Haughton Green Families Who Emigrated to America

16th August 2011. Sheila Bruntnell supplied me with this info about hers and mine Haughton Green (and near area) relatives who decided to emigrate to America in the mid 19th century.

Dear Lynne,

Our great great great great grandparents (I think yours are just 3 greats), William and Elizabeth Whittaker (née Tomkins), moved to Haughton Green, from Holehouse Fold, Romiley, in the mid 1840s). William was a hatter. All their children had interesting lives, but George, Ann, and Elizabeth Whittaker (plus Sarah Whittaker's daughter, Eliza Ann) had the most. They all emigrated to America in the mid 19th century. John Whittaker, another son and your great great grandfather, deserves a mention. He was the one who did not emigrate.He became landlord of the Bay Horse pub in Haughton Green in 1871. He had previously lived with his first wife, Sarah Lloyd, in Gibraltar Lane. He then went on to become landlord of "The Top House", at the top of Two Trees Lane.

It's interesting to note that many people emigrated to America from Lancashire and Cheshire at that time. A lot of hatters, miners and cotton mill workers from Tameside went. We can only glean so much information from census records, as they don't tell us why people moved about, e.g. why Elizabeth Whittaker (née Tomkins, above) moved from Ruabon in Wales to Romiley and why she and her husband William Whittaker moved to Haughton Green. Lizzie Barton (their great great granddaughter) left a detailed account of her family's life in her book Where's our Lizzie? We can only surmise what prompted all these people from Lancashire and Cheshire to seek a better life in America in the mid 19th century. Were they seduced by advertising as their trades were in great demand in America? Were our social conditions and class system preventing them from ever rising out of poverty? Were they seeking a better life? From sailing records it seems that most of our relatives sailed to Philadelphia, avoiding the New York passage which would have taken them to Ellis Island to be processed. Maybe it was because they had a job to go to that had come from advertisements. By the same token, not all people who went to Australia and New Zealand were transported.

We see documentaries from time to time about European immigrants, e.g. Russians, Poles, Germans, Irish and Scandinavians etc. Each nationality has often been represented in films about the West. However, I have never heard a Lancashire accent on the wagon train. I have mentioned this to our relatives in America, who have their roots in Haughton Green. Somehow our people have been overlooked but they were there in their thousands. here are some details about our Whittakers at home and abroad.

William and Elizabeth Whittaker's Children

George Whittaker married Ann (also Whittaker) and emigrated to Camden, New Jersey, America. I am now in touch with their great great granddaughter, Tali.

Ann Whittaker married Benjamin Ollerenshaw and emigrated to the South Island, New Zealand and lived at Invercargill. Benjamin was killed in a mining accident at Caversham. Tali has had some contact with Benjamin and Ann's family in NZ.

Elizabeth Whittaker married Elijah Bowker on 6th May 1851 at Manchester Cathedral. Elijah's family lived in Two Trees Lane. They emigrated in 1857 and settled in Green, Mahoning, Ohio. They moved there just before the beginning of the Civil War. Eventually they moved to Kansas. I am in touch with their great great grandson, Harry.

William Whittaker Jr. we are not sure about. We know he emigrated with Elijah Bowker, but not much else.

Sarah Whittaker, my great great grandmother, married William Bowker (Elijah's brother). They chose not to emigrate, as did your great great grandfather, John Whittaker, the aforementioned landlord of the Bay Horse.

Alice Whittaker married James Barton and they emigrated to Washington Ohio in the 1880s. James went out first on the SS City of Richmond and Alice and children followed. In 1892 James and Alice's son, William Barton, returned to England to marry his cousin Eliza Ann Bowker (the aforementioned Sarah Whittaker's daughter) and took her back to Salem, Columbiana, Ohio.

Martha Whittaker  Youngest daughter of William and Elizabeth married Nicholas Hine , a card maker from Manchester and they lived in Meadow lane and Later Gibralter Lane Haughton.

THE BARTONS OF HAUGHTON GREEN

The Barton Family came to Haughton Green in the 1850's from Adlington, Cheshire, where the family had lived for centuries. They were originally farmers, supplementing the family income with mining in and around the Adlington/Poynton area. Their Parish Church was Prestbury and there is mention of the family going back to the 1500's in the parish records. In or around the 1850's, the mines were depleted and the family moved to Haughton Green, as there were several pits there. The family of Thomas and Mary(nee Bennett),  both born c1822, came with their children. There were seven children altogether, the youngest ones being born in Haughton Green.  They were an enterprising lot, willing to go where the work took them. Several members of the extended family emigrated to America. I have traced some of these relatives and one has actually traced me through the website that promotes my mother's book, "WHERE'S OUR LIZZIE". I now have a 3rd cousin, Ellen, in Florida, the great great great granddaughter of Thomas and Mary Barton. The Gravestone of Thomas(1879)  and Mary Barton(1888) can still be seen in St Mary's church yard, albeit it is now lying down instead of upright. It is just a few yards up the path from the lychgate, on the left.   The history of the Haughton Green Bartons forms a part of my mother's book, which covers her childhood from 1909 to 1923. She died in 2008, just two days short of her 99th birthday. She still remembered the children of Thomas and Mary, as they were her great aunts and uncles. The Barton men  married into the Whittaker Family, several times. Perhaps it was that my great great grandfather, John Whittaker, ran a local pub (Bay Horse) and had several attractive daughters. In any case three Whittaker girls were snapped up by Barton men! One of these, Elizabeth Whittaker, was my great Grandmother. It was some of these branches of Barton Whittakers that went to America and where their descendents are today. The Barton family spread into the area - Denton, Hyde and beyond into places like South Yorkshire. Thomas and Mary's grandson William Barton, my grandfather, was killed in an air raid in Oct 1941,  in Denton (one of the few casualities in the town), along with his wife Hannah and 2 of their children Billy and Joe. They had moved there from Haughton Green, just up the road, in 1938.  Maybe their branch of the Bartons should have emigrated to America, like their relatives, well before in the 19th Century! Lynne  THE OLD IRON SCHOOL   My Grandfather, William Barton went to school here. My mother told me that it was built by James  Walton, the owner of the wire works in Haughton Green. It was on Meadow Lane and was literally made of iron sections that fitted together like a prefab. It was, as you can imagine, a very cold building. My grandfather had to buy his own books for lessons, which my mother remembered being shown, pre 1920. The school was replaced by St Mary's Church School in 1905  and the Old Iron School was demolished.  Lynne         Č

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