Ancestry.com. Manchester, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1541-1812[database on-line] From Phillimore Ecclesiastical maps, 4820 [accessed 6 June 2019]
I can trace back six generations of Dootsons from myself. My father is Brian, then there was Will, William, Henry, Henry and the furthest back I can trace with a fair amount of certainty is another Henry Dootson (sometimes Doodson), born in Chowbent, Lancashire in about 1798.[1] Chowbent is 6km South West of Bolton and also known, especially more recently as Atherton. Henry was illegitimate[2] and the registers of St Mary the Virgin at Leigh show that his mother might have been Ellen Dootson.[3] It is possible that Ellen was born Collier and married to Samuel Dootson in 1789 – they had 3 children before Henry was born. I base this assumption on the fact that Henry named one of his children John Collier Dootson – a possible reference to his grandfather maybe. It could be that she was widowed and that was why Henry had no recorded father but I can’t find the death of Samuel so this is all pure speculation.
Atherton was famous in those early days of the Industrial revolution for its production of nails, and many men in the town were listed as nailors, including Samuel Dootson, Ellen’s assumed husband. How Ellen managed to survive or what her job was is not recorded.
Henry, however, seems to have moved north to Bolton, where there would have been more employment in the cotton factories. The population of Bolton more than doubled in the early part of the century, from 29,837 in 1801 to 60,143 in 1831.[4] He married Betty – or Betsey or Elizabeth – Radcliffe in Bolton in October 1819 in the parish church in Bolton-le-Moors, and so was part of this huge population increase. We know little about Betty – she might have come from Atherton with him – there are two Elizabeth Radcliffes of about the right age born in Atherton, but none born in Bolton. In the 1841 census we can see she was born in Lancashire, so it is also possible she was born elsewhere in Lancashire. Bolton-le-Moors was the old name for what we now know as Bolton, and in the nineteenth century it was split into Great and Little Bolton, although there are many different parishes or townships within the town.[5] I have tried to focus my research around Great Bolton as this seems to be where the family were located, around Black Horse Street, Derby Street and Vernon Street.[6] The records for the parish church in Bolton-le-Moors (later named St Peter’s) show that Henry and Elizabeth baptised 9 children between 1821 and 1839, sadly burying at least 3 of these before their 2nd birthdays. This included John Collier who was born on Christmas Eve 1828 and died on New Year’s day.
For 20 years, from 1819 to 1839, Henry’s recorded occupation was a Sizer. This would have been a mill-based job, in a cotton or paper mill and involved covering the thread or paper with a solution of ‘Size’ in order to prepare it to take up the dye.
The hungry ‘40s must have been a very difficult time for Henry and his family. Economic depression meant that work dried up in the mills and food was very expensive because of a succession of crop failures. This was compounded by the Corn Laws, meant to protect the interests of the Tory landowners and stop the import of cheap foreign grain. By the time the corn laws were repealed in 1846, both Henry and his oldest son Henry had set up as Bread-bakers in different parts of Bolton. In the 1841 census Samuel Kirkman, married to Henry’s eldest daughter Marianne or Mary Ann was living with the family and working as a cotton carder alongside the younger Henry. In later censuses he too was employed as a baker in Moor Street , not far from Black Horse Street, so there does seem to be a family connection with baking.
In 1848, at the age of 50, Henry’s wife Betsy died and just 7 months later he remarried. His new wife was a widow called Jane Cooper. It is on this marriage certificate that we see the word “illegitimate” in place of his father’s name. His youngest child John was 12 and continued to live with them, along with 18 year old Elizabeth, although Jane’s children lived elsewhere. Henry died on 11th January 1855 of a strangulated hernia. He was 56.
[1] 1851 census shows his place of birth;
[2] 1849 certificate of marriage to Jane states he is illegitimate.
[3] https://lan-opc.org.uk/Atherton/index.html
[accessed 9 May 2019]
[4] http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10057061/cube/TOT_POP
[accessed 9 May 2019]
[5] https://www.lan-opc.org.uk/Bolton-le-Moors/index.html
[accessed 9 May 2019]
[6] Great-great-grandfather Henry was living at Black Horse Street until the 1871 census, then moved within Great Bolton
Caroline's Family History 