The Tan House, Borrowby

The Post Office and Grocer's shop on Borrowby Green

A page from the Leake burial register at the time of the 1860 diptheria outbreak

Chapter 8: The Pearsons of Borrowby

Families of Pearsons lived for many generations in the villages north of Thirsk in north Yorkshire. As early as April 1698 a Richard Pierson of Sowerby is recorded as having had a son John baptised at Deighton; and a Richard Pearson (probably the same person) died a few miles away at Kirby Sigston in May 1720, after the baptism of two of his sons there during the first few years of the 18th century. At Kirby Sigston, Danby Wiske and Brompton there are continuous series of Pearsons extending throughout that century and into the next. Baptisms, marriages and burials are also recorded in Osmotherley, Over Silton and Hutton Bonville amongst other villages. My maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Ann Pearson, was descended from the Pearsons who lived in Borrowby, a pleasant village of stone-built cottages on a small hill about six miles north of Thirsk. (Historically, Borrowby consists of two separate "townships" - Borrowby itself and Gueldable - but the houses of the two townships are so inter-mingled that I propose to make no distinction between them.) Borrowby is in the ecclesiastical parish of Leake. But Leake itself is a village that was abandoned centuries ago and nowadays consists only of the old Norman church and Leake Hall, standing by themselves in the fields about three quarters of a mile from Borrowby, on the other side of the main road from Thirsk to Teesside.

My grandmother's branch of the Pearson family starts with Miles Pearson I. He was born in or about 1782, but the precise details of his birth remain an unsolved problem*. Despite the prevalence of Pearsons in this part of north Yorkshire, and an extensive search through the registers of over thirty parishes, I have been unable to trace Miles's baptism; and civil records such as tax registers and records of wills have also failed to provide any clues. Eighteenth century references to Pearsons in Borrowby village itself are, in fact, relatively few. A George and Jane Pearson "of Leake House" had a son George baptised at Leake in May 1798, and a George Pearson witnessed a number of marriages at Leake during the period from 1790 to 1801. It is probable that these were one and the same person, and that this George Pearson was one of that name who was born at Kirby Sigston, a neighbouring village, in January 1757. As I explain in connection with Miles Pearson's marriage, he himself may have had some connection with the Mortons of Leake Hall. And it is possible that George Pearson "of Leake House" - a substantial farm of 200 acres north of Borrowby village which was later occupied by a member of the Morton family - was his father. Alternatively, he might have been the son of a George and Grace Pearson of Northallerton, who are recorded as having had children baptised there in 1771 and 1775.

*Editor's note: Trevor was looking in the wrong place, later he successfully traced back Miles' ancestry four generations in the Malham area of North Yorkshire - in the Pennines, over 50 miles to the west. See 'The Origins of the Pearsons of Borrowby' below.

The circumstances surrounding Miles Pearson's marriage also present unusual features. On 10 September 1806 he married Mary Sadler of Borrowby, a member of a farming family which still exists in that part of the country. Mary was the daughter of Thomas Sadler, a tanner, and his wife Sarah (nee Urwin) and the grand-daughter of Wilfred and Mary Sadler (nee Welbanck) of Kepwick Mill. Most unusually for the Leake parish registers, the marriage is recorded on its own on a separate page and the entry is signed by four witnesses. Two of the witnesses were Mary's brother John and Mary Kirk, a neighbour of the Sadlers, both signing on Mary's behalf. The other two witnesses were Warcop Consitt, lord of the manor of Brawith who lived at Brawith Hall about a mile to the south-west of Borrowby, and William Morton who lived at Leake Hall. Warcop Consitt and his brother Peter were two eccentric recluses who were descended from a Tudor Lord Mayor of York. According to William Grainge's "Vale of Mowbray" (1859) they resided at Brawith Hall "for more than two thirds of a century, practising a kind of feudal hospitality, guarded by bloodhounds and mastiffs and attended solely by female domestics". I find it very difficult to understand why Warcop Consitt should have come out of his seclusion to witness this particular marriage with Morton of Leake, for he did so on no other such occasion. It would seem almost as though there was some relationship (not necessarily a family relationship) between the Pearsons and Warcop Consitt as well as between the Pearsons and the Mortons of Leake Hall: but this is pure conjecture.

Miles Pearson I was a tanner. This trade is not mentioned in the marriage entry, when he would have been about 24 years of age, but it is shown in Baines' Directory of the North Riding of Yorkshire for 1823 and also in the census return for 1841. He lived at the Tan House, an attractive stone-built house on the western outskirts of Borrowby village, along the back lane to Northallerton. The actual tannery was situated in a separate stone building decorated with interesting carving which stands on the other side of the present garden and is now used as a garage and general store.

Miles and Mary Pearson had ten children in all. In order of age they were: Sarah, Richard, Thomas, Miles II, Wilfred Sadler, John, James, Robert, Elizabeth and William. At the date of the 1841 census Sarah, the eldest child, had already married and was living in Ripon (18 miles to the SW) as Mrs Thompson (Editor's note: other research has the order Sarah 1806, Thomas 1810, Richard 1811, Wilfred Sadler 1814, Miles II 1816, James 1819, Elizabeth 1824, Robert & William 1826, John not listed. Sarah married Robert Thompson, b.1801, in Borrowby in 1825. From 1830-1843 they had children Miles, Margaret?, Richard, Alice, Thomas, Pearson I, Pearson II & Sarah, all born in Borrowby and, with the possible exception of the last, all christened in nearby Leake, so their tie with Ripon was perhaps not strong). All the others were still living in or near Borrowby, five of them (including Miles II) at the Tan House with their parents. Richard was a fellmonger; Thomas a butcher; Miles a shoemaker with William as his apprentice; Wilfred, James and Robert were tailors; and John was a cowkeeper. Elizabeth was in service to a neighbour, Ann Heighley. Sarah Sadler, Miles' mother-in-law, was also still living in Borrowby as a widow in her eighties. Five months after the census Miles Pearson died of tuberculosis on 22 August 1841: he was 59 years of age. Old Sarah Sadler died in October 1845, aged 88, and Mary Pearson, Miles's widow, died from pneumonia on 16 March 1848, aged 63. Miles and Mary were buried in Leake churchyard, on the left-hand side of the main pathway into the church alongside Wilfred and Mary Sadler of Kepwick Mill, Mary Pearson's grandparents, and the Mortons of Leake Hall.

By the date of the 1851 census Sarah had lost her husband and returned to Borrowby where she was living as a pauper with her four children (one of whom bore the unusual name of Pearson Thompson) (Editor's note: two children born to her in 1841 & 1842 were named Pearson, the first probably died an infant). Richard and Robert were both married and living in Thirsk. Thomas the butcher remained unmarried and lived with his unmarried brother James and sister Elizabeth. John and William, likewise unmarried, were living in neighbouring villages. The other two sons of Miles and Mary Pearson, Miles II and Wilfred, were living with their families in Borrowby village.

Miles Pearson II, my great-grandfather, was born on 22 December 1811 and baptised at Leake seven days later. On 17 February 1844, when he was 32, he married Mary Wilson of Borrowby. She was the eldest of three daughters of Joseph and Mary Wilson (nee Proctor), who came originally from Sand Hutton and Carthorpe respectively (see Appendix F), At the time of his marriage Miles was a master cordwainer (Editor's note: a cordwainer makes shoes and other articles from soft leather, to be distinguished from a cobbler who repairs shoes) and he is also shown as such in the 1851 census return seven years later. From a survey of Borrowby which was prepared for tithe commutation purposes in the census year I have been able to establish that he and his family were then living in a cottage on the east side of the main village street. This was nearly opposite the old High Well (which has long since disappeared), about four houses further up the lane than Borrowby Farm and next door but one to Miles' brother Wilfred. A cottage still stands on the site, but it has been considerably renovated and altered. By 1857, however, a local directory shows that Miles had become a grocer and sub-postmaster, and I assume that the house he then lived in was the small stone-built cottage which faces on to the village green and is used to this day as a grocer's shop and sub-post office. The cottage has certainly been used for these purposes for as long as I can remember Borrowby village, which is now approaching sixty years.

Miles and Mary Pearson had thirteen children. Two of these - Mary Anne and Joseph - died shortly after their births in 1844 and 1854; and three were born after Miles and Mary had left Borrowby. Of the other eight children who were born at Borrowby four - Robert (born 1845), Mary (born 1847), Elizabeth (born 1850) and Joseph Alfred (born 1857) - died as children in an outbreak, of diphtheria in March and April 1860. Many years ago my grandmother told me about this outbreak, which had such a catastrophic effect on the Pearsons of Borrowby. Miles and his brothers James (who had married after 1851) and Wilfred lost no less than eight children between them within four weeks, Miles himself losing four in ten days. The four of Miles' children who survived were Martha, Miles III, Sarah Helen (or Ellen) and William; and my grandmother remembered her father telling her that the death roll might have been even higher if one of the boys had not been away from home at the time. She also told me that she never really knew the names of all her elder brothers and sisters and cousins who had died in the outbreak, two years before she was born, but that the memory of that tragic spring of 1860 had remained with her parents for the rest of their lives. The Leake burial register brings out only too clearly the losses that were suffered not only by the Pearsons but by other families as well; and the Vicar's footnote to one of the pages - "principally caused by diphtheria" speaks for itself. In the circumstances it is not difficult to accept my grandmother's comment that during the summer of that year there was hardly a child to be seen playing on the village green. She believed that all the children affected by the outbreak had been buried in a common grave at Leake, but I have not been able to confirm this. It is a fact that at least some of them - for example, James Pearsons's two children - are named on the gravestones of parents who died later.

Shortly after the loss of their children in 1860 Miles Pearson and wife and four surviving children left Borrowby for good and moved to Brompton near Northallerton. In the next chapter I give an account of their later years, which in many ways constituted a quite separate part of their married life. Here I deal with the rest of the story of the Pearsons in Borrowby itself.

By the date of the 1861 census John the cowkeeper, Miles' younger brother, had been dead seven years and been buried with his parents in Leake churchyard. James and Wilfred stayed on in Borrowby and a local directory shows that by 1872 James had, like Miles II before him, become a grocer and sub-postmaster and given up his occupation as a tailor. Thomas the butcher also remained at Borrowby and by 1861 his widowed sister Sarah was keeping house for him in place of Elizabeth. Richard and Robert were still living in Thirsk. All of them, with members of the families of those who had married, were later buried at Leake at various dates up to 1903, which saw the death of James' widow Alice, aged 84.

One other contact with Borrowby survived the departure of Miles Pearson II in 1860. Miles III, one of the four children who survived the diphtheria outbreak, eventually returned to the village as a young man to work as a tailor. He married Jane Hutchinson, a member of an old-established farming family in that area, and they had five children: Mabel Jane, Marion, Hilda, Reginald Newton and Christopher Miles. In 1895 fate struck the Pearson family once more, this time in the shape of tuberculosis. In June of that year Hilda died aged 8; Miles III himself died in the following January followed by his wife Jane in November; and Mabel Jane, aged 16, died four months afterwards in March 1897. The two sons and Marion, deprived of their parents and sisters within less than two years, were cared for by Jane's sister and her husband Edward Bosomworth, a member of a very old north Yorkshire farming family which is mentioned in John Wesley's Journal and is still in the Thirsk area today. Both Reginald and Christopher were killed during the First World War and Marion, the last survivor of the family, married and went to live at Windermere. There she lost her husband and in her later years she returned (as Marion Mitchell) to the village in which she had been born. She lived at Victory Cottage, near the Wheatsheaf Inn, for a number of years; and when at last she died in an old people's home in Northallerton in October 1969, aged 86, the last Pearson link with Borrowby village was severed. My mother, as a young girl of about eight in 1895-1896, could remember my grandmother taking the train from Stockton-on-Tees to Thirsk to visit her brother Miles and his family at the time when (as she put it) "one was dying in the front room and another in the back". From all accounts the three orphaned children were well cared for by the Bosomworths after their parents' deaths. But life for them, in service with various farming families, must have been very hard for many years. During the fifty or so years after Marion had been left entirely on her own and more particularly after she had lost her husband and returned to Borrowby - she wrote quite often to my mother. And I have in my possession a rather sad little letter she wrote from Northallerton towards the end of 1969. This was never posted and was found in her effects after she had died.

Darnbrook House.
Photo given to the editor's father, Alwyn Wilson Jones, inscribed, 'The home… where Miles Pearson lived (1782) and three generations of the Pearson family - Peter (Wilson) & Liz (Jones) @ Darnbrook, 1994'

See also location photo

The Times of 10 June 1995 records the purchase of Darnbrook Farm by the National Trust.

The Origins of the Pearsons of Borrowby

(A later addition to Chapter 8)

When I first made enquiries into the origins of the Pearson family (the ancestors of my maternal grandmother) I was unable to trace them further back than the early years of the 19th century, when Miles Pearson I was married at Borrowby near Thirsk in North Yorkshire. From Miles’ age at his death it was known that he must have been born in 1782, but his baptism entry and the names of his parents could not be identified despite a family wide search through North Yorkshire parish registers. I now find that the Pearsons originated in the hill parishes around Malham in what was then the West Riding or Yorkshire – many miles away from the Thirsk area.

The earliest Pearson in the direct line of descendant appears to have been William Pearson, a yeoman, who was born around 1650, married Isabel Warde at Linton-in-Craven in November 1677 and lived thereafter at Kettlewell in Upper Wharfdale. William and Isabel had at least three sons: William, James and Joseph. Precise details of the family at that time are difficult to establish, because many of the entries in the 18th century Kettlewell registers are unreadable; but there seems to be no doubt that the ancestor of the Pearsons of Borrowby was Joseph. He married Ann Robinson at Kettlewell in 1715 and that couple then moved to Kirkby Malham parish, where their four sons and one daughter – Thomas, Robert, Joseph, William and Alice – were baptised between 1718 and 1725.

The direct line of descent then passed through Joseph’s second son, Robert who married Alice Proctor of Darnbrooke by licence at Kirkby Malham in October 1737, when he was only 17 years old. Alice was descended from a family of Proctors who were living at the hamlet of Darnbrooke as early as 1689 and Robert probably made his home there after his marriage. Darnbrooke is a very isolated group of 3 farms (two of them relatively modern) on Malham Moor, at the foot of a steep hill along the minor road between Arncliffe-in-Littondale and Malham Tarn. Darnbrooke House, the main habitation, stands on the side of Darnbrooke Beck. It is a fine stone built farmhouse dating from before 1600, and in pre-reformation days its predecessor was part of the extensive estate of Fountains Abbey. It was in the possession of the Bucke family for over three hundred years, and a Richard Pearson (possibly an Uncle of Robert) married onto the Bucke family in 1731. Robert and Alice Pearson had at least five children: Ann (b.1738), Thomas who died in infancy (b.1739), Miles (b.1742), Richard (b.1745) and James (b.1747). Two more of Robert’s children – William (b.1752) and Ann II (b.1753) – may have been by a second wife named Mary Gill.

Richard, the fourth child and third son of Robert and Alice Pearson, married Elizabeth Preston by licence at Arncliffe church in August 1774. Elizabeth was the daughter of William Preston, and her family, like the Buckes and the Proctors go back a very long way in the Littondale area. Local records describe Richard as a farmer living at Darnbrooke and the baptism entries for all this children give that as the family’s abode. There were eight children in all: Robert the eldest, who was baptised in 1775 was followed by Mary (1776), Thomas (1780), Miles (1782), Richard (1784), James (1786), Robert II (1788) and Richard II (1800). Of these the elder Robert and the elder Richard died in infancy. It was Miles, baptised on 29 March 1782 who later moved to Borrowby.

Miles Pearson was living at North Allenton shortly before he was married in 1806, but it is not known why or when he left the Malham area, or whether he was accompanied by other members of his family. It may be significant that Pearsons had been living at Kirby Sigston near Borrowby since the beginning of the 17th century. But there is no evidence of a link between the two families that might have encouraged Miles to move; and any relationship with the Kirby Sigston family must have been very remote after nearly a century had passed. That Miles Pearson himself came from the Malham area however there can be no doubt. The baptism date, and the prior names in the Malham families which are repeated with remarkable regularity in later generations at Borrowby, all point conclusively in this direction.

By 1841 the date of the prior detailed census there was no Pearson still living in the parishes of Kirkby Malham or Arncliffe.

Miles as a first name is rare in the Yorkshire parish registers that I have examined (except those of Leake). But there were at least five in the Malham area during the 17th and 18th centuries. One was Miles Proctor who was married at Arncliffe as early as 1655; a second was Miles Tennant, the Vicar of that parish from 1718*; a third was Miles Wilson the curate from 1744; and there were the two Pearsons who were baptised in 1742 and 1782. It is quite possible that this name was first given in memory of Miles Coverdale (1488-1568) the famous translator of the English Bible who was born in Coverdale about ten miles or so from Arncliffe and was to play an important part in the English Reformation.

*Editor's note (info found by Peter Jones, source University College Record Vol. XIV no. 2 (2006)): Trevor makes an error with the dates of the Vicar Miles Tennant. "When the living fell vacant in 1681, the new vicar, Miles Tennant, had matriculated from Oxford University in 1677, and was only twenty-two years old. In other words, none of the existing Fellows wanted the parish. Tennant, however, had a special interest, because he was a local lad, coming from Buckden, one of the hamlets within the parish of Arncliffe. He was also poorly off, for he matriculated as a servitor … Miles Tennant remained at Arncliffe for over half a century, and was buried there on Christmas Eve 1732. According to his memorial, he even married the daughter of the previous vicar."

August 1989.

Next: The later years of Miles & Mary Pearson