PAST AND PRESENT
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SOME FAMILY LINKS. –IV
In the third chapter, referring to Thomas Welch, of Cabus, and his captaincy of the 5th (Lancaster) Battalion Company of the Lons-dale Local Militia at the training in 1811, I mentioned that “the colonelcy was held by William housman, a first-cousin of whom was ancestress of the late Mrs. W. G. Welch.” This is how the ancestral connection occurs: William housman, J.P., a West India merchant, of Lune Bank, Skerton, for a number of years Lieutenant-Colonel of the Loyal Lancaster Volunteers, afterwards the Local Militia, was nephew of John Housman, J.P., merchant, who was elected Mayor of Lancaster in 1787 and died in 1793. A daughter of John Housman married one Heaton; of this marriage there was issue a son, John Heaton, who married a Miss Aldren; a daughter of the latter married Dr. James Johnson, of Lancaster, afterwards of Hampson, Ellel, and a daughter of Dr. John-son married Mr. William Gibbins Welch, of Lancaster, now of Hampson. The afore-named William Housman (one of the brothers of the founder and first incumbent of St. Anne’s Church, Moor-lane) had a daughter, Frances Margaret, who married Joseph Whalley, barrister-at-law (son of Lawson Whalley, M.D., J.P.), and Colonel Joseph Lawson Whalley, J.P., Richmond House, is their son.
There was a still earlier connection between the Welch and Johnson families. In addition to several sons – among them Thomas, of Cabus, and John, the grandfather of Mr. W. G. Welch and Mr. A. B. S. Welch – John Welch, of Hang Yeat, had a number of daughters, and one of these, Mary, married Dr. Christopher Johnson, of Lancaster, who was elected Mayor in 1832. Of the marriage of Dr. Johnson and Mary Welch there was issue four sons and two daughters. The sons were James M.D.; Christopher, surgeon; Thomas, solicitor; and Benjamin, farmer, Scotforth. One of the daughters, Elizabeth, lived with her brothers Christopher and Thomas, at Castle Park. The other daughter, Jeannette Johnson, was married on December 27th, 1854, to Edward Parke Lamport, a native of this town (son of the Rev.William Lamport , for many years pastor of the Unitarian Chapel, St. Nicholas-street), and Dr. Henry Christopher Lamport, of Meadow-side, is their son. The Hampson estate at Ellel came into the possession of Dr. James Johnson through his mother – John Welch’s daughter Mary – and passed to Mr. W. G. Welch (a great-grandson of John), who now resides there, through his marriage with the doctor’s daughter. Of John Welch’s other daughters, mention has already been made of Jenny, born in 1781, who married Edward Blackburne, of Holleth; they had a son – Timothy Blackburne, of Forton - and three daughters; a descendant, Miss Blackburne, is, or recently was, living in Lancaster. Another daughter, Betty, born in 1784, who married Christopher Smith, draper, New-street, pre-deceased her husband, and he married again. Her sister Hannah, born in 1787, was the wife of Thomas Thompson, who carried on busi-ness as an ironmonger and grocer at the bot-tom of Market-street. In addition to Timothy, John, and Thomas, of whom an account has al-ready been given, John Welch had a younger son, Richard, who married Margaret, daughter of Hacking? Lawrence, and sister of his bro-ther Timothy’s first wife. Richard Welch lived sometime in Dalton-square, near what is now the Corporation’s electric tramway station. For awhile he was in partnership with his brothers. He was a sugar planter in Bar-badoes – imported rum and sugar, and often went out to his plantations. He had three sons and two daughters.
In a previous chapter mention was made of the children of William welch ( son of Thomas of Cabus), who was associated with his brother Henry in business in Cheapside and North-road; and the marriage of the eldest son, Thomas, with Sarah Harrison, daughter of John Harrison, of Cockerham, was recorded. Thomas Welch, who died at Brookhouse, Caton, May 17th, 1884, aged 29, was survived by his wife and two daughters, now residing at Southport. Mrs. T. Welch belongs to an old and interesting local family. Her father was a son of James Harrison, whose wife, Ann (to whom he was married on December 22nd, 1812), was a daughter of T. Hodgson of Winmarleigh. Of the same family, probably, was William Harrison, of Ellel; he was a brother-in-law of William Brade, a Forton yeoman, who died in 1763, while another brother-in-law of William Brade, and co-executor under his will, was the Tmothy Welch, of Galgate or Ellel, who was born in 1714 and died in 1791. Two of Mrs. Thomas Welch’s paternal uncles, James and Thomas Harrison, became extensive mer-chants and ship-owners at Liverpool. James, described as of Wallasey (Cheshire), Hare-Appletree (Quernmore), and Dornden, Tun-bridge Wells (Kent), died in 1891; Thomas is also dead, but another brother, Edward, survives. By his marriage with a daughter of Joseph Heath, of Tunstall, Staffordshire, James Harrison, the ship-owner had two sons and three daughters, the sons being Frederic James and heath Harrison, who also engaged in the ship-owners’ business. It will be remembered that on the coming-of-age of the eldest of Mr. F. J. Harrison’s four daughters, September 18th , 1903, the tenantry, &c., on his Ellel and Maer Hill estates were enter-tained at Mr. Harrison’s seat in Staffordshire. As regards the local estate of the Harrison family, it may be noted that Hare-Appletree (not “Haresnape,” as stated by a writer some years ago in an effort to decipher one of the old brasses in Lancaster Parish Church) was during a great part of the seventeenth century held by members of the Rippon family. Major Thomas Rippon was Mayor of Lancaster in 1652-3-4, and Alderman Thomas Medcalf, the Mayor in 1695 and 1704, was the son-in-law of William Rippon of Hare-Appletree. Mr. John Harrison, brother of the widowed Mrs. T. Welch, is a partner in the well-known firm of Liverpool merchants, Messrs. Wright, Crossley, and Co. There used to be associated with the same firm an Edmondson, a sister of whom, Mrs. Dutton, who died not long ago, left a substantial benefaction to one of the Lancaster charitable institutions.
Both the Welch and the Yeats families – in which latter family John Welch (1753-1802) of Hang Yeat, Ellel, found a wife – were re-presented in the Ellel disctrict in the seven-teenth century, at which time there were also Welches in Lancaster, while the name of Yeats was worthily borne by some of the resi-dents in this town and also in the parish of Heysham ( some of them at Middleton Brows) and in Lunesdale. There was a Margaret Yeats who died at “Salt Coat Brows,” Glasson, in 1661, and a Grace Yeats, who died at the same place in 1676; and there was a William Welch who died at “Salt Coat Houses” in 1680. In the last-mentioned year there were two members of the Lancaster Corporation bearing the name of John Yeats – father and son; and one Henry Welch was a member of the same body some thirty years later. On the doorhead stone of the house No. 21, west side of Damside-street (where it leads into the bottom part of Bridge-lane) there is inscribed “16 Y 87,” with “I.E.” beneath; and over the doorway of a house in Bridge-lane, “16 Y 94,” also with “I.E.,” beneath. These initials no doubt refer to John Yeats and his wife. About 230 years ago there was a John Yeats who acted as schoolmaster for the Society of Friends in Lancaster. His daughter Elizabeth, who died in 1727, was married at Lancaster in the early part of 1724 to George Robinson, of Yealand Conyers.
In the first of these chapters on “Some Family Links” it was stated that John Welch’s wife, Betty Yeats (afterwards called Elizabeth) was the daughter of Henry and Mary Yeats, of Skelsmergh Hall, near Kendal. That statement is open to correction. Further research serves to show that Betty Yeats, whose marriage took place by licence at Kendal Church on January 26th, 1777, would be the daughter of John Yeats of Ellel, and his wife Margaret, who, I find, were buried in Cockerham Churchyard. John Yeats survived his wife nearly nineteen years. She died on November 27th, 1761, in her thirty-fifth year, and he died on June 28?th, 1780 in his fiftieth year. On their tombstones are the lines:-
Within this place we sleep in hope to have
A joyful resurrection from the grave.
In the same churchyard, the same lines appear on the gravestone of Timothy Welch of Ellel (1714-1791) and his wife Jennet Brade, the parents of the John Welch who married John Yeats’ daughter. When their daughter Betty was born, John Yeats and his wife were living at Ashton Hall. That was in 1758. And it may be assumed that John Yeats was brother of George Yeats, who in 1757 took Ashton Hall on a five years’ lease, and after-wards removed to the hole of Ellel, where he built a farmhouse of his own in 1775. When Betty Yeats was married she was only nine-teen years old, so that parental consent was necessary; and that her mother was then dead may be inferred from the fact that in the wedding register the bride, described as “a minor,” is stated to have been married “with the consent of her father.” The witnesses were Henry Yeats and James Carrodus, the former of whom would be the bride’s brother. In the register the bride is described as “of Skelsmergh,” and her brother was probably living there at the time, as he is said to have “married the daughter of the Skelsmergh Hall people.” Skelsmergh Hall (like Wither-slack Hall) was four about four hundred years one of the homes of the knightly Leybournes; but as the head of the family espoused the Jacobite cause in 1715, the estate was forfeited to the Crown, and the property was ultimately acquired by the Wilsons of Dallam Tower. Only a fragment of the old hall now exists, the other material having been employed “to adapt the structure to the requirements of a farm house.”
George Yeats, sometime of Ashton Hall and later of the Hole of Ellel – uncle of John Welch’s wife and Henry Yeats – had a daughter Ellen, who married Henry Smith, gentleman. The last-named, I think, would be identical with Henry Smith who was the son of William Smith, a yeoman, of Forton; and I find Henry also described as a nephew of “Andrew Brown, late of Cockerham, after-wards of Scotforth, yeoman,” who died either late in 1787 or early in 1788. Henry Smith went to live at the Hole of Ellel in 1797, and died there on June 9th, 1831, aged 67. His wife survived him, and died on August 24th, 1840, aged 76. They were interred at Cocker-ham Church. Their eldest son William succeeded to the property at Ellel, where he died on June 1st, 1866, aged 76; and his sister Mary died on November 13th, 1872, aged 78. The Ellel property is now in the ownership of William Smith’s son, Mr. Henry Gardiner Smith, of Moor House, Ellel, who has also inherited property in the Forton district, where his ancestors held land in the seventeenth century. In the early part of 1824 George Smith, gentleman, was living at the Hole of Ellel, and he was an executor under the will of Robert Smith, yeoman, of Ashton-With-Stodday, then recently deceased. Henry Yeats, who died at Ellel in 1835, and to whom I shall have occasion to make further reference in another chapter, was a dis-tinguished agriculturalist, and two of the numerous cups he won at shows in the district and in Westmorland are preserved by one of his great-grandsons, Mr. William Dodd, J.P., of Green Close, Silverdale. W.H.
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