Dave Spencer's Family History Website

    If, instead of choosing John and Annas Paley as the starting point for my main Paley web page, I had chosen John's father, also called John then the extended family described in the main page would have been much bigger indeed.In particular, there are many known descendants of John's sister Jane and her husband Abraham Varley.

    John Paley the elder (1703 - 94) was an innkeeper at Skirethornes near Linton-in-Craven. He married twice. He had a son called Robert (1726 - 78) by his first wife Thomasin. He had several more children with his second wife Anne Shackleton (1710 - 58).

    John and Anne's eldest child was Isable (born 1731) who married John Rogers, a farmer. There are three generations of their descendants in my database.

    The second child of John and Anne was their daughter Jane (1734 - 94) who married Abraham Varley (1736- 1807) who is recorded as a miner and a husbandman.He was born at Skirethornes but died at Skipton. Some of their many recorded descendants stayed in the Skipton area whilst others moved to surrounding towns and cities notably Leeds and Cononley, Quite a number of the Varleys were boatmen who worked on the canals whilst others included farmers, miners and cotton workers.

    Some of the Varley girls married into other well documented families such as the Constantine and Stoyles families.

    The third child of John and Anne was Elizabeth who married a man called William Smithson, born in Addingham near Ilkley. Other than they had a son I have discovered nothing else about them.

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