Mow Cop and Biddulph Moor Family Trees
genealogy is a neverending endeavour (endeavour's the polite word for it!) and the many family trees I've compiled are all 'working' documents, somehow doomed to perpetual unfinitude – in fact looking through them brings it home just how, I'm hard put to find more than a handful 'presentable' enough to present here, or perhaps more accurately, to find some that don't scatterbomb me with 'must check that' and 'must fill gap' and 'must look that up first'; the only thing is to start with a few tidy ones and put in some overtime on the rest or – better idea – lower my expectations and let them sneak through in their true colours as the tangled thickets they are
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the family trees listed below are available as pdfs which should open in a new tab; so that they fit onto an ordinary sized page they don't in fact take the traditional 'tree' form (sadly) but are set out in descending indented form, where one half-inch indent (approx) equals one generation; hopefully viewers will get the hang of how they work by gazing at them
it may be worth mentioning that my interest in these families is historical rather than personal, the genealogical research has been done as part of the essential history of Mow Cop and Biddulph Moor, or anyway their human history ('history's about chaps' was the adage of my old history teacher Alderman W. H. Semper – hardly a motto for a local historian, but he must have been right or why'd I end up with a veritable timberyard of em?), so it's family history as a department of local history, not the yen to hunt down my ancestors; that said, my mother's were mostly from Mow Cop and my father's from Biddulph Moor, so I imagine I'm related to all the Biddulph Moor family trees (being a close-knit aka notoriously inbred community) and to a few of the Mow Cop ones, though MC has always been a more diverse and open community
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Oakes Early
a simplified outline of the early generations of the Oakes family, one of the great old Mow Cop families, covering the 17th century and beginning of the 18th, mainly Samuel and Dorothy and their children - click below to view the pdf
De Mouhul
the earliest people we can name who lived on Mow Cop took the name of the hill at the time when hereditary surnames were first used; they appear in documents and property deeds from about 1250 until 1402 - click below to view the pdf
Shubotham & Bourne
a simplified lineage showing the kinship of Daniel Shubotham and Hugh Bourne, who were second-cousins, their paternal grandmothers being sisters belonging to the Heath family of Trubshaw - click below to view the pdf
Antrobus
the Kent Green branch of the Antrobus family played an important part in the history of Mow Cop through two centuries, not least in the millstone industry; later they rose to the status of gentry - click below to view the pdf
Heathcote
beginning with the arrival of John Heathcote shortly before 1788, the Heathcotes of Holly Lane became one of Biddulph's distinctive families, and also played an important part in the history of Mow Cop - click below to view the pdf
Brassington
the immediate family of Primitive Methodist preacher and orator D. W. Brassington of Mow Cop, together with new information about his mother, the great revivalist Jane Brassington of Congleton - click below to view the pdf
Locksley
though never a large Mow Cop family, the Locksleys were the first to inter-marry with the Scottish millstone makers who arrived in 1825/6, as well as pioneers of the village of Mount Pleasant - click below to view the pdf
Cheshire
the four generations of Cheshires of Limekiln Farm provide an unusually concise and neat family tree; they were important tenant famers, early Methodists, and gave their name to Cheshire's Close - click below to view the pdf
Platt
the family of fustian master Robert Platt, the proprietor of Mount Pleasant Mill; he and wife Emma originated in the heartland of fustian cutting in the Oldham area and came to Mow Cop about 1890 - click below to view the pdf
Battersby of Biddulph Moor
the Battersbys were a rare thing on Biddulph Moor, a new family, or half-new, originating in 1827 when Thomas Battersby married Hannah Lancaster, joining one of the Moor's great old pot selling families - click below to view the pdf
Simcock of Biddulph Moor
this is the 'Ralph' branch, one of several Simcock lineages that descended from James and Eve, married in 1723, taking in the Biddulph Moor character 'The Old Raphe' and 'The Mow Cop artist' Jack Simcock - click below to view the pdf
Itinerant Dealers in Staffordshire Ware – a 1797 engraving of a family of Biddulph Moor pot sellers
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blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb family blurb blurb blurb blurn blurb blurb Mow Cop blurb blurb blurb, blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb Moor blurb blurb blurb blurb - click below to view the pdf
more Mow Cop and Biddulph Moor family trees ro come ...