Herts/Beds pupils who went to Ackworth School
			Entry	Left	Pupil	From
			1790	1792	Benjamin Haggar	Baldock
			1790	1792	Martha F Ashford	Hoddesdon
			1792	1793	William Ashford	Hoddesdon
			1792	1797	Hannah Littleboy	Berkhampstead
			1793	1796	James Jackson	Hertford
			1793	1798	Ann Nutting	Ware, Herts
			1793	1798	Mary A Harrison	Youngsbury, Herts
			1793	1795	Mary Risely	Ashwell, Herts
			1793	1785	Elizabeth Mason	Clophill, Beds
			1793	1798	Ann Gripper	Ware, Herts
			1794	1798	Barron Harrison	Youngsbury, Herts
			1795	1797	Abraham Risely	Ashwell
			1796	1800	Rachael Littleboy	Berkhampstead
			1796	1798	Ann Risley	Ashwell, Herts
			1797	1798	John Thorn	Ashwell, Herts
			1797	1799	Mary Bassett	Leighton Buzzard
			1797	1799	Ann Bassett	Leighton Buzzard
			1798	1801	Sarah Thorn	Ashwell
			1798	1803	Abraham Thorn	Ashwell
			1799	1800	Daniel Risely	Ashwell, Herts
			1799	1801	Joseph Hine	Hexton, Herts
			1799	1802	Stephen Jackson	Hertford
			1800	1805	Mary Coleby	Hempstead ?
			1800	1805	Sarah Littleboy	Berkhampstead
			1800	1803	Sarah Risely	Ashwell
			1801	1803	James Risely	Ashwell
			1802	1806	Joseph Jackson	Hertford
			1802	1807	Charles Ridgeway	Leighton Buzzard
			1802	1806	Jeremiah H Wiffen	Woburn, Beds
			1802	1804	Sarah Ashby	Pulloxhill, Beds
			1802	1804	Susannah Ashby	Pullox-hill, Beds
			1802	1804	Thomas Morris	Ampthill
			1802	1803	William Brown	Hitchin
			1803	1808	Richard M Chapman	Wormley
			1803	1808	Benjamin B Wiffen	Woburn
			1803	1807	Joseph Cranstone	Hempstead
		See Ackworth School Pupils for longer list

There are a number of outstanding questions raised by this posting and tracking down other pupils who went to the school is difficult. If you happen to know of such pupils (perhaps one of your ancestors) please Tell me about it (remembering to clearly identify the subject you are commenting on)

 

January 2011

Michael Fowler provided an update about George Blaxland saying: I have been in contact with Catharina Clement and she has been a mindful of information. William Alexander served his apprenticeship as a shipwright in the dockyard till 1775/6. As a Quaker he was a pacifist and so left the dockyard and set up a Quaker school in Rochester run first by himself then William Rickman, I would presume George Blaxland served his apprenticeship as a schoolmaster at the school where he met William's daughter Sarah and married her 5th September 1792 then set up his own school at Bancroft, Hitchin. After his early death in 1801 Sarah may have carried on running the school until she remarried in 1808 to John Richardson who came from a big Quaker family and went to live in the Northumberland area. At first I was told that her death was in Croydon but this is incorrect as she was buried in the North. I'm not sure where she lived or how John Richardson came to be living in Croydon.

 

I have now found that George and Sarah Blaxland had four children William Blaxland (birth 23rd Nov. 1793), Anna Blaxland (birth 09 Nov 1795 at Hitchin), Alexander Blaxland (birth 31st Dec 1797 at Hitchin) and George Blaxland (birth 16th July 1800 at Hitchin).

 

When George died in 1801 his wife Sarah nee Alexander remarried in 1808 to John Richardson at Stockton Durham so the whole family of Blaxlands ie children William, Anna, Alexander and George would have gone to live in the North. Sarah Blaxland was John Richardson's third wife and one of his sons from a previous marriage was an engineer so it looks like George the younger followed in his footsteps. He married Jane Thompson in Jarrow Nov 1822 and lived in the Gateshead area, I have since found out that he had four children born in the north Ann 1822/3, Mary Isabella Dec 1823, Sarah Alexander 1826 and Edward 07/08/29. I have a feeling that Ann and Edward did not live long as I cannot trace them when they all moved south from Gateshead  The youngest child. Their youngest child George Blaxland was born at St Albans 20th December 1833 and baptised 23rd Feb. 1834.

In 1841 George Blaxland, (40, engineer) was living in Wish Cottage, Woolwich Road, Greenwich with his wife Jane and children An [sic] (17), Mary (16), Sarah (14) and George (7), together with Mary Thompson (35, of independent means) and John Hudson (25, engineer). [Found with FindMyPast - not found with Ancestry.]

 

I wonder if the "missing" Ann Blaxland was the Mary Ann Blaxland who married in the Medway registration district in 1847 or the Anna Maria Blaxland who married in the Sheppey  registration district (which includes Sheerness) in 1848. (FreeBMD).

Later the family were living in the Sheerness area as his first wife Jane died there in 1847 so I am not sure when he started working in the Dockyards of Sheerness.

 

 February 2012

Sarah (Pendomer @t aol.com) writes from Somerset to say: On reading your site on the Blaxland Quaker School in Hitchin, I have just found one of my family attended this school - or at least a Quaker school in Hitchin - must be the same one.  Here are his details: John Middleton b 1784 d 1793.  Son of Benjamin Middleton and his wife Tabitha Hoyland, Quakers of Sheffield.  John was born in Wellingborough, Northants and died of scarlet fever while at the school. (Source: Memoirs of Maria Fox).

The book Memoirs of Maria Fox is available on online and the relevant text (with scanner fault corrections) is

Your dear aunt, Hannah Middleton, was born at Wellingborough, the 9th of Ninth Month, 1786. As she was several  years older than myself, I cannot give any account, from my own observation, of her early childhood ; but have heard it remarked by others, that she was lively, affectionate, and of a timid disposition. Her elder brother, John, was exceedingly fond of her, and delighted in her company. He was a very active, intelligent boy, but died of scarlet fever, whilst at school at Hitchin, in the year 1793, when he was little more than nine years old. His death was a heavy affliction to his parents; and though they were enabled to how with Christian submission to the stroke, it was long before the spirits of my dear mother fully recovered from  the shock they had sustained. On her return from Hitchin, after attending her dear John, her anxiety was again called forth, by my sister sickening of the same complaint, and, for some time, her life was considered in imminent danger. It pleased our Heavenly Father, however, to bless their efforts for the recovery of this interesting child, and her sweet society must have been a great solace to her affectionate parents.

 

Answers to Questions

BLAXLAND, engineer, St Albans, circa 1833 January, 2011

Places Hitchin

The history given above suggests a clear "Hertfordshire" question here.  What was George Blaxland (1800-1874) doing in the St Albans area in 1833, and how long was he there?

 

Let us start with the baptism. Familysearch gives what is, in fact, the National Archives reference RG 4/749, which is the "register" deposited in 1837 by the Presbyterian/Unitarian Chapel in Dagnal Lane, St Albans. It is important to realise that, unlike Church of England registers of the time, there were no rules about the keeping of non-conformist registers. Many were, in effect, more like a general purpose chapel log book kept by the minister. It is impossible to say what a particular book will contain without looking at it. Some contain minutes of chapel meetings, including lists of who attended, and notes of who joined the chapel with dates and their previous chapel, or date of resignation and the name of the chapel in the place they moved to. While details of the baptisms of the books that survive have been extracted and indexed, the other people references are not. It could well be that the microfilm of RG 4/749 (copy at HALS and through LDS Family History Centres) contains useful additional information about George Blaxland (1800-1874). On the other hand there may be nothing apart from the baptism.

 

The other approach - which unfortunately is less likely to produce documentary evidence relates to possible work for an engineer in St Albans in the 1830s. In the 1830's the occupation of engineer would often be associated with the manufacture, installation, managing, maintenance and running of stationary steam engines and other significant machines (which would often be steam-powered.) There is no evidence in Industrial Archaeology of Hertfordshire to suggest that there was a steam engine manufactory in Hertfordshire and I think we can rule out George as coming to St Albans to manufacture steam engines, and I think we can also rule out him merely being in charge of running a machine, for which the term "engine driver" would be more appropriate. So it is appropriate to ask who in the 1830's might have needed an engineer to install, manage or maintain machinery.

 

There is one obvious potential "employer" - Joseph Fowler, of Bernards Heath, St Albans. St Albans is on a chalk hill with no surface water, and typically wells would be over 200 feet deep. Bernards Heath is at the highest end of the town and there was a brickworks, run by Benjamin Fowler and his family which would have needed a water supply. In 1833 Joseph Fowler established a waterworks on, or close to, the site of the brickworks and was given permission to lay pipes in the public roads. It is unlikely that the existing brickworks water supply would have been adequate and it is likely that a new well needed to be dug, a pretty high powered steam pump installed, and water pipes laid under the town roads. It would almost certainly have required the construction of some kind of reservoir - and a few years later there were large storage tanks as part of the water works, date of erection unknown. Joseph would have needed a skilled engineer to manage the establishment of the waterworks infrastructure. Could this have been George Blaxland? Unfortunately my own detailed research on the Bernards Heath brickworks and the associated waterworks produced no evidence for surviving records.

 

There are other potential employers in St Albans - the gas works was established in the 1820's and there were breweries which presumably had their own wells which needed steam-driven pumps. The silk mills in the valley below the town could have used steam power - but had water power available. A few miles away, on the River Gade, there were major paper mills which would clearly have needed skilled engineers.

 

What sources might provide evidence, one way or another, as to whether George was involved in providing St Albans with a piped water supply? Some suggestions:

• The book The Corporation Records of St Albans only mentions that Joseph Fowler had permission to dig the roads for the water pipes. The actual corporation minute books may well have more to say about the original permission and any problems that arose during installation - and there is a chance that the engineer in charge is mentioned by name. These are currently at HALS, with microfilm copies in St Albans Central Library.

• When George Blaxland died in 1874 there may have been an obituary in the local paper which actually mentioned some of the projects he had been involved with. However my experience of Hertfordshire local papers suggests that obituaries were fewer and less detailed than those found later in the century.

• Is there any evidence that George was involved in other public works type projects elsewhere? In cases such as this, with a comparatively rare surname, a search of The Times archives can sometimes turn up something useful. The type of work his step-brother might give a clue to what George might have been doing.

• Records of work done for the government are more likely to survive (possibly in the National Archives) that work done for other organisations. I have no experience of such records but if he was an employee at H.M. Dockyard at Sheerness there may be records of his employment which might refer to earlier work. If he was a contractor there might be tender documents which detail relevant prior experience.