Family Tree
We have a large family tree comprising the Meadowcroft/Hanson families and the Taylor/Thompson families (and others!).
Spencer Meadowcroft with Herbert Approx 1885
Robert’s family is the Meadowcroft/Hanson family – principally from West Yorkshire with offshoots in Lancashire. The earliest known Meadowcroft is William born 1745 in the Rochdale area.
Isaac Hanson, born 1768 in Elland, West Yorkshire is the earliest known member of the Hanson family.
Other main connections to the family are the Dyson family and the Stocks family.
Val’s family is the Taylor/Thompson family – principally from Lincolnshire and South & East Yorkshire. The earliest known Taylor is William born in Branston, Lincolnshire in 1744.
Thomas Thompson, born 1760 in Doncaster is the earliest known member of the Thompson family.
Other main connections to the family are the Coates family, the Kearnes family from London and the Senior family. Also the Watt family in the Durham area.
The two photos show:- Spencer Meadowcroft (b.1839 Elland, W.Yorks) and his son Herbert (b.1882 Elland, W. Yorks). Herbert is Robert’s Grandfather.
2nd Photo shows Emma Coates (nee Kearnes) (b.1860 Westminster) and 3 of her grandchildren, Florence, Arthur and George Robinson. Emma Coates is Val’s Great Grandmother. George Robinson (b.1909 Hull) (in the photo with blond hair) was killed in Salerno, Italy in 1943.
We have lots more information about the people in these photos and other members of both families, some going back as far as the 16th century.
Our family tree has been traced back by Val over five hundred years. It is a story and a history that is unique to us yet at the same time it has many features that will be familiar to other families today. Our family embraces directly the Taylor and Thompson families on Val’s side and the Meadowcroft and Hanson families on Robert’s side.
War and its impact disrupted lives and caused great suffering and our family was not unaffected. Family members were lost and hardships were experienced in the First World War; the family lived through the Second World War when our parents experienced at first hand mobilisation, work in the ordnance factories and the terror of aerial bombing raids.
In an earlier period, in the nineteenth century, hardship took a different and harsher form than today with large families, poor housing and high infant mortality. While the national statistics can enable us to know the data and the numbers, it is through writers like Charles Dickens that we can really understand the impact on individuals of the rapid growth of towns and cities, of grinding poverty and the workhouse.
Our family witnessed the slow emergence of social institutions and the gradual steps towards what was to become recognised as the ‘welfare state’. We can look today at the ‘poverty maps’ of London produced by Charles Booth which revealed the impact of rapid urban change in London in 1889 and the shifts that took place by 1898/99. These huge social changes were taking place right across the country.
Emma Coates (nee Kearnes) with grandchildren Florence,
Arthur and George Robinson – approx 1916
Our family lived through industrialisation in England, they moved from the land to the early mills and factories. They also worked as watermen and as trawlermen in extremely harsh conditions. From having little or no access to free education, we found that some of our family were unable to write their own name. Yet in a relatively short time, family members were able to take advantage of the opportunities they now had to become well educated, well read and, like other families, many became upwardly mobile.