Street names Thornton Bradford

[Deetot]

 Hi There All,
What a fascinating thread this has been to follow! 

Just to further confuse johnnyboy and Dobbie,  here is a snippet I found while checking some transcriptions for BFHS.  (Some of you may know that we have begun to record the MIs and transcribe the Kipping Chapel Records in order to produce a CD later this year)

Kipping Chapel: Guilbert Dobson, son of Isaac and Betty Dobson born 26th May 1806, bapt 1st July 1806

Also came across
Hannah, dau of James and Malley Driver,  born 22nd Aug  bapt 2nd Oct 1806
Hannah, dau of Thomas and Hannah Driver,  born 21st Dec 1806  bapt 17th Feb 1807.

Regards,

Deetot

[johnnyboy]

Hi Deetot: Thanks for the reply. And good luck with the indexing of Kipping Chapel records.

If you are indexing the Bs, the Ms, and the Ds of Kipping Chapel, some of my Dobsons are in there. The IGI has two Anna Dobsons baptized on November 17, 1823 at Kipping Independent. One of the Annas is the sister of my 2x great grandmother. Mary Dobson, another sister of my 2x great grandmother, was baptized at Kipping on Feb. 4, 1822. But the family seems to have joined Mount Zion Methodist New Connexion church some time after this. And siblings of my 2x great grandmother were being baptized at Mount Zion as late as 1837. Sadly, my 2x great grandmother, Susey Dobson, born 1825 or so, is not in the IGI. Perhaps the parish register page is missing. Or maybe they left her a heathen. 

There is also a John Dobson baptized at Kipping the same day as the two Annas. The three must have been baptized in the same ceremony. They have different fathers: Thomas (Anna), Joseph (Anna), and Isaac Dobson (John).

This John Dobson seems to be the brother of Guilbert Dobson, the son of Isaac and Betty Dobson. A third child of Isaac and Betty (she's named Elizabeth in the IGI entry) is named Joseph. He was baptized on May 30, 1820.

I think the fathers Thomas, Joseph, and Isaac Dobson are related, but I have no idea how they might be.

And it gets more complicated. My 3x great grandfather Joseph Dobson, the father of Anna and Mary, lived in very close proximity to (sometimes next door; sometimes two houses away) a John Dobson who was a few years his senior. They were neighbors for 40 years, but I can't prove any relationship between them, nor among any of the other Dobsons. 

Thomas, Isaac, Joseph, and John Dobson might be brothers, near cousins, or even distant cousins. Perhaps they never spoke with one another.

Does this make anyone's head ache?--in the way that mine does when I spend more than a few minutes at a time trying to sort out the Dobsons.

Maybe I should switch to the Drivers. I'm sure that Jen would appreciate that. Then her thread wouldn't be continually steered off course.

John 

[northernsearcher]

Hello All my turn to hijack my post! I’ve been out of the loop for a while for various reasons; it’s good to be back and following the thread again. I haven’t been totally idle and have managed a very brief visit to Thornton. I found the Kipping Cemetery, the one that Deetot and the Bradford Family History society have been reclaiming and transcribing. It was a wonderful old graveyard, very beautiful.  I took some photo’s which I put on AntonP’s Thornton Kipping Cemetery post.  I was looking for AntonP’s, Rev. Joseph Cockin as I had promised I would the next time I went to Howarth.  It was only a quick visit and having climbed over the wall into the cemetery (on the instructions from the really helpful man in the Garage on Thornton Road) I failed to find any Cockin, Dobson or Driver headstones.  In my defence I have to say it was very wet and I was wearing the totally wrong shoes.  Deetot is way ahead of me here.  I am planning to go back again.  Next time (with climbing boots) I am hoping to look at all the headstones and photograph those of Cockin, Dobson and Driver.
As far as the identity of Main Street is concerned I am working my way through John’s suggestion using the National Archives Historical Streets Project, I have to cross reference this with Census records so I am working my way through it slowly.  John you are right what I/we really need is an old map.
So thank you everyone for the work you have been doing looks like we might get there eventually!
Jen

[northernsearcher]

Oh forgot to say that I am delighted with the Driver find Deetot. Hannah daughter of Thomas and Hannah Driver is the sister of my children's ggggrandfather. So yes John swap to the Drivers. Then we can work on them together!
Jen

[johnnyboy]

Hi Jen: Welcome back to your thread. I've been away too, so the thread hasn't been taken as far away from the Drivers as it might have been if I weren't so busy writing up a research project.

What follows is some compensatory searching in the IGI for Drivers. It was meant to assuage the my guilt. But, ironically, during the search for your Drivers, I may have discovered something about my 3x great grandfather Joseph Dobson. But enough about me...I'll keep you in suspense until I've posted what I found about the Drivers.

Using the batch search at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/%7Ehughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers/CountyYorkshire_(T-Z).htm#PageTitle

I found:

In IGI Batch P009141, there are the following children with Thomas and Hannah Driver as parents.

John Driver born 4 Dec 1793; christened 5 Jan 1794 Kipping Independent

David Driver born 15 Dec 1797; christened 11 Feb 1798 Kipping Independent

Joseph Driver born 22 Feb 1800; christened 1800 (no day or month) Kipping Independent

Thomas Driver born 8 Jun 1802 christened 1 Oct 1802 Kipping Independent

Hannah Driver born 21 Dec 1806; christened 17 Feb, 1807 Kipping Independent

In IGI Batch C009142, there are the following children with Thomas Driver and Hannah Driver as parents. They seem to be siblings of the above children.

Charles Driver born 16 Apr 1809; christened 13 Jun 1809  Kipping Independent

Samuel Driver born 27 Dec 1811; christened 28 Feb 1811 Kipping Independent

Betty Driver born 21 May 1814; christened 18 August 1814 Kipping Independent

Abraham Driver born 13 Feb 1817; christened 31 Oct 1817 Kipping Independent

John Driver born 8 Jul 1822; christened 10 Apr 1822 Oct Kipping Independent

Apparently, the first-born John Driver passed away before 1822.

Hope this adds to--or at least confirms--what you already know.

As for Joseph Dobson: I searched for Dobson births in IGI Batch C108152, which covers the years 1730-1812. Joseph Dobson is born 1797, the son of Joseph Dobson and Elizabeth Illingworth. I believe this is my Joseph Dobson. But none of the 40 other Dobson children in the batch were born to Joseph Dobson and Elizabeth Illingworth. That puzzled me until....there was a light bulb glowing over my head.

One explanation: Joseph Dobson may have been an only child, or at least the only child of this marriage. He may have been an only child because his father died. It seems more likely that his father would have died because he has no siblings that I can find with the last name Dobson. If that was the case, his mother may have remarried, leaving the possibility that he had half-siblings.

But there is a problem with this explanation: My 3x great grandmother, Joseph's daughter, went to work in Ovenden, a few miles away from Thornton. She lived with John and Susey Wood. Susey's maiden name was Dobson, and I've thought until now that she was Joseph Dobson's sister. But I've not been able to find her birth to confirm this.

See? This is why my head hurts when I think about the Dobsons.

Regards,
John   

[northernsearcher]

Good to be back John. Thank you for your contribution to the Driver picture. I hadn’t picked up the last John Driver, maybe because I am poor at maths!  I think it’s strange to “replace” a dead child by giving another child the same name but it does seem to happen quite frequently. I still think it’s odd. Your Dobson’s are getting more and more confusing, no wonder your head hurts,  I have a similar problem with another branch of my family which I will have to ask for help from Rootschat very soon out of sheer frustration.  Maybe someone will read this thread that has an interest in Dobson’s and offer you an explanation.  Your Illingworth connection is interesting.  I have come across the name over and over again when trawling Thornton census records. I think they must have been a Thornton family. I think there were Illingworth’s in the Bell Chapel cemetery and the Kipping cemetery.  As far as Main Street is concerned, I am at the moment coming down on the side of Market St.  Having visited Thornton twice now I think that the narrower and older looking of the two streets is Market Street.  But hey, Thornton Road could have been widened; it certainly is a “main” road but as far as I know that could have been after clearing poor housing and modernisation.  I do hope we get a definite answer.

[johnnyboy]

Hi Jen: If you have access to the censuses on Anc**try, I think you can find descriptions of the boundaries of the individual enumerations districts as part of the census records. You might look at the description of the enumeration district that Charles Driver and family lived in 1861 to see if the description uses "Main Street" (a proper noun) or "the main street" (a common noun that indicates the street's function and importance). That might provide an answer to the burning question.

How you access the descriptions of enumeration districts, I'm not sure. But I will be at the library today and will have a look around on the computer if I can.

As for the two John Drivers: Families memorialized the first child by giving the name to a subsequent child. The custom is widespread. It happened on the Italian side of my family.

Regards,
John   

[northernsearcher]

Thanks John
Will do the English language bit - although I am pretty sure it was Main St.
Jen

[Deetot]

Hi All,

In doing some research for AntonP (another thread) I found a book compiled by Michael Smith, 2003 which is called "Market Street, Thornton" and produced by the Thornton Antiquarian Society.  This has lists of residents of many of the older properties over the years.                                                 
 Quote  "Before the 19th Century, Market Street (which at various times has been called Village Street, Town Street, Main Street or Thornton Street) was the main highway from Bradford either to Halifax or the Dales area."  The book has 116 Market Street lived in by Nathan Driver "shopkeeper" in1893 but no Dobsons.                                                                                                                           The road that is now the main road is Thornton Road and by passes the older part of the village and was at one time called New Road.
Hope this helps.
Deetot