1 from neighbouring Staffordshire, 3 from Suffolk (there’s a story there!), and 1 from an extra-Salopian county which I have not been able to pin down.

Two charts showing the geographic origins of the people enumerated on the 1841 census at Waters Upton, broken down by age group. Notes for the first chart in this section apply. The first chart shows actual numbers in each age group, the second shows percentages.

In a small parish unable to accommodate a growing population you would expect that, all things being equal, the chances of any given individual moving away will increase as they get older (not to mention the chances of them dying). A higher proportion of natives within the younger element of the population rather than within the ‘oldies’ is therefore not a surprise – but the actual extent of this within the under-10s (88.9% of whom were born in the parish) I find somewhat staggering! The dramatic drop to 40.7% for those aged from 10 to 19 is also quite striking. For older age groups although the proportion of natives fluctuates, the actual number in the 20-29, 30-39 and 40-49 groups is equal (8 for each group). Clearly, all things were not equal when it came to the chances of someone leaving the parish!

> On to Part 2.