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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Yorkshire (West Riding) => Topic started by: silicondale on Sunday 22 June 25 23:09 BST (UK)
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I have a John Brown (born Hunslet 1852) who was an organ builder, employed by the London-based organ building company Henry Willis & Sons in the 1870s. But John and his family lived in Sheffield throughout the 1870s. Was there any connection between the organ building company in London and Henry Willis steel manufacturers in Sheffield? Were they owned by the same Henry Willis? Or did the London organ building company have a branch office in Sheffield?
John Brown then emigrated to the USA in 1881, initially working for Hilborne Lewis Roosevelt, an organ builder in New York (this was a non-political cousin of US presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt). He later, in about 1885, set up his own organ building company in Wilmington, Delaware.
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White's Directory of Sheffield 1879 is available from Leicester University. It shows
Brown, John, Pianoforte dealer & organ bldr. 5 Plumpton st, page 421
https://leicester.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/266500/rec/3%20
(may be slow to load)
Henry Willis is not listed under Trades - Organ builders, but neither is John Brown, page 809
https://leicester.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/266908/rec/3
(Added: Brown is under Music etc. dealers)
https://leicester.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/266904/rec/3
Willis, Henry & Son, steel manufacturers are at page 606
https://leicester.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/266685/rec/3
Henry Willis of London was a major organ building company and probably had agents elsewhere for tuning and minor repairs. It may be worth checking the British Organ Archive:
https://bios.org.uk/the-british-organ-archive/
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Is it possible that John Brown was the Sheffield branch of the London company?
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Wow, Molly - I love the lateral thinking. Will check the address with the family's entry in the 1881 census but I'd bet it's the same.
And Alan, you may well have hit on the answer, that clearly any large order would have to be filled by a bigger company, not just the John Brown one-man-band.
Many thanks to both.
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Plumpton Street was previously named Plum Street in 1871, but altered because there was another Plum Street in Sheffield. I only know this because a friend's ancestor's sister lived at no. 8!
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Thanks, Molly! Have gone quite a bit further now. John Brown emigrated in 1881 with Louisa Ann Evans, granddaughter of William Willey, a prominent Sheffield cutler who had moved to London in the 1840s. After his death in 1853 his daughter Mary inherited his shop at 21 Fish Street Hill in the City of London (close to the Great Fire Monument). She married Evan Evans who continued to run the shop as a tobacconist/newsagent which also sold cutlery. Louisa was their daughter. But although John Brown had been living in Sheffield for several years, I've found no Sheffield connection between the two families.
John Brown left a family in Sheffield (including a son, Frank, born in 1882 after John had already sailed to New York). After John left, his wife Caroline and their 6 children moved from Plumpton Street to Court 5, 8 Cambridge Road, Heeley - sounds to me like much smaller and cheaper accommodation. Caroline petitioned for divorce in 1894, and John Brown and Louisa Ann then married in Camden, New Jersey, in 1895. Frank eventually joined him in America and managed the organ-building business after his father's retirement.
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I think this must have been No. 5, Court 8, Cambridge Road. Cambridge Road begins at nos. 100 and 111 because the lower numbers are named Tillotson Road. There was only one court - no. 8, with 5 houses, which were not back-to-backs, so not a bad situation.
This is the OS 1:500 town plan of 1889
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=19.0&lat=53.35932&lon=-1.46700&layers=117746211&b=ESRIWorld&o=100
On 1:1250 scale, house numbers are shown in 1950, renamed Cambridge Place by 1970, demolished before 1982.
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=19.0&lat=53.35940&lon=-1.46707&layers=170&b=ESRIWorld&o=100
Here is Plumpton Street in 1889
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17.0&lat=53.37170&lon=-1.48730&layers=117746211&b=ESRIWorld&o=100
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I think you must be right, Molly, and I just misread the address. And many thanks for the maps! I don't live too far from Sheffield and have visited the city several times, but it's changed so much in recent years that I find it hard to visualise it. It's the same in London's east end, where I lived as a child in the 1950s. Much of it is unrecognisable today - though I suppose better than all the bomb sites. And the shop on Fish Street Hill disappeared long ago - where it was is now the back of a concrete and steel office building