Chart 4 [April 2008 ]

The Family Tree of my grandfather, John William HARTLEY b.1879 Manchester

1] my grandfather John William Hartley	2] my great grandfather James Hartley	3] my great great grandfather John Hartley	4] my great great great grandfather William Hartley
John William HARTLEY Born:  Apr 1879 Place: Whitehead Street, Manchester LAN Marr:  Sep 1903 Place: Chadderton LAN Occupation: Tool Fitter - Foreman Died:  Mar 1950 Place: Coventry WAR married to: Sarah HALL John William's brother. My Paternal Great Uncle Nathaniel HARTLEY My Father Mac HARTLEY	James HARTLEY Born: Nov 1854 Place: Lees Street, Ancoats, Manchester LAN Marr:  Jun 1876 Place: Collyhurst, Manchester LAN Occupation: Metal Planer Died:  Oct 1928 Place: Coventry WAR married to: Margaret HARTLEY Born: Feb 1856  Place: Ancoats, Manchester LAN Marr:  Jun 1876 Place: Collyhurst, Manchester LAN Died: May 1904  Place: Oldham LAN	John HARTLEY Born: 1820-1828 Place: Blackburn LAN Marr:  May 1842 Place: Manchester LAN Occupation: Metal Planer Died: Apr 1880 Place: Collyhurst, Manchester LAN [Thought to have sister Mary and brothers William and Richard] married to: Mary Ann DEACON Born: Nov 1818-1825 Place: Ancoats, Manchester LAN Marr:  May 1842 Place: Manchester LAN Died: Nov 1866 Place: Ancoats, Manchester LAN	William HARTLEY Born: abt 1792 Place: Blackburn/Colne LAN [unconfirmed] Marr:  abt 1816 Place: Blackburn/Colne LAN [unconfirmed] Occupation: Weaver - Mechanic Died: aft 1842 Place: Blackburn LAN [unconfirmed] married to: Elizabeth [Betty] [unconfirmed]  Born: abt 1796 Place: Blackburn/Colne LAN [unconfirmed] Marr:  abt 1816 Place: Blackburn/Colne LAN [unconfirmed] Died: bef 1841 Place: Blackburn LAN [unconfirmed]
John William had 4 brothers and 2 sisters. After their mother died suddenly in 1904 the family broke up. John William, his wife Sarah and his father, James, went to live at Rugby, and later Coventry, Warwickshire. his brother James: lived with his sister Ada and worked as an Engine Fitter at Dronsfield Brothers [Textile Machinery] Works in Ashton Road, Oldham. He married a local girl Elizabeth MANN. Later moved down to Coventry and ran two pubs before working at Rootes [Motors]. Henry: moved to Woolwich, London and worked at the Woolwich Arsenal. He married Rosie BAGG. Nathaniel: joined the Lancashire Fusiliers [Army] see Nathaniel HARTLEY Richard: lived with his sister, Ada, and worked with her husband. Richard joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment [Army]. He married Laura HOLLOWS. They later moved to Coventry. Ada: had married Edwin OWEN in 1897 and lived locally. She worked at Cromwell Street Mill, Oldham. Mary Ann: had died in 1895 aged three. Elizabeth Alice: After her parents died she was taken in and adopted by James, her uncle. I'm uncertain as to what happened to her after 1891.	Margaret HARTLEY's parents: Richard HARTLEY Born: abt 1821  Place: Manchester LAN Marr:  May 1849 Place:  Manchester LAN Occupation: Metal Planer - Mechanic Died: bef 1891  Place: Manchester LAN [thought to have had brothers James b.1830 and Henry b.1835] married to: Margaret FANNAN Born: abt 1830  Place: Ancoats, Manchester LAN Marr:  May 1849 Place:  Manchester LAN Occupation: Umbrella Maker Died: aft 1901  Place: Collyhurst, Manchester LAN	Mary DEACON's parents: Patrick DEACON Born: abt 1781 Place: unknown Ireland? Marr:  Dec 1802 Place: Manchester LAN Occupation: Weaver Died: bef 1851 Place: Ancoats, Manchester, LAN married to: Mary SMITH Born: abt 1785 Place: Ireland Marr:  Dec 1802 Place: Manchester LAN Died: aft 1855 Place: Ancoats, Manchester, LAN	Thompson Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER
Whitehead Street, Collyhurst, MANCHESTER	James HARTLEY was born November 1854 at Lees Street, Ancoats, Manchester. He married Margaret HARTLEY in June 1876 at Collyhurst, Manchester. In the late 1870's they moved to Derby but after a few years they returned to the Oldham area. In 1885 they were living at Top 'oth Green, Old Lane, Chadderton in a small cottage with a small park opposite. James worked as an Iron Turner at Spencers, a small engineering works just down Old Lane, Chadderton. Margaret HARTLEY was an Umbella Maker. She used to carry the completed umbrellas in a pram, about five miles, all the way into Manchester. Their cottage had a long garden and they kept chickens. James and Margaret had 5 boys, John William [my grandfather], James, Henry, Nathaniel and Richard, and 2 girls, Ada and Mary Ann [who died aged 3]. They also adopted an orphan-girl, Elizabeth Alice, who was a daughter of James' brother, John, who died in 1891. Margaret died suddenly in 1904 and the family broke up. [continued, left column]	Back Ashley Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER	Richard HARTLEY's parents: William HARTLEY Born: abt 1796 Place: Manchester LAN [unconfirmed] Marr:  abt 1820 Place: unknown Died: aft 1849 Occupation: Weaver - Mechanic Place: Ancoats, Manchester, LAN *may have been transported to Australia in the 1830's married to Elizabeth NUTTALL [unconfirmed]  Born: abt 1800 Place: unknown Marr:  abt 1816 Place: unknown Died: bef 1841 Place: Ancoats, Manchester, LAN *may have been transported to Australia in the 1830's
Whitehead Street, Collyhurst, MANCHESTER	Lees Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER	Back Ashley Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER	Foundry Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER
Collyhurst Road, MANCHESTER	Lees Street Mill, Ancoats, MANCHESTER	Ashley Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER	Margaret FANNAN's parents: Charles FANNAN Born: abt 1761-70  Place: [likely] Co.Roscommon, Ireland Marr:  abt 1809 Place: unknown First Wife: [may have been] Elizabeth DEWHURST m.1806 Place: Deane by Bolton, Lancashire Occupation: Silk Weaver Died: Jun 1845 Place: Ancoats, Manchester, LAN [FANNAN surname more commonly FANNON in Co.Roscommon, Ireland. Originally O'FIONNAN [FIANNA] - 'The Fair-Haired' 2ndC AD ] married to: Sarah [FANNAN] nee Unknown Born: abt 1790 Place: Cheshire CHS Marr:  abt 1809 Place: unknown Died: aft 1855 Place: Ancoats, Manchester, LAN
Collyhurst Road, MANCHESTER	Lees Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER		Foundry Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER
Collyhurst Road, MANCHESTER	Lees Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER		Junction Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER
Collyhurst Road, MANCHESTER	Lees Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER	Murray Mill, Ancoats, MANCHESTER	Butler Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER
Thornton Street, MANCHESTER	Beehive Mill, Ancoats, MANCHESTER		Round Chapel, Ancoats, MANCHESTER
		Every Street, Ancoats, MANCHESTER

If anyone above looks familiar, or if you have any info regarding a HARTLEY in Manchester or Coventry, please E-mail me at:  william@hartleyfamily.org.uk

By 1841, a tenth of the Manchester's population was Irish and many lived in the district known as "Little Ireland", a slum area in the Ancoats area of Manchester which Engels labelled in his 1845 'Condition of the Working Class In England' as "the most disgusting spot of all!". This area of the city was so overcrowded that the sudden Irish influx during the Potato Famine could not be accommodated and had to turn to other English cities, notably Liverpool and Birmingham.

Engels wrote, "The New Town, known also as Irish Town, stretches up a hill of clay, beyond the Old Town, between the Irk and St. George's Road. Here all the features of a city are lost. Single rows of houses or groups of streets stand, here and there, like little villages on the naked, not even grass-grown clay soil; the houses, or rather cottages, are in bad order, never repaired, filthy, with damp, unclean, cellar dwellings; the lanes are neither paved nor supplied with sewers, but harbour numerous colonies of swine penned in small sties or yards, or wandering unrestrained through the neighbourhood. The mud in the streets is so deep that there is never a chance, except in the dryest weather, of walking without sinking into it ankle deep at every step. In the vicinity of St. George's Road, the separate groups of buildings approach each other more closely, ending in a continuation of lanes, blind alleys, back lanes and courts, which grow more and more crowded and irregular the nearer they approach the heart of the town. True, they are here oftener paved or supplied with paved sidewalks and gutters; but the filth, the bad order of the houses, and especially of the cellars, remain the same." [Engels 'Condition of the Working Class']

According to the census of 1841, 60% of the population of the West of Ireland lived in windowless single-roomed mud cabins with little furniture. It was from this area that the majority of Manchester's Irish immigrants came. Unprepared for city life, they often took any job available, many degrading, low-paid and dangerous. Manchester's early Irish inhabitants found themselves living in poverty. They often crammed into houses with little air and light. A tax on windows caused many landlords to block up as many openings as possible, making the houses dangerously dark and lacking ventilation. Overcrowding forced many to live in the cellars of houses where the conditions were damp, dangerously dark and lacking sanitation. A report found that 18,000 Irish inhabitants lived in Manchester cellars. [15% of these actually slept more than 3 people in one bed, with cases of 8 in a bed reported and even horrific tales of many even sleeping without a bed]. Life in Manchester though for many was surprisingly better than that enjoyed in Ireland, and for this reason immigrants were willing to work for lower pay than the locals. This lead to tension, especially when Irish workers were used to break strikes. Many Irish in Manchester sent a fraction of their earnings 'back home' which helped the Irish economy

Other Irish immigrants to Manchester also found national fame for differing reasons; Fergus O'CONNOR and Bronterre O'BRIEN lead the Chartist movement. Other Irish Chartists included mill girls Mary BURNS and her sister Lydia [known as Lizzie], who both had an intimate relationship with the sociologist Frederich ENGELS [*In 1848 Frederick Engels and Karl Marx wrote 'The Communist Manifesto', urging a worldwide socialist revolution.] Both sisters had worked at Engels' 'Ermen and Engels Cotton Mill' in Manchester.
In 1845 Frederick Engels was guided around Manchester by Mary Burns who lived in the slum district around Deansgate, and by Georg WEERTH, a German friend of his from Bradford. Mary Burns was the local-born daughter of Michael BURNS who had emigrated from Ireland to Manchester. She and Engels never married but he lived much of the time at the house he provided for her and Lizzie in Ardwick [although he maintained separate lodgings].
Engels was distraught at Mary's death at the age of 41 in 1863. As he wrote to his friend, Karl Marx, 'I felt as though with her I was burying the last vestige of my youth'. Their relationship was unconventional. Mary and Engels never married and lived apart, at least formally. The great class differences between them were much harder to overcome in the 19th century than they would be today. Culturally they must have seemed very far apart ... Mary was probably illiterate, for example, and did not share the same friends as Engels. When Engels eventually started a relationship with Mary's sister Lizzie, Karl Marx became friendly with her [she and Karl's wife, Jenny Marx, would holiday together in later years] and Karl's daughter, Eleanor Marx, visited Manchester to stay at the Engels-Burns household. She also accompanied them on a trip to Ireland.
Much is made of Engels' unconventional relationships with the Burns sisters [he referred to Lizzie as 'his wife' but only married her on her deathbed in 1878]. Eleanor Marx learnt about Irish oppression from Lizzie Burns who also showed her the haunts of the Fenian Manchester Martyrs [see below].
When Engels met the young Mary Burns in 1840's Manchester she was involved in the Chartist politics of the time, as were so many Irish textile workers. There is some evidence that Engels gained a great deal from living with the Burns sisters, and that their personalities were at one with his own. Engels wrote to the German socialist August Bebel's wife in 1878 after Lizzie's death, 'She was of genuine Irish proletarian stock and her passionate, innate feeling for her class was of far greater value to me and stood me in better stead at moments of crisis than all the refinement and culture of your educated and aesthetic young ladies.
The 14 year old Eleanor Marx wrote home in 1869 with a description of the Burns household: On Saturday it was so warm that we, that is Auntie [Lizzie] and myself and Sarah, lay down on the floor the whole day drinking beer, claret, etc... In the evening when Uncle [Engels] came home he found Auntie, me and Ellen [Lizzie's niece], who was telling us Irish tales, all lying our full length on the floor, with no stays, no hoots, and one petticoat and a cotton dress on, and that was all. His role as a respectable businessman was one reason why Engels had to keep his private life separate from his work, and so it was only when he left his 'Ermen and Engels Cotton Mill' in Manchester and moved to London that he could live openly with Lizzie. Mary and Lizzie Burns had a neice, Mary Ellen Burns known as 'Pumps', with whom Engels was also very fond, often staying with her and her family in Manchester.
Engels portrait of the average Irishman living in Manchester did not paint a favourable picture though: "He builds a pigsty against the house wall as he did at home, and if he is prevented from doing this, he lets the pig sleep in the room with himself. The Irishman loves his pig as the Arab his horse, with the difference that he sells it when it is fat enough to kill. Otherwise he eats and sleeps with it, his children play with it, ride upon it, roll in the dirt with it, as anyone may see a thousand times repeated in all the great towns of England." [Engels 'Condition of the Working Class'] So many Irish immigrants lived in similar conditions near Oxford Road that it became known as Little Ireland; another such place off Rochdale Road was called Irish Town.

My grandfather, James HARTLEY, had a brother named William HARTLEY b.1852. William married Mary Ann LOONEY in 1873. Their eldest daughter, Mary Ann HARTLEY, married William Henry BURNS, believed to have been the grandson of Michael BURNS, the father of the Irish Chartist, Mary BURNS, mentioned above.

The Manchester Martyrs On 11th September 1867, the police arrested two men for behaving suspiciously in a doorway. The two, Colonel T.J.KELLY and Captain DEASY, were leading figures in the Fenian Rising. A week later, the prison van that carried the two handcuffed from court to Belle Vue Prison was ambushed by a crowd of thirty armed Fenians who had been lying in wait for it. After fatally shooting a police officer, the Fenians escaped with Kelly and Deasy [still handcuffed] never to be recaptured. Three of the ambushers were later executed for the murder of the policeman and went down in Irish Republican history as the "Manchester Martyrs.

My Family Tree 

My Paternal Grandfather John William HARTLEY's Family Tree

Index to Names Index to Surnames --- My Home Page My Paternal Great Uncle Nathaniel HARTLEY My Father Mac HARTLEY

My WILLIAMS Family My Maternal Grandfather Henry Llech WILLIAMS

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