Everyone is called George Duckworth- George Duckworth (1778-1858)

 

 

My husband was on at me to find more about the Duckworths from Lancashire. It was one of the first families we fleshed out back in 2012 when we started the family history.

When we started, as far as we could get back, was George Duckworth married Esther Frayker in 1830, a pair of third great-grandparents. Actually, we had got back there fairly accurately considering it seemed everyone seemed to be called George Duckworth.

Duckworth is an English Lancashire habitorial name, from Duckworth in the borough of Bury. In an old English name, Duce for Duck and Worth meaning enclosure.

                                                         Figure 1 one of the many mills in the area

They lived in a cotton milling town with industry revolving around growing and weaving cotton. These had sprung up along the waterways  as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

In the 1891 census, there were 4,716 Duckworth families in Lancashire, 70% of all recorded Duckworths.

In England  as late as1939 cotton mills were a major source of employments. 13% of men were employed in the cotton weaving industry. Generally males were labourers and builders labourers made up 38%. Women were mostly unpaid domestics at 61% and it seemed before marriage the girls were cotton weavers, 9%.

The Duckworths in the 1841 census

In the first census back in 1841 we find George Duckworth, 63, was an agricultural labourer and Esther  his wife nee Frayker was 51. Son, William Duckworth , my husbands 2x great grandfather was shown as their son on this census and was a cotton winder, age 20. We all know the problems with the 1841 census literacy, lack of birthplaces, rounding up or down of ages and this one was a bit puzzling as usual.

I looked up the Lancashire Parish online clerk records https://www.lan-opc.org.uk/Search/indexp.html - such a worthwhile database. It's very a user-friendly search and it copes with language, literacy, and accent spelling variations of the Lancastrians of old.

Further I found that Esther and George had married in 1830 when William was 10 years old. 

Here's their record of marriage:

Marriage: 7 Mar 1830 St James, Haslingden, Lancashire, England
George Duckworth - (X), of The Town and Chapelry of Haslingden
Esther Frayker - (X), of The Town and Chapelry of Haslingden
Witness: Anne Ormerod, (X); Jas Wilding
Married by Banns by: William Gray Minister
Register: Marriages 1822 - 1831, Entry 899
Source: LDS Film 1068836

The parish records transcriptions and are informative showing both parents, location, employment occupation and church name often with the godparents. William wasn't to be found as a son of George.

The Lancashire Parish Clark records allows for extreme search options but I assume George Duckworth must have had a previous wife if he had a 10 year old son when he married Esther.

I couldn't find William Duckworth born to a previous marriage and with so many George Duckworths is was hard to go back further to his parents.  Everyone is called George  and I was about to give up and tried looking for Esther Fracker's parents and background instead. Everyone is called Esther, but Frackea, Fracker, Fricker, is not so common.

And so Fracker is not her maiden name, eureka. She's been married before. On the 2nd of the 2nd, at St Mary the Virgin Church, Bury in Lancashire, in 1812, Esther Whittaker married James Fricker, a cotton carder.

The marriage was short-lived with James Fracker being buried after dying at Ashton's Factory in 1818, just after their sixth anniversary. He was aged 27.

There were other children resulting from the marriage. They had a son, Joseph b 1812 and possibly another son William born 1812 but had died aged 4 in 1816. Joseph had died in 1830 the year of their marriage.

Perhaps William, who George had claimed as his son in 1841 was the son of someone else? With Esther Fracker widowed and a 12-year-old gap between her husband's demise and her marriage to George Duckworth, where does William born approximately 1820 come in? Another marriage. Next, I find a non-parental event or NPE. An illegitimate child was born.

On the 4th of April, 1823, Esther Fraker of Aston's Factory, a spinner, takes her son William Fraker  along to Emmanuel Church in Holcombe to be baptised. The records show William Fracker, the reputed son of James Ramsden and Esther Fraker, was born in 1823 in Ramsbottom. From her marriage to George, little William assumed the name Duckworth.

That's it. The Duckworths have dried up. My husband is not part of the Duckworths from Lancashire. In fact, my husband doesn't have any Duckworth ethnicity. Future family are not blood Duckworths, but only took the name as William and later generations continued to call themselves Duckworth.

With no sign of the Ramsden family, it will be a hard slog to go any further back , and we truly don't own the Duckworth name. The only other prospect is to go back through the Whittakers but oh no -it seems everyone is called Esther Whittaker!