Joseph Howarth
I came across Joseph quite by by accident. I was researching John Howarth, father of John Edward who married the daughter of Jemima Ridgway. John had been born in Bolton around 1833 and I wondered if there was a connection to my main Howarth branch. In the course of this, I came across a different John Howarth, also born in Bolton about the same time and on to his father Joseph who I believe was Samuel Howarth's youngest brother.

Joseph was baptised at St Peter's Church, Bolton, in September 1807, the son of Robert and Mary. He was the youngest of their twelve children and married Susanna Hobson in Bolton on 19 Mar 1832. It is interesting that Susanna, or Susan as she was also known, was born Shipton, Somerset, according to the census returns.Possibly Shepton Mallet? There is a Shipton to the south of Bristol on the 1742 map by Thomas Badesdale to the left. Click the image to enlarge.

The couple were living at Cross Leech Street, Dukinfield, what is now Stalybridge1841 which can be seen on this 1897 map. Their daughter, Hannah, was born in Dukinfield about 1840, while her sister, Alice, had been born in Gorton two years earlier, so it seems that seetled in Dukinfield in the late 1830s. In 1851 and 1861, they were at Victoria Parade on Dog Lane, or what is now Astley Street. This was close to Globe Square on the western edge of the town and close to Audenshaw.

Joseph worked as a dresser and then a twister in the cotton industry and the couple had five children, only one of them a boy, the earlier mentioned John who had been born in Bolton around 1832. Susanna died in Audenshaw in 1879 at the age of 68, probably at the home of her daughter Alice. Certainly that was where Joseph was in 1881. He died in 1886 aged 79.

John Howarth

Guide Lane in the 1920s © Tameside Image Library

Their son John married Hannah in the mid-1850s and though she was born in Auenshaw about 1818, I have yet to locate their marriage. The couple lived first in Openshaw and then at Guide Lane, Audenshaw. John worked in an iron foundry for the best part of twenty years, but by 1881 he had become a confectioner, a trade he continued to follow into the 20th century. He and Hannah had three children. According to the 1861, their only son, Joseph, had been born in Altrincham, Cheshire, which must have been a brief interlude for the family.

Joseph died in infancy and of the two daughters, I have only traced Esther who married Joseph Henry Peel in 1888 and they had one son, Arthur, who died in 1894 at the age of four. It seems as though Esther joined her father in the food trade, describing herself as a fish fryer at a coffee house in 1901.

Hannah died in 1883 and two years later John married the widow, Mary Ann Brady, née Gledhill. She and her daughter were living with John in 1891, but she died in early 1901 and John remained a widower until he died in 1916 aged 84. One interesting aside is that John's niece, Sarah Alice Ashburn, lived with him more or less from birth until adulthood rather than with her mother, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Howarth
Elizabeth married Samuel Ashburn in 1867 and at first lived with her parents at Ashton Street, Dukinfield which lies between the Peak Forest Canal and the River Tame. The couple had five children: John who married Eliza Hannah Hurst, George who married Sarah Clarke in Droylsden and Hannah who married John Cheetham in Hollinwood. Sarah Alice lived with her uncle John as already mentioned and she married Harry Robinson in 1901 at Ashton St Michael.

The youngest, Martha, was born around the time of her father's death. Her mother remarried in 1883 to James Hill, but Elizabeth died the following year aged 40 leaving Martha an orphan. In 1891, she was living with her uncle, James William Ashburn. I have not been able to find her in 1901, although she was around. She did not marry and died in Audenshaw in 1964 aged 85.

Alice Howarth
As mentioned above, Joseph spent his final days living with his daughter Alice at Brown Street, Audenshaw. She had married William Lowe in 1868 at St John's Church, Dukinfield. They had one daughter, Susan, named after her grandmother. Susan gave birth to an illegitimate son, Willie, in 1897 and the family as a whole moved to Hawarden near Chester.

Sarah Howarth
Joseph's youngest daughter was Sarah. She married James Cheetham in 1868 at Ashton St Michael and the couple lived their lives in Audenshaw, or at least I think so as I have not found them on the 1891 census. They had three children, Annie, Albert and Amy. Albert married Lilian Prestwich in 1903 at Hooley Hill Wesleyan Methodist Church and she is potentially linked to my Prestwich family. They lived in Audenshaw into their eighties.

Hannah Howarth
Joseph's remaining daughter, Hannah, is something of a mystery as yet. She appears in the censuses until 1861 when she was 21 and then apparently disappears, probably due to an as yet undiscovered marriage.