© 2016 David E. Spencer
Mary Thomas, my great great grandmother was born in Bacup, a town in the Rossendale Valley in East Lancashire. She was the second wife of Lawrence Ashworth.They married at St. Nicholas, Newchurch-in-Rossendale in 1840 - she is described as a "spinster, weaver of Tong Bridge" and daughter of Mark Thomas, carter. He is described as a "widower, warper of Bankside" and son of Edmund Ashworth, weaver.
Mary's father, Mark Thomas presented me with one of my greatest challenges in researching my family history. Mark lived long enough to be counted and recorded in the 1841 census, living in Bacup Lancashire, but he had died by the end of the year. The 1841 census had one major flaw as far as family historians are concerned - the precise location of a person's birthplace was not one of the questions asked by the census enumerator as in later censuses - instead the question asked was "Were you born in this county?". If, as in Mark's case the answer was "No" then all that you know is that the ancestor came from any of the other counties in England and Wales, in Mark's case other than Lancashire. In most cases, the subject survived until the 1851 census when the precise birthplace location was asked. This was not possible in Mark's case. His wife, Susannah did, however, survive until 1851 and beyond. Her birthplace was given as "Whitechapel, Cleckheaton, Yorkshire". This did not necessarily help us with Mark - he and Susannah may well have met up in Bacup having moved there from different parts of the country. The other problem with the 1841 census is that ages are rounded down to the next multiple of five. Thus Mark's given age of "70" could actually mean anything between 70 and 74 years and 364 days!.
Finally came the problem with inadequate online information. Looking on familysearch.org I found a baptism in Dewsbury in 1771 for a Mark, son of Abraham Thomas and I thought that I may have discovered another ancestor. Only when the West Yorkshire archives became more fully available online at Ancestry. I found not only that Mark, son of Abraham had died in infancy but that Mark, son of Jacob had been born in 1767 in Heaton Lane, Cleckheaton. The rest of what is written below came to light subsequently.
Note about the records
Mary's family came from the area around Cleckheaton in West Yorkshire. This was part of the very large parish of Birstall which stretched almost from Leeds to Dewsbury. There was a chapel of ease for Birstall parish at Whitechapel in Cleckheaton. Baptisms, marriages and burials at Whitechapel were recorded in the local register and also copied into the main Birstall registers. Some records survive in both registers or only in one. Fortunately both Birstall and Cleckheaton records are present in the West Yorkshire parish records collection in Ancestry's website.
Mary is my maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother. Although Mary was born in Bacup, Lancashire her family all came from the area around Cleckheaton. Mary's great great grandfather was called Jonas and he is the most distant Thomas ancestor I have found. Jonas was born in the mid 17th century. We do not know the name of his wife. Jonas had at least four children:-
We do not know the name of the wife of Jonas jr. but we do know that he had eight children. In the parish records most were described as being born in Littletown.The children were:-
Jacob is Mary's grandfather and is recorded as a "clothier" in the parish records. He married Mary Wilson on the 14th August 1766 at Whitechapel, Cleckheaton. They had eleven children:-
Mark spent his early adult life as a clothier in Moor Bottom - then and now a village / suburb on the edge of Cleckheaton, not far from the M62 motorway service area of Hartshead Moor. Mark married twice.
His first marriage was in 1799 at Whitechapel, Cleckheaton to Mary Brooke with whom he had four children:-
Mary died in June 1806 of child bed fever and was buried at Cleckheaton.
Mark's second wife was Susannah, daughter of Joseph Mawson, a Cleckheaton labourer and his wife Mary. Susannah, my great great great grandmother was much younger than Mark - she was born in Whitechapel, Cleckheaton in 1796. She and Mark married in 1813 at Cleckheaton. Susannah died in Bacup about 1877. Mark and Susannah had five children :-