20. Richard and Harriet Rowland of the West Riding of Yorkshire

The Rowland surname comes from a first name. Our Rowland family probably came from Ireland, where the first name would have been Rothlain. Some sources suggest that the surname always derives from the patronymic name of a clan in Mayo and Sligo in the west of Ireland.

The Wood surname probably derives from a family living near a wood, or working in one. Our Wood family came from Yorkshire.

For the record, and with the usual cautions, my oldest direct ancestors we know about in this part of the family are: Richard Rowland (1778) and Thornton Wood (1768, Yorkshire).

Richard Rowland (1796, Ireland) married Harriet Wood (1804). Richard was a gamekeeper. They had four children:

• 42.2.1 - Mary Rowland (1828)
• 42.2.2 - Catharine Rowland (1831)
• 42.2.3 - Richard Rowland (1833)
• 42.2.4 - Joseph Rowland (1836)

More on these individuals in Chapter 42.

Richard had been married before - in 1821 to Martha Wood (1799) - she died in 1822. Richard married Harriet Wood in 1826 - she died in 1839 at Coldhill, Saxton. The following year, Richard married Hannah Allott (1798, Silkstone nr Barnsley). This marriage names Richard's father as another Richard - a steward. In 1841, Richard and three of the children lived in Coldhill Cottage, Saxton. Hannah is with her father, and her step-daughter Catharine in Sheffield.

Parlington - Gamekeeper's Cottage (my photo)

Parlington - Dog's Grave (my photo)

At the time of the 1851 census, Richard was visiting his by-now-married daughter Mary's family in Stainborough nr Barnsley. Hannah was living on the Parlington Hall estate. This may have been in the Gamekeeper's Cottage, which I photographed in 2004, along with a contemporary dog's grave. There is a little more on the gamekeeping online.

I was there to photo the Grade II* listed arch, commemorating American independence. King George IV reputedly refused to pass through the archway, declaring that he would not enter the house of a man who could thus perpetuate the memory of England's defeats.

Parlington - Triumphal Arch (my photo)

Richard died, probably while at Parlington, in 1857. Hannah went to live with her brother in Sheffield. The estate did not last much longer: after a death in a hunting accident, the daughters of the family returned to their father's estate in Ireland, rebuilding the neglected Castle Oliver, and neglecting Parlington in turn.

In 1842, when Richard was probably an employee, one of the sisters, Mary Isabella Gascoigne, anonymously published a book which subverted C19 assumptions about gender and technology by teaching women to produce decorative objects using a lathe. [She] observed that there was nothing intrinsically masculine about the use of machine tools. Her later home, Castle Oliver, was subsequently owned by Billy Coleman who won the British Rally Championship in a Ford Escort, in 1974.

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