© 2016 David E. Spencer
As a surname Hartley is very common indeed in East Lancashire and is especially common in Colne. Searching for a particular Hartley family in the Colne and Burnley area in the Parish Registers and census records is rather like looking for a particular tree in a very dense forest. All that can be done is to follow the time-honoured principle of family history research and "go from the known to the unknown one step at a time".
The earliest Hartley ancestor I have located is John Hartley (1799 - 1842) Who was a weaver at Colne Edge (the area around Red Lane on the North West side of Colne) then at Spring Lane near the centre of Colne. He married his wife Ellen Spencer (yet another of my ancestors being Spencers) in Colne. They had at least 10 children but there is some duplication of their childrens' Christian names. From this I assume that some died in infancy and their name taken on by a later sibling (although this not always be the case). Of these I have found marriage records for only three.
Their eldest son was my gt gt grandfather Joseph born in 1819 who was a weaver in Colne then in Burnley. Click here to read about Joseph and his family.
The fifth child of John and Ellen was called Hargreaves, born in 1821. He became a weaver then waste dealer in Colne. He married Margaret Stowe in 1854 but they were childless. The youngest son of John and Ellen was William, born in 1835. He was a weaver in Burnley. He married Priscilla Lee in 1860.They had four children - James born 1862, Mary, born 1865, Ada, born 1870 and Emma, born 1879.Ada married a cotton cleaner called Benjamin Ridge and they had two children - Florrie, born 1895 and Christopher born 1900.