BBC "Who Do You Think You Are?" Gareth Malone (WDYTYA Series 12 Episode 5)

[Rosinish]

I hope Gareth doesn't spend his weekend "googling" his ancestors as he will be directed to RC but on the bright side he will find out even more about his ancestry :-)

Annie

[Jomot]

I watched and enjoyed, didn't mind the singing,  loved the way Pappa was involved and how he was overjoyed to see his Grandfather.

I hated the constant singing & padding when I still had questions I wanted answering, but completely agree that Pappa's joy was a delight to see, so for me it was worth watching just for that   

[ankerdine]

I smiled the whole way through and enjoyed the thrill of the little nuggets of gold he found.

That's exactly how I felt. However, right at the beginning I was determined to be bored but Gareth is such an inspirational person that feeling soon left me. I loved the sing-song in the pub - so typical of Irish folk songs.

My OH has Malone ancestors but I've never researched them in depth. Perhaps I will now.

Judy

[avm228]

If Gareth does google and find this thread I want him to know he can do no wrong in my eyes, having made those TV programmes which inspired me to rediscover choral singing.  It's changed my life (much for the better)

Getting back to the programme - there were lovely moments, but for me it wasn't the most gripping I've seen. I may even have multitasked.  Sorry Gareth.

[sallyyorks]

Dan's father Patrick was probably a Roscrea weaver and the decline in the local industry likely made him decide to move to Leeds:-

"The population of Roscrea appears to have reached its height in the 1830s. In 1885 a wool merchant from the neighbouring town of Birr reported to the House of Commons Select Committee on Industries (Ireland) that in the early decades of the 19th century 1,000 men were employed in Roscrea as weavers and wool combers, but that by the early 1880s this number had dropped to just 2."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscrea


Blue

I can't quote all your posts, there are far too many of them. That you think the Lowry's were Irish is interesting but it is speculation and you have not provided any documentary proof.

Daniel was born in Yorkshire. He is on the 1841 census in Leeds as being "born in county".

His being a catholic and having a father called Patrick is not proof that he, or his father, was from Ireland. There are "Patricks" and "Lowrys" going back in Yorkshire parish registers to at least the 17th century. There are Lowrys in Leeds parish church register at least as early as the mid 18th century . Yorkshire, like Lancashire,  also had high numbers of native English catholics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recusancy

The link you provided in a previous post making the claim that "Dan"  was born in Roscrea gives no citations or any evidence whatsoever to back up its claim

"Wool combers" were found all over Yorkshire. If you are going to speculate that he moved for work, then he is more likely to be from Bradford than anywhere else in the world.  Bradford, (like many other towns and cities in the West Riding), was built on industrial mills and on wool combing in particular. 
This quote below about Bradford is just the  number of "wool combers"alone. Then on top of that, there would have been all the spinners, weavers, dyers and so on
"...In Bradford, I am told on good authority, there are about 15,000 woolcombers...." Bradford Sanitation Report 1837
Some info on wool combers in Yorkshire here http://bancroftsfromyorkshire.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/woolcombing-in-yorkshire-dirty-business.html?m=1

Perhaps he "migrated" to Leeds from any number of other West Riding industrial mill towns/cities or from the Yorkshire countryside or even from Lancashire or wherever.  It was the industrial revolution after all ! , millions of English people "migrated" into the towns and cities. You need to start from where he was born, (Yorkshire) and work outwards.

The programme itself , if I remember correctly , even stated that the family were "not Irish" but that "Dan" advertised himself as an "Irish singer" because he was performing songs to Irish migrants in Liverpool pubs. If the programme had found any Irish ancestry for the Lowrys then I am sure they would have mentioned it.

[Blue70]

If Dan's parents were English where is their marriage? There is no proof of any English roots. He considered himself Irish and his bio said he was born in a specific Irish place with a history of weaving, the occupation of his father. He was born in Leeds but it looks like his parents came over from Ireland.


Blue

[sallyyorks]

If Dan's parents were English where is their marriage? There is no proof of any English roots. He considered himself Irish and his bio said he was born in a specific Irish place with a history of weaving, the occupation of his father. He was born in Leeds but it looks like his parents came over from Ireland.


Blue

The records may not be online yet, the records might have been damaged or lost, they might have married in some obscure little non conformist chapel lost in time, they might not have married at all. There are a number of reasons . I looked for a marriage for my grt x 4  grandparents for six years and I only found it a few weeks ago. The parish register is so tiny that I found it by accident when I looked at the next page after finding another record.

The programme made a point of explaining why a man from Leeds sang Irish songs in Liverpool .

The "bio" you posted has no references/citations

The West Riding famously had a woollen industry for many centuries but with mechanisation it became very different to the old cottage type industry and by the 1820s it was the epicentre of a huge  woollen  industry that had made hand loom weaving irrelevant. Armley mills (Leeds) for example became the largest woollen mill in the world. Just one of these water/steam (coal) powered mills might employ thousands of men, women and children.  These new  machines, or "rattling devils" (as child labour reformers aptly described them) required very little skill to operate. The mill workers were industrial labourers, and not old fashioned type hand loom weavers.

[Blue70]

If Dan's parents were English where is their marriage? There is no proof of any English roots. He considered himself Irish and his bio said he was born in a specific Irish place with a history of weaving, the occupation of his father. He was born in Leeds but it looks like his parents came over from Ireland.


Blue

The records may not be online yet, the records might have been damaged or lost, they mjght have married in some obscure little non conformist chapel lost in time, they might not have married at all. There are a number of reasons . I looked for a marriage for my grt x 4  grandparents for six years and I only found it a few weeks ago. The parish register is so tiny that I found it by accident when I looked at the next page after finding another record.

The programme made a point of explaining why a man from Leeds sang Irish songs in Liverpool .

The "bio" you posted has no references/citations

The West Riding famously had a woollen industry for many centuries but with mechanisation it became very different to the old cottage type industry and by the 1820s it was the epicentre of a huge  woollen  industry that had made hand loom weaving irrelevant. Armley mills (Leeds) for example became the largest woollen mill in the world. Just one of these water/steam powered mills might employ thousands of men, women and children.  These new  machines or "rattling devils" (as Oastler called them) required very little skill to operate. The mill workers were industrial labourers, and not old fashioned type hand loom weavers.

I'm afraid the weight of evidence at the moment is that he had Irish roots. A quick look at the Irish Tithe records show Lowreys in Roscrea, they are on Griffith's and on other later records.


Blue

[sallyyorks]

I'm afraid the weight of evidence at the moment is that he had Irish roots. A quick look at the Irish Tithe records show Lowreys in Roscrea, they are on Griffith's and on other later records.


Blue

But there is no evidence and the name Lowry is also a north of England surname . It is found in old records in Leeds too.
The evidence so far is that Dan was born in Yorkshire and that at his marriage (Leeds parish church) his father is named as a weaver called Patrick. Industrial mill  weaving was the main local industry of Leeds and had been since the late 1700s . Before that it had been a local cottage industry
Just the demographics alone of a large industrial mill city like Leeds with its vast majority  of "born in county " weavers, spinners and dyers  makes it likely that he was more local than not. Dan was born in the 1820s in Yorkshire . Immigration from Ireland didn't really start to happen in Leeds  in large numbers until the late 1840s/50s and even then, they only made up a relatively small per cent of the total  industrial workforce . Most of them would have migrated from the surrounding  local countryside, during the early years of industrialisation (late 1700s to early 1800s)
I could understand your theory  that his dad was Irish more if Dan had been born in Leeds or Bradford (or wherever)  in the 1850s or 1860s, but he was born a generation earlier in the 1820s.
I agree that "Patrick" is more of an Irish name but I think you have to take into account that there was also a number of   native English Catholics in the north of England too.
Good luck with your search and theory anyway. You might be right, who knows