Just posted a request about my Turner ancestry in County Durham - this is the other side of that family, the Siddles. I have quite a lot of information on some members of this family, but I am looking either to push my research further back, or to find other connections of this family.
ANN SIDDLE, my connection, was born in 1832 in Hamsterley. She was the third child and eldest daughter of WILLIAM and MARY SIDDLE, nee DODDS, who were married in 1827, in Hamsterley. Her older brothers were JOHN (1828) and WILLIAM (1830), both of whom appear on the 1841 census and subsequently disappear - whilst stories of Ann and her sisters were passed down through the family, there was never any mention of the two brothers, and nobody in the family knew that they existed.
Ann also had younger sisters, ELIZABETH and MARY. Elizabeth married WILLIAM LAMBERT and emigrated to Australia. Her son, WILLIAM ADDISON LAMBERT, became mayor of Leichhardt in New South Wales, and her grandson represented New South Wales at Baseball and went on to have a fairly prominent political career. Mary married JOHN BROWN and remained in County Durham, having seven children (one of whom died at three years old) and Ann married first JOHN TEASDALE and then GEORGE TURNER. She had two children by her first marriage, JOHN and MARY (Molly) and three by her second, GEORGE HUTCHINSON, MARGARET ANN and FRANCES (my great-grandmother).
Ann's father, William, was born in 1800, in Wolsingham, the son of WILLIAM SIDDLE, farmer at Thornley, and ELIZABETH TOWNS, of Wolsingham. He appears to have been a man of reasonable means, as he employed house servants and sent his daughters to boarding school. In 1841 he is listed as a farmer at West Rackwood Farm, near Hamsterley; in 1851, he is down as a wood merchant (I suspect that he had found that growing and selling timber on his lands made more money than farming) and in 1861, he is listed as a contractor living in South Bedburn. Given that this was the time that the railway line was being laid in the area, and that the family story states that he sold his land to the railway company, I imagine that that is what contractor refers to. He died in 1867.
Would love to hear from anyone researching any branch of this family, or anyone with additional information (I do have more information that I haven't posted though, particularly on the Brown family, and the Teasdale children by Ann's first marriage, as well as the fate of the Turner family).
