© 2016 David E. Spencer
Introduction
This family was the first of my ancestral families that I encountered. My dad's cousin Mary Fletcher was a keen local and family historian who had access to the Parish Register of Newchurch-in-Pendle, the home of the Boardwell family from the end of the end of the eighteenth century until the turn of the twentieth century. Mary seemed to know everyone in Pendleside and talked to many members of the extended Boardwell family and corresponded with many others including me. Having shown interest in her work and findings I became one of her co-investigators, finding and communicating with my own fellow Boardwell searchers.
One of the problems of finding past Boardwell events is the variation that various Parish Clerks brought into the spelling of the name - thus "Bordall","Bardell", "Bardill", "Bordell", Bordill" and the more obvious "Bordwell" all need to be recorded and evaluated.
However, it did fire my interest and enthusiasm for family history that I am still here some thirty odd years later studying the Boardwells as well as my other interests."
The earliest known Boardwells
The most remote Boardwell ancestor that I am confident with is my 6 great grandad Jonas Boardwell who was born in the mid to late 17th century. he lived in or near Padiham, a small town to the West of Burnley. I do not have a birth date for him but he died in 1732. He was afarmer outside the town and appears to have married twice - this is difficult to be sure of - certainly there are two marriages of a Jonas Boardwell in Padiham with a "decent interval" between the death of his first wife and the second marriage. However my own ancestry is from his first (or only) nuptials with Jane Howarth in 1679. The name "Jonas" was a trademark first name for Boardwell males for a long time until the death as a teenager in 1861 of my great great uncle Jonas Boardwell in Newchurch-in-Pendle stopoped the practice.
Jonas and Jane had four sons and two daughters. Of these the fourth born, Richard was my five great grandad. Born in 1700 and baptised in Padiham. He died at Newchurch -in-Pendle in 1768. He was a farmer and it was he who shifted the focus of the family's farming activities from Padiham to Newchurch-in-Pendle, a few miles away. He married Ellen Smith with whom he had ten children. Of these children the six boys are especially interesting because the second eldest of them called Lawrence left a will when he died in 1794, in which he leaves his few effects to his four brothers - this means his elder brother Jonas must have died before him. The will is in the Lancashire County Record Office and, in spite of its brevity makes poignant reading.
Lawrence's younger brother John was my four great grandad. Born about 1747 he was a farmer near Newchurch-in-Pendle. In 1777 he married Mary Holden with whom he had six daughters and one son. His third child, born in 1781 was Ann, my three great grandmother. Ann lived until 1841 and never married although she did have a son called Lawrence born in 1815.
Although Lawrence was clearly born out of wedlock there are no adverse comments referring to this in the Parish Register such as "base born child". This perhaps is a measure of the social standing of the family at that time. There is no written reference to the putative father but family gossip did reveal the name of a neighbour as a possible culprit.
Click here to read about Lawrence and his family.