Castlegate, Stockton-on-Tees

Chapter 7: The Early Wilsons of Teesside and North Yorkshire

I have taken my father's side of the family story up to the deaths of Clement and Mary Eleanor Jones and it is now necessary to go back in time and give an account of my mother's ancestors before bringing both sides of the story together up to the present time.

My mother was descended from Wilsons who lived on Teeside and in North Yorkshire, and from Pearsons who came from the same parts of the country. The earliest identifiable member of the Wilson family was Thomas Wilson of Butterwick, a small group of farmhouses about two miles east of Sedgefield in County Durham, (As several generations in the direct line of descent were given the name Thomas, I refer to them as Thomas I, Thomas II etc, where it is necessary to do so in order to avoid confusion.) Thomas I was born about 1730 and married Margaret Shaw, also of Butterwick, on 31 May 1753. Their marriage entry, in Latin in the Sedgefield parish registers, gives no information about their occupations; but as this was a purely agricultural area it is reasonable to assume that Thomas was a farmer or farm labourer. Other Wilsons were living at that time at Bradbury, just to the west of Sedgefield, and no doubt they all came originally from the same family. Thomas and Margaret Wilson had three children - Robert, Elizabeth and Thomas (Thomas II) - born during the period from 1755 to 1766. Thomas, the youngest, was baptised at Sedgefield on 19 October 1766. Thomas I died at Butterwick in January 1791, when he must have been about 60 years of age.

Thomas Wilson II married Ann Dixon, of Stranton, near Hartlepool, and had ten children. I have not been able to trace his marriage or the baptisms of his four eldest children, but the baptisms of his six youngest children appear in the parish registers of Wolviston, a village situated about two miles north of Billingham-on-Tees. According to the registers, Thomas was working as a labourer at Newton Bewley, then a small hamlet on the road between Wolviston and Hartlerool. The seventh child (and third son), born on 18 November 1804 and baptised two days later, was yet another Thomas (Thomas III): the other children were Elizabeth, Edward, a second Elizabeth (the first having died in infancy), John and Jane. The baptism entry for Jane is particularly informative. It describes her as "the sixth daughter of Thomas Wilson, labourer, native of Sedgefield, and his wife Ann, daughter of Edward Dixon, native of Stranton". It is not possible to say when Thomas II moved from Butterwick to Newton Bewley, although the distance is no more than a few miles. Nor have I been able to identify his burial entry, and nothing is known about him as a person.

Of Thomas Wilson III, born in 1804, more is known because he enters the period of census returns and statutory certificates. Thomas married Jane Dobson, the eldest of nine children of William and Frances Dobson (nee Palister) of Moorsholm, a small village situated a mile or so off the moorland road from Guisborough to Whitby in North Yorkshire (see Appendix E). I have not been able to trace their marriage in either the Wolviston or the Moorsholm areas, but it must have taken place in about 1830 because their eldest son John was baptised in Billingham church in December 1832. (Editor's note: John Dobson (a GenesReunited contact) informs that Jane Dobson married Thomas Wilson at Easington near Loftus on 24 May 1831). Thomas Wilson at that time lived at Billingham Mill, an old water mill on the lower reaches of Billingham Beck, and the baptism entry for John describes him as a miller. His second son, Thomas (Thomas IV), was baptised at Billingham on 28 September 1834, followed by Frances, the only daughter, in May 1836, It is rather strange that the only relevant marriage entry I have been able to trace at Billingham is one between John Wilson and Mary Dobson, both of Billingham, on 12 June 1824. This strongly suggests a double relationshir with Thomas Wilson the miller and Frances Dobson, but I have not been able to discover what it was. Thomas had a younger brother named John, but he would have been well under marriageable age in 1824. Moreover, Jane had no sister named Mary and so far as I can tell her parents did not live at Billingham at any time.

Between 1836 and 1840 Thomas Wilson III moved from Billingham to Loftus, on the north Yorkshire coast between Teesmouth and Whitby and not far from the Dobson- family's home at Moorsholm. A further child, Robert, was bom there in early 1840. The 1841 census return for Loftus shows Thomas Wilson living there as a miller, with Jane his wife and their four children. At the same date Jane's mother Frances Dobson, then a widow in her early fifties, was still living as a farmer at Moorsholm with three of her younger children. Thomas' mill at Loftus was a windmill and is described in the 1841 census return as being situated on "the north side of the road from Brotton to Whitby". The site of the mill was on the right hand side of a fairly narrow lane which leaves Loftus High Street about opposite the present Cooperative Stores and leads up the hill towards the sea cliffs. The stone base of the mill has been incorporated into a more recent building on the same site. Thomas and his family were still at this mill in 1851, when the census return showed that a fifth child, William, had been born there about 1842. The second son, Thomas IV, was by then 16 years of age and assisting his father in the mill, but he later took employment at the Liverton ironstone mines about a mile south of Loftus village. My grandmother told me that one night, as young Thomas was returning to Loftus along the narrow country lane in almost total darkness, his horse stumbled over the body of a murdered man. Apparently Thomas did not think it wise to stop and investigate further, the more especially as an employee of the mining company who was carrying money in his saddle bag had been attacked in the same lane a short time before!

By 1861 Thomas Wilson III had left Loftus and was living in the Market Place at Guisborough, the census return showing him as a shopkeeper with premises next door to the Cock Hotel. His children had already left home, although John and Robert were residing elsewhere in Guisborough. He eventually died from the effects of a strangulated hernia on 29 February 1876 and his widow Jane died a few years later. I have not been able to trace a gravestone to their memory in Guisborough cemetery.

Thomas Wilson IV, my great-grandfather, moved to Stockton-on-Tees at some date between 1851 and 1859, because on 1 September 1859 he was married at Holy Trinity Church, Stockton, to Jane Ann Maw. She was the daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth Maw and was born at Whitburn, a few miles north of Sunderland. At the date of the marriage Thomas was 25 and Jane 26: the marriage certificate does not give an address at Stockton for Thomas; but Jane's address is given as Follingsby Cottage, Jarrow, and her father is described as a platelayer. Their first home was 7 Castlegate, Stockton, an ancient lane which has now disappeared but which until recent years led from the south-east corner of the High Street to the riverside. Thomas and Jane had six children in all. The eldest, Thomas Edward, was born in 1860 and died in infancy. The others, in order of age, were John, Joseph (my grandfather), Albert, Arthur and Jane Ann, and were born at various dates between 1862 and the beginning of 1871. Although the census returns for both 1871 and 1881 show all the children as having been born at Stockton, Joseph was in fact born in Pit House Lane in the village of Pittington (or Leamside) near the city of Durham, on 21 December 1863. His birth certificate names his mother as the informant and gives her address as Castlegate, Stockton-on-Tees. It was no more than a chance remark by one of my uncles - to the effect that his father had been born at a pit village near Durham - that enabled me to trace Joseph's birth, But he had no idea why Jane Ann was at Pittington at the end of 1863 or whether Thomas was with her there, and I have been able to throw no light on the matter.

The census return for 1871 shows that Thomas Wilson IV had by then moved from Castlegate to No.3 Moat Street, the next street leading down to the riverside. which has also been lost in redevelopment. There, on 28 December 1879, Jane Ann died from "acute yellow atrophy of the liver" (jaundice). My uncle told me that my grandfather remembered very clearly being told of his mother's death, which had occurred on "the night the Tay Bridge fell down". Thomas was still a widower at the same address at the date of the 1881 census, but he later married again. Unfortunately neither my mother nor my uncle could recall the name of his second wife; but they both said that she was a "foreigner" who had come from the east London area, somewhere near Plaistow. There were no children of this second marriage. Thomas Wilson died of bronchitis at Moat Street on 15 April 1911 and my uncle told me that his widow came to stay with my grandparents for some months after his death.

On his first marriage certificate and in the 1861 census return Thomas Wilson IV is shown as a wharfinger's foreman. On my grandfather's birth certificate and in later census returns he is described as a warehouseman and corn merchant. He was employed by A G Rudd and Company, corn merchants, who had warehouses at the foot of Castlegate and later also employed my grandfather Joseph Wilson. My mother, who remembered Thomas well, described him as a "giant" having great physical and mental energy but a very kindly disposition, who had looked after his children well during the years of his widowerhood. Jane Anne, his first wife, died while my grandfather was still young and thus many years before my mother's time, and I have no information about her as a person. As for Thomas' second wife, she was on the short side, easy-going, and usually wore a headdress containing back beads! My mother and my eldest uncle used to visit the house in Moat Street in their early childhood and were allowed to play with sets of children's bricks and other toys which Thomas' second wife kept for them in a curboard under the stairs. My mother also recalled that on market days, which were Wednesdays and Saturdays in Stockton, the house was often visited by a man who wore a tall black hat and came from Guisborough. He and Thomas Wilson used to play draughts in the parlour. I assume that this visitor must have been either John or Robert Wilson, Thomas's brothers - probably Robert, because that name had remained in my mother's memory although she could not identify it with a particular person. My mother also told me a rather peculiar story about a corpse which had lain for some days in an upstairs room at Moat Street; and my uncle, who also remembered the incident, believed that it must have been one of the Maw family, for whom my great-grandfather and grandfather conducted some business long after Jane Ann's death.

Of Thomas Wilson's five surviving children, John became a clerk and cashier at Ashmore, Benson, Pease Ltd; Albert (who was described rather remarkably in the 1881 census return as a 14 year old dentist) became a builder and, after living in South Africa for a few years, built houses in and around Stockton - including what later became Wilson Street in Thornaby-on-Tees; Arthur was connected with the theatre; and Jane Ann married and lived at Hartlepool. My grandfather, Joseph Wilson, married Elizabeth Ann Pearson, whose family is the subject of the following charters.

Next: The Pearsons of Borrowby