18. John and Mary Green of the West Riding of Yorkshire

The Green surname may be derived from an association with green clothing, a village green, or a Green Man in May Day celebrations. Our Green family came from Wigan in Lancashire.

Musgrave was a prominent Anglo-Scottish border reiver family with the name possibly deriving from margrave ('march warden'). Border reivers were raiders along the Anglo-Scottish border from the late C13 to the beginning of the C17, with Tudor times being their heyday. Their ranks consisted of both Scottish and English people, and they raided the entire Border country without regard to their victims' nationality. Our Musgrave family spent several generations in the Barnsley area of Yorkshire, especially in Darton.

For the record, and with the usual cautions, my oldest direct ancestors we know about in this part of the family are: Thomas Green (1834), Richard Humphryes (1825), Mary Crompton (1890), William Musgreave (1679), Maria Gibson (1679), Hannah Hawley (1701), Mary Lockwood (1730) and John Allen (1755).

John Green was born in Wigan in 1808 to Thomas Latham Green and Mary. John married Mary Musgrave (1807, Barnsley) in Silkstone nr Barnsley in 1826.

Wigan's status as a centre for coal production, engineering and textiles in the C18 led to the Douglas Navigation in the 1740s, the canalisation of part of the River Douglas and later the building of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Wigan became a hub for transport of coal from the Lancashire coal pits to Liverpool and Leeds. It was a centre for textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, but, due to a dearth of fast-flowing streams and rivers, it was not until the C19 that cotton and linen factories began to spread into the town. In 1818, William Woods introduced the first power looms and eight cotton mills sprang up in the Wallgate part of Wigan. These mills swiftly became infamous for their dangerous and unbearable conditions, low pay and use of child labour. There is more information on the buildings in an English Heritage booklet available online.

Trencherfield Mill, Wigan (my photo)

As well as being a mill town, Wigan was also an important centre for coal production. It was recorded that in 1854 there were 54 collieries in and around the town, about a sixth of all the collieries in Lancashire. My photos of the town are here.

Church of All Saints, Wigan (my photo)

From the C17, Barnsley developed into a stop-off point on the route between Leeds, Wakefield, Sheffield and London. The traffic generated as a result of its location fuelled trade, with hostelries and related services prospering. By the time John arrived, Barnsley was a principal centre for linen weaving - flax spinning by water power having been introduced in the mid to late C18. See Chapter 5 for a contemporary flax mill in Shrewsbury.

Market St, Barnsley (my photo)

The first passenger station to serve Barnsley was opened by the North Midland Railway in 1840. From the 1850s onwards, a large number of coal pits were opened, mostly in the villages surrounding the town, especially those to the east. As John got older, the linen industry began to decline due to competition from Ireland and Scotland, and from cotton. So coal eclipsed flax, and the ratio of workers in the two industries in John's neighbourhood tilted - it was about even by 1861.  There is an interesting thesis available online about the working conditions in Barnsley at the time. My photos of the town are here.

Theatre Royal, Barnsley (1898) (my photo)

So, our family were certainly from Wigan and certainly ended up in Barnsley. The problem is that John Green is a common name and there are gaps and inconsistencies in the records. DNA has not yet come to our aid. We know from an Agnes Green's marriage record from 1853 that her father is John Green, a bleacher, living in Barnsley. We know from later censuses that Agnes was born in Wigan. And this John is resident in Barnsley and consistently shown as a linen weaver, living in the old town - and born in Wigan.

There are no other likely candidates in the records but it remains possible that the juvenile Agnes found her way from Wigan by different means, and that her father was a different John. This is before compulsory registration - there is no record of Agnes being born or baptised (the sole candidate is in another coal mining area near Stoke-on-Trent). We would normally expect the censuses to help but she does not live with John in Barnsley.

There is, however, a person of the right name and age living across town with a hat maker called George Traviss. George has room not only for his niece, Agnes, but also for a widowed daughter and her son, and a servant. Agnes is recorded as a shop woman which fits known history, but having been born in Barnsley. And the name Traviss shows up very soon as a middle name.

The other children are shown in the census as normal, albeit with some long gaps! They are not all our family if we have the wrong John Green though...

41.2.1 - Agnes Green (1826 - as above)
41.2.2 - Abigail Green (1829)
41.2.3 - Charles Green (1831)
41.2.4 - Ann Green (1833)
41.2.5 - Mary Green (1835)
41.2.6 - William Green (1839)
41.2.7 - Alice Green (1849)
41.2.8 - Richard Green (1850)
41.2.9 - Elizabeth Green (1858)

More on these individuals in Chapter 41.

There is a clue to working conditions at the time in reports of an explosion in October 1868. Residents initially thought it was yet another explosion at the colliery. But no, Mr Norris's firework factory was working long hours to meet the demand in the lead up to Bonfire Night. The workforce - mostly made up of young boys and girls had to unpack gunpowder from 50lb barrels and mix it up with the other ingredients. The factory was made of wood, and situated next to a paper warehouse, and close to terraced housing. One of the children had apparently placed a tin of 'composition' on the stove.

John died in Barnsley in 1875, Mary in 1878 in Keighley nr Bradford. My photos of Keighley are here.

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