Our Irish lineage can be traced back to the town of Ballantine, in the County of Mayo. That is where Mary Ann Hirst (nee Cannon) was born about 1861. Who her father was is not yet known, nor is her mothers maiden name.
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| Mary Ann Hirst (nee Cannon) with her mother, circa 1890s |
Young Mary Cannon came to Oldham, Lancashire, an industrial town teaming with huge smelly, soot blackened cotton mills probably around 1880 or at least at the end of the 1870's. This pattern of migration and settlement was common among many an Irish immigrant. She was living and working there by the time of the 1881 UK census. She had friends or family with the Carden family at 5 Skelhorn Street, Oldham. She was just a young woman of 20, and responsible for her 14 year old sister (or cousin) Ann who also most likely made the journey from West Ireland and across the Irish Sea to Lancashire, with her, likely landing at Liverpool. They were recorded as visitors at Skelhorn Street on the evening of the 1881 census.
A decade later she was then "hitched up" and residing at number 9 Back Dickinson Street, Oldham (Above Town). When I went there on a fact finding mission back in August 2010 there was no trace of the house or street, and it appears from the map that the area is now industrial units. There is still a Dickinson Street though.
Mary married what appears to be a local man, William James Hirst, whose family were likely from a small village just on the moors above the town, at Saddleworth, heading back into the Pennines. It is possible the couple met at work, in the cotton mill. Mary was a "cardroom operative". There are several men and boys of his name around Oldham at this time. There is also a James William Hirst, born 1862 in Oldham. There is however a William HURST, born about 1847, aged 44 at the time of the 1891 UK census. He was living in the Parish of St James. He was wed to Mary Ann Hurst. They had at this time three children, all 5 or under, Elizabeth A Hurst, 5, William Hurst, 2, and our ancestor Mary A Hurst, 3/12, ie 3-4 months. William, her husband worked as a "Cotton cardroom jobber". It is likely Mary was illerate , judging by the "mark" of X
on her daugters, Mary Agnes' birth certificate on 8th January 1891, my great grandmother, below.
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| Mary Agnes Hirst later Raymond, circa 1912. |
When Mary was about 10, by 1901 her mother had moved about 215 miles down south, to the rural village of Felsham, in the agricultural heartlands of Suffolk, where many-a-Christmas turkey is bred! By now Mary Cannon had become Mrs William Cooke. Little Mary was still a Cannon though. The story goes that Mary's first husband died, and she remarried, this is what my uncle David Austin of Sydney, Australia had to say on it "the groom story is this...Mary's mother Mary Cannon was married to a rich man or squire or whatever who fell off his horse and broke his neck, and the mother ended up marrying the groom, who brought up my grandmother...It doesn't make sense because if you think about it the widow and groom
would have inherited, and the fact is that Mary Hirst my grandmother was dirt poor".
David feels this story was told to make a little girl's loss of her father, either through death or divorce a more cushioned blow, easing her suffering. A William Hirst did die in Oldham between 1891 and 1901 from an accident in a cotton mill when a machine strap broke and fatally smashed into his chest area, killing him three days later, so this could be her father.
But maybe there was money, and it was squandered by the man she would next get together with, William Cooke?
Nothing is known of Mary's sister Elizabeth (Ann?) or brother William. Nor is ought known about their Aunty Ann, six years Mary Ann's junior.
According to my uncle David, Mary Cooke lived to be ripe old age, into the 1940's. Perhaps she is the same Mary Cooke who died in Brighton, Sussex, aged 87 in 1940? (Source: Ancestry.co.uk).
Hirst (lesser Hurst) is an extremely common name in in the Pennine region, Lancashire and Yorkshire, particularly the "West Riding", a division of West Yorkshire). There was an East Riding and a North Riding. But no South Riding. A "Riding" long ago "Thriding" was an large area of land divided into three parts.
And so it came to be that Mary Hirst moved yet again. This time it is unsure exactly where, By 1911, at 20 she was living in Southampton, and married to Joseph "Harris" Raymond formerly Solomon. Joe is a very interesting character with an extremely colourful life, having had three different families, and a total of 17 children (at least two of which did nor survive infancy). That however is another story altogether...
Joe Solomon married Mary Hirst at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Teddington in 1912, my Grandmama was born however a couple of years prior to this unusually late wedding, on 27th November 1909, at Maidstone in Kent. Her father was a medical herbalist, possibly a travelling Edwardian "Quack Showman" and later became a successful antiques dealer, having a shop in Brighton, at 22 Meeting House Lane, in the now fashionable Lanes area of the town. He once sat Grandmama in a large chair, when she was a little girl, telling her that King Henry VIII had sat in the very same chair. How he knew this is unknown! Maybe this was the kind of patter used to sell furniture in those far off days. Joseph and Mary (very biblical) would go on to have three boys. Joe (Joseph Harry) born 9th August 1911 in Bournemouth Hampshire, died 30th October 1989 The Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton. Percy (John Percival) born 5th December 1915 in Kingston, Surrey, died of Mycardial Infection and Carcinoma of Broncus, on 28th May 1986, at 25 Lambert Drive, Shurdington, Gloucestershire. Ted (Edward McDonald) was born in 1916 possibly in Scotland, hence the unusual middle name. He died in 1967, and never married. Very little is known of his life, though it is believed now that he had a son.
The youngest of their children was a girl, Blanche Mary Dorothy who was born on 2nd January 1918 at the family home above her fathers antiques business at 22 Meeting House Lane, Brighton, Sussex. She would marry Max Klein on 20th January 1938 in London. The couple lived in a nice new modern house in Stanmore, which Mary, her mother would visit from time to time. The couple had 5 sons., though the first, David, would die tragically in infancy, in 1939. Each of the brothers had a family of their own.
Mary Hirst died in 1951 at Royal Sussex Hospital, Brighton of heart failure (Essential hypertension and haemachromatosis) having the attack while on a train coming back from seeing her family in London.
She lived her last years at 29, Gloucester Street, near to Brighton Station. She lived with an old Boer War veteran called Steve Jinks, who has been described by one family source as 'a super old bloke'. He gave one of Mary's grandsons his old war medals. Steve was a master house painter by trade. It is believed his wife had been called Harriet, and was originally from Boston in Lincolnshire.
The rest as we know is history and the start of our present lineages...
