The prevalence of the Harrop surname in 1881 and 1998.

The earliest information I have is of James HARROP, born in Dinting in the Parish of Glossop, Derbyshire. He married Mary, but unfortunately, there were three James HARROPs who married Marys about this time. There was Mary RIDGWAY in June 1814 at Glossop; Mary DEWSNAP in November 1822, also at Glossop and Mary OGDEN in in January 1825 at Mottram.

Please let me know where you are all coming from

According to the 1851 Census, Mary gave Hollingworth as her place of birth which would make Mary OGDEN the most likely candidate, but according to the IGI, she was baptised in 1799, five years later than expected from her given age. Both Mary DEWSNAP and Mary RIDGWAY were baptised in 1794, the latter at Glossop and the former at an independent church in Tintwistle. It is mainly for this reason that I have included Mary DEWSNAP on this site, but it clearly needs further clarification.

Their youngest son, Samuel HARROP was baptised on 18 May, 1828. He married Martha BOOTH in 1852 in Glossop. She was the daughter of John BOOTH and Lydia TURNER and had been born in Jackson Bridge in the Holmfirth area of Yorkshire. Although she was living there at the time of the 1841 Census, she had moved by 1851, the year before they married. They had five children they were living on Mossley Road, Ashton-under-Lyne, by the time of the 1881 Census. Samuel and Martha's son, George Henry Booth HARROP was born in 1858 at Hill Top, Dinting, Glossop, Derbyshire.

George was living in Audenshaw when he married Hannah THORPE at St Stephen's Church in 1878. She was born in 1857 in Bootle, Lancashire, the daughter of Ben THORPE, a journeyman stonemason, and Sarah TURNER. Everton View, her birthplace, still exists today and is close to the docks.

I have been unable to locate George's family on the 1881 Census, although their entry for 1891 gives George's eldest daughter's birth place as Tintwistle in 1880, while three other children were born in Mottram.

Spoken family history has it that George, who was a joiner, worked with his brother in an undertaker's business in Hurst, Ashton-under-Lyne, but that he could never get used to washing down the corpses. So he left the business and returned to the Mottram area. My dad also has a story that George had a leg amputated on the kitchen table.

Jane HARROP was born in 1896 at 31 New Street in Mottram, Cheshire. She married James RHODES at St Michael's Church and moved with him, first to Hyde and later to Dukinfield, both in Cheshire.

Ian Rhodes