Kelsall - A Quaker Family. Part I. Origins
by Julia M Beedon
For some three hundred years the family name Kelsall has been present within the
Wyresdale, Quernmore, Dolphinholme, Bleasdale and Garstang areas. For a
considerable part of this period the family maintained strong links with the
Society of Friends, the Quakers, and appear th have been one of the original
Quaker families in North Lancashire. From studying the family history of the
Kelsalls it is apparent that the common ancestor of all Kelsalls known in this
area was one Joseph Kelsall who was born in 1684 in the Covent Garden area of
London. How he eventually came to settle in the Quernmore area is a rather
interesting and complex story.
Joseph Kelsall's father, John, was born in July 1650 near to the Delamere Forest
in Cheshire. His family probably originated from the nearby village of Kelsall
from which the surname is derived. John Kelsall was married twice, his first
marriage to Hannah Leftwith of Staploe in Cheshire (1) took place in 1680 but
she died soon after giving birth to her only son, John in 1681. The baby only
lived for eleven days. John's second wife was Elizabeth Cragg (born 21 December
1660), the fourth child of Thomas Cragg and his wife Jennet (nee Townson) and a
great-granddaughter of John Cragg, the first curate of Wyresdale Chapel (2).
There is no clear eveidence of how John Kelsall met Elizabeth Cragg, but he may
have been one of those Quakers who were approved travelling preachers. If so, he
may have met members of the Cragg family whilst visiting Friends in Wyresdale.
Elizabeth's mother, Jennet, had married Thomas Thompson, a Quaker in 1671 (3)
following the death of her first husband in 1668 (4).
John and Elizabeth Kelsall made their home in the Covent Garden area of London
where John carried on a business as a tailor. They had two sons, John, born 18
September 1683, and Joseph, born 9 September 1684 (5). Sadly the boys' father
died only one month after Joseph's birth, 5 October 1684, and on 28 November
1685 the brothers were orphaned with the death of Elizabeth Kelsall from fever.
John and Elizabeth Kelsall were probably buried in the Quaker Burial This Burial
Ground was rediscovered in 1892 during building excavations and was reported in
the Friends' Newspaper and the London Press at that time. It appeared that the
land had been used as a Quaker Burial Ground between 1675 and 1757 when the
lease ran out and had subsequently been covered by a dense mass of buildings.
the Society of Friends was allowed to remove all the bones and over 500 skulls
for re-interment at the Friends' Burial Ground at Isleworth in Middlesex. There
was nothing found on the Long Acre site that indicated the identity of any of
the Friends whose graves had thus been disturbed, but there was speculation that
they would have included those of John Kelsall and both his wives (6).
The orphaned brothers appear to have remained in the care of a nursemaid from
the time of their mother's death until news of their situation reached their
grandmother Jennet 'Cragg' in 1687. Jennet travelled alone to London from her
home at Rooten Brook Farm in Quernmore near Lancaster. She took charge of her
young grandchildren bringing them back with her to Rooten Brook riding in
panniers on the side of her horse (7). Jennet was 54 years of age at this time
and the journey was certainly an extraordinary one for a person of her age and
the fact that she undertook her journey alone.
The two Kelsall brothers were brought up at Rooten Brook where it became evident
that John tended to be the more scholarly whilst James [recte Joseph] preferred
the life of a farmer. John was sent to schools at Abbeystead and Lancaster and
to the Quaker Schools at Yealand and Penketh near Warrington (one of the
'Dissenting Academies'). On completing his education John became a schoolmaster
at Dolobran in Wales before moving to work in Coalbrookdale in Shropshire.
Then, as a clerk to the famous Quaker ironmaster Abraham Darby, he moved to
Dolgellau in Merionethshire. He married Susanna Davies and they had a family of
four girls and six boys. John was said to have had some injury or deformity to
his foot which left him slightly lame for most of his life (8).
Joseph Kelsall remained in Wyresdale as a farmer and it is from him that the
Kelsall families of the area are descended, a story that will be the subject of
future articles in this Journal.
References
1. John Kelsall's Diary (see Reference 6).
2. Georgina Fandrey (nee Cragg), The Craggs of Greenbank, privately
published, 1974.
3. The Life of Timothy Cragg (see Reference 6).
4. The Registers of the Parish Church of Lancaster, 1599 - 1690, Lancashire
Parish register Society, 1908.
5. Registers of the Society of Friends, Lancaster Monthly Meeting.
6. Manuscript notebook in the possession of Mrs E Woodhouse, Ellel.
7. There are several accounts published in this journal including:-
G Fandrey (see Reference 2).
John P Bibby, The Bibbys of Conder Mill and their Descendants,
Liverpool, 1979.
Sue D Kenyon, Jennet Cragg, A Story of the Time of the Plague, undated.
M Wright, A Story of the Time of the Plague, undated.
8. John Kelsall's Diary (see Refernce 6).
Acknowledgements
I should like to record my grateful thanks to the many people who have
helped me with my past and continuing research into Quaker History. In
particular these have included the Society of Friends, Lancaster Monthly
Meeting; and the many members of the Kelsall families who have given me free
access to much valuable information and offered me pleasant hospitality.
[From:
The Over-Wyre Historical Journal Volume IV - 1986-87]
Kelsall - A Quaker Family. Part II The Early Years
by Julia M Beedon
In Part I of this account we learned how Joseph Kelsall, the ancestor of
all our North Lancashire Kelsalls, came to live at Rooten Brook Farm in
Quernmore, in Lancaster Parish 1. His older brother John left home and
eventually settled in Wales and to all intents and purposes ceased to be a North
Lancashire Quaker.
Joseph Kelsall became a farmer at Rooten Brook in Quernmore, one of the old
vaccaries of the once Royal Forest of Wyresdale. On October 12th 17252 he
married Margaret Winder 3 the daughter of William Winder, a member of an old
Wyresdale family. The ceremony took place at the Wyresdale Friends' Meeting
House, a part of the Lancaster Monthly Meeting4. The couple settled at Quernmore
in Wyresdale and raised a family of eight children, often erroneously recorded
as seven presumably because of an early death. The family was a member of the
Wyresdale Friends s and thus their births are recorded there.
The first child, Elizabeth, was born on July 7th 1926 [recte 1726]. Another
daughter, Agnes or usually Ann, was born on either 7 March or 7 July 1728. By
the time of her marriage she was known as Ann (an alternative name) so perhaps
the 'duplicate' entry in the register is in error. A third daughter, Jennet, was
born on 5 June 1730 and another, Margaret, was born on either 3 August or 19
September 1732.
A son, Joseph, was born on 16 September 1734, followed by William on 23 May
1737. A third son, John, was born on 16 December 1739 and a fourth, Thomas,
arrived on 27 November 1744.
Jennet was the only child of Joseph and Margaret who died in infancy, at about
five years of age, on 6 December 1735 and presumably, was buried at the
Wyresdale Meeting House Burial Ground. The father, Joseph Kelsall, died on 29
April 1758 and was buried on 1 May at Wyresdale, aged about 73. His wife,
Margaret, died on 26 June 1782 aged 82 and was also buried at Wyresdale Meeting
House on 30 June 1782. Joseph and Margaret were the first Kelsalls to live at
Tarnbrook in Upper Wyresdale , a settlement of up to 20 cottages and farms. The
Friends documents show that the early Kelsalls were involved in the local
industry of felt-making and hat-making which had developed at Tarnbrook.
In his Journal John Kelsall wrote of his brother Joseph's life at Tarnbrook and
later at Rooten Brook. During the 1745 'Scotch' Rebellion (now usually known as
the '45 Jacobite Rebellion) he noted that a party of Scots came to the Upper
Wyresdale area looking for horses. They failed to find Joseph Kelsall's animals
as he had taken them to an outbarn and fed them there. It was reported that the
Scots left the district with one horse and a cart and a servant5.
All the surviving children of Joseph and Margaret Kelsall married and had
children of their own. This is where the Kelsall family tree becomes
complicated because of similar Christian names and intermarriage and marriage
alliances with spouse closely related to others in the wider family.
Elizabeth married Jonah Mason of Lancaster and had many descendants. Ann married
John Jackson of Quernmore , 'the honest miller'. At the time when he made his
will he was residing at Hareappletree in Quernmore , another of the former
Wyresdale vaccaries. The fourth child, daughter Margaret married John Morrison,
a salt (sail) cloth manufacturer of Lancaster. Joseph, the eldest son but fifth
child, married Ellen Edmundson at Yealand Meeting House near Carnforth, and
settled on a farm near the Wyresdale Meeting House. The farm was held on a life
lease by Joseph's family. William, the second son, married Margaret Jackson and
farmed at Tarnbrook. They eventually had three sons and six daughters. The
seventh child, Thomas, married Dorothy Jackson his sister-in-law Margaret's
sister. The youngest son, John, married Mary Corless of Banton House in Ellel
and they lived at Rooten Brook.
The links created by the marriages with members of the Jackson family provide
connections with other research undertaken by the writer with regard to the
Jackson families at Spout House, Scorton, Oakenclough and Calder Vale. The
Kelsalls also feature in the history of Guy's Farm, at Nan's nook in Ellel and
the Jackson brothers were witnesses to a Holden family will.
______
References
1. Julia M Beeden. 'Kelsall - A Quernmore Family. Part I. Origins' in The Over-Wyre
Historical Journal Vol IV.
2. Calendar dates have been altered in line with the modern calendar.
3. John P Bibby. The Bibbys of Conder Mill and their Descendants, Liverpool,
1979.
4. Registers of the Society of Friends, Lancaster Monthly Meeting.
5. John Kelsall's Journal, manuscript notebook in the possession of Mrs E
Woodhose, Ellel.
[From:
The Over-Wyre Historical Journal Volume V - 1988-89]
Kelsall - A Quaker Family. Part III Friends throughout three centuries
by Julia M Beedon
In part II of the Kelsall Family History (1) we saw how Joseph, the younger of
the two small boys rescued from London in the late Seventeenth Century by their
grandmother Jennet Cragg, settled in Quernmore and Upper Wyresdale as a yeoman
farmer. He married Margaret Winder of Wyresdale and they had eight children,
seven of whom survived infancy.
Joseph and Margaret Kelsall's eldest son, but fifth child, was born on
September 16th 1734 (2) and named Joseph after his father. He married Ellen
Edmundson at Yealand Friend's Meeting House (near Carnforth) on April 6th 1774.
They settled on a farm near to the Wyresdale Friends' Meeting House in Upper
Wyresdale. Joseph was a farmer or husbandman all his life. His descendants were
still attending the same Meeting House in 1952 (3).
Joseph and Ellen had only three children: Joseph, born September 28th 1778;
Joshua, born July 27th 1781 and Dorothy, born October 27th 1789. Their eldest
son Joseph died on March 31st 1802 at the age of twenty-three, having never
married. He was buried on April 4th 1802 at the Wyresdale Meeting House His
father Joseph died at the age of seventy-one on April 19th 1806, and was buried
at the Meeting House, two days later. David Cragg, son of Timothy of Greenbank
Farm in Upper Wyresdale , noted in his Diary that a Burial Note was sent to John
Procter the grave maker to prepare a grave in the Wyresdale Friends Burial
Ground. About fifty people attended the funeral of Joseph Kelsall including
Molly Pye. (Molly or Mary Pye was David's intended wife despite family
opposition because she was a Methodist and the family were Friends!). William
Jepson preached at the funeral. It was the local custom for the family of the
deceased to go round the locality inviting people to attend the funeral. Ellen,
who in 1806 was described as already "old", died at the age of sixty-four
on February 16th 1813 and was also buried at the Wyresdale Meeting House on
February 18th.
Joshua and his sister Dorothy are known to have kept a small shop at their farm
in a building with a thatched roof (2). Dorothy married a Lancaster tailor James
Atkinson at Lancaster Monthly Meeting on July 10th 1817. He was a son of James
and Ann Atkinson of Holme in Westmorland (5). They had three children, Ellen,
Joseph and James Atkinson. The 1841 Census Returns show that James Atkinson and
his wife Dorothy aged approximately sixty-four and fifty respectively, were then
living at the Wyresdale Meeting House, James still working as a tailor. Dorothy
died on April 11th 1858 at the age of about seventy years.
Joshua Kelsall married a recent convert to the Society of Friends, Mary
Swindlehurst, daughter of farmers Abraham and Elizabeth Swindlehurst, on July
10th 1816 at Yealand Conyers near Carnforth. At that time Joshua was descibed
as a linen weaver but various other sources refer to him as either a husbandman
or farmer throughout his life (6). As with many upland or marginal farmers in
both Lancashire and Yorkshire during the last century it is quite possible that
he carried on dual occupations, weather and circumstances permitting. Joshua
continued to keep the shop as well as farming: he also taught the children of
Friends and of other Wyresdale families for two and a half days per week and
"for as much as was thought sufficient on the Sabbath Day". Until his death in
1854, September 25th, at the age of seventy-three, Joshua Kelsall maintained the
first school in Upper Wyresdale . His teaching was said to be "after somewhat
primitive fashion", but he was much beloved by the School and by the Meeting as
a worthy man and Elder (7). Charles Holme of the Calder Bridge Preparative
Meeting at Bonds near Garstang dedicated a couplet to him in his "Lines written
in an Album" on April 24th 1852:-
"There is our worthy Friend Joshua a tiller of land
And conducts a Friends School which he well understands" (8).
The Wyresdale Friend School was endowed by the Quarterly Meeting in 1807. Sums
of money for the endowment were deposited with the London and North Western
Railway Company with the proviso that if the school failed to be successful then
the money was to be returned to the Quarterly Meeting for the provision of
another Friend's School elsewhere (9). Attendance at the school was very much
greater in the earlier part of the Nineteenth Century when the population of the
immediate neighborhood was larger. When the Reverend Daniel Schofield, curate of
Over Wyresdale from 1894, was writing his articles for the Lancaster Guardian
attendance at the school with a good master was about thirty children (10).
Conditions in the Wyresdale Friends School are said to have been very primitive.
There were no real desks or proper pens. Instead troughs filled with sand
became desks; copy books were used; writing was done with sharpened pieces of
wood. The Masters at the school during the Nineteenth Century were Joshua
Kelsall, James Atkinson, Wilkinson Walker, Thomas Braithwaite, William Graham,
John Helliwell, and John E. Hobby (11). It is important to realise that Upper
Wyresdale already had another school at Abbeystead, founded as the Abbeystead
Endowed School in 1674 by William Cawthorne gentleman. Among many noteworthy
pupils, it was attended in the late Seventeenth Century by the John Kelsall who
was to become Master of a school at Dolobran in Montgomeryshire, brother of the
'first' Joseph Kelsall of Wyresdale.
Joshua and Mary Kelsall's first two children, Ellen and Elizabeth, were born on
May 10th 1817 and December 21st 1818 at their farm next to the Wyresdale Meeting
House. Joshua was alternately descibed as a linen weaver or a husbandman, not
mutually exclusive occupations, as mentioned above. In 1820 they moved up to
Higher or Upper Moorhead, a farm still almost in sight of the Meeting House.
During their six years tenancy of this farm they had two sons, Joseph on July
27th 1829 [recte 1820?] and Joshua on August 14th 1822. Abraham their last child
arrived on May 10th 1826, the day of their removal down to Chapel House in Over
Wyresdale ! (12).
The 1841 Census shows Joshua and Mary living at Chapel House with a son Joseph
and a daughter Elizabeth still at home; living in also were a fifteen-year-old
boy James Clarkson working as a male servant and an eight-year-old girl Melicent
(sic) Swindlehurst who was employed as a female servant, vey likely a close
relation of Mary's. Joshua and Mary lived at Chapel House for the rest of their
lives. At the time of the 1851 Census the household cobsisted of Joshua (69),
Mary (59), Elizabeth (32) and Joseph (30) their adult children who were as yet
unmarried, a four-year-old grand-daughter Elizabeth who attended school, and two
locally-born servants Thomas Simpson and Elizabeth Loxham aged only fourteen and
twelve respectively. Mary's mother Elizabeth Swindlehurst a widow of eighty-one
also lived with the family.
Chapel House was a farm rich in Quaker tradition having been earlier the home of
the Cragg family. The first incumbent of Wyresdale Chapel, John Cragg, was
living at Chapel House from the early 1600s. His great grand-daughter Elizabeth
Cragg, who became the second wife of John Kelsall of Cheshire and London and
mother of the boys Joseph and John, was born there in 1660 (13).
Joseph Kelsall, the eldest son, continued to live at and farm Chapel House
after his father's death on September 25th 1854. Later on, he and his wife
lived in a cottage on Catshaw Farm, not far from the Catshaw Cotton Factory; he
married Ann Till, daughter of William and Ann Till and grand-daughter of of
James Till a Wyresdale Yeoman farmer of a very large family. At the time of the
1841 Census James aged about seventy-five years farmed at Moor Bottom Farm with
his son Thomas whilst William and Ann and their family lived at Lower Emmetts
Farm. William's wife Ann was the second daughter of Thomas and Jane Brewer of
Brow Top Farm in Quernmore , the "honest miller", and his wife Ann, second
daughter of the original Joseph Kelsall; (see family tree part). In this area
many of the families were frequently inter-related, some much more closely than
this example.
Joseph and Ann's son William (possibly born in 1864) married Elizabeth Mason of
Kitchen Ground in Ellel; she was born on April 20th 1866, a younger daughter of
George Mason and Hannah Mills his wife. The Mason family were Lancaster
undertakers and descended from George Mason who had come from Dent in Yorkshire
in the late Eighteenth Century. William and Elizabeth Kelsall had a family of
eight children:- George Mason, Joseph, William Till, Thomas, James, Emily, Annie
(who died at sixteen years of age) and Elizabeth. they lived near the Catshaw
Mill in Upper Wyresdale and at Kitchen Ground Farm in Ellel. At the time of
writing this article Elizabeth is the only surviving child of this generation -
I am very grateful to this Quaker lady for her kindness in providing much
information and assistance for my research into this branch of the Kelsall
family.
References
1. See Over Wyre Historical Journal, Vol. V, pp. 18-19.
2. Registers of the Society of Friends, Lancaster Monthly Meeting.
3. The Story of the Wyresdale Meeting House c1670; duplicated booklet 1952.
4. See 3 above.
5. See Friends' Register at 2. above
6. See Friends' Registers and Census Returns, Over Wyresdale , 1841 and 1851.
7. Georgina Fandrey (nee Cragg), The Craggs of Greenbank, privately published,
1974.
8. Manuscript notebook in the possession of Mrs. E. Woodhouse of Ellel.
9. Rev. D. Schofield, Over Wyresdale , its Church, Schools and Charities, reprinted from
the Lancaster Guardian, 1909.
10. ibid.
11. ibid.
12. See Friends' Registers and Meeting House booklet at 3. above.
13. See Schofiled, Over Wyresdale ; note 9. above.
JOSEPH KELSALL = MARGARET WINDER
________________________________
|
_____________________________________________________________________
ELIZABETH ANN JENNET MARGARET JOSEPH WILLIAM JOHN THOMAS
b.1726 b.1728 b.1730 b.1732 b.1734 b.1737 b.1739 b.1744
d.1810 d.1735 d.1806 d.1819
m. m.
JOHN ELLEN
JACKSON EDMUNDSON
| |
_____________... ___________________
JANE JAMES TILL JOSEPH JOSHUA DOROTHY
b.1758 b. b.1778 b.1781 b.1789
d. d. d.1802 d.1854 d.1858
m. m. m. m.
THOMAS . MARY JAMES
BREWER . SWINDLEHURST ATKINSON
| | | |
| __ | |
|___________________ _______ | |___________________
[son] [daur.] ANN = WILLIAM | ELLEN JOSEPH JAMES
b. | b. | b. b. b.
d. | d. | d. d. d.
_______________ |
| ||.... _______________________________________
ANN OTHERS ELLEN ELIZABETH JOSEPH JOSHUA ABRAHAM
b. b. b. b. b. b.
d. d. d. d. d. d.
m. m.
|_______________________________________
| | ||....
WILLIAM JOSEPH J. OTHERS
b.c1864 b.
d. d.
m.
ELIZABETH
MASON
|
_____________________________________________________________________
GEORGE JOSEPH WILLIAM THOMAS EMILY ANN JAMES ELIZABETH
MASON TILL MILLS
b.1890 b.1894 b.1896 b.1898 b.1900 b.1903 b.1905 b.1908
d. d. d. d. d. d. d. d.
[From:
The Over-Wyre Historical Journal Volume VI - 1990-91]
To continue......