Keith Wilson (2009)
Mathew Wilson 1726-1802
George Wilson 1758-1830
Mathew Wilson 1790-1873
George Wilson 1818-1903
William Wilson 1855-1941

SECTION 3
Title 1
Title 2
Title 3
Title 4
Title 5

Following the Wilson line back from William, the earliest ancestor who has been found so far is Matthew Wilson, born in 1726/7 when George 11 was on the throne. Although he lived in Catton, there is no record of his birth there, so he or his family must have moved there from elsewhere. It is possible that his father was a Richard Wilson , born in Easingwold in 1683, son of Francis, born in 1657, but this has not yet been proved. The first thing that we know about him is that he was married in Topcliffe on 12^th June 1757. He was described as a servant. He married Margaret Dixon of the same parish. Witnesses at the wedding were Margaret’s father, John Dixon, and John Gamwell. Matthew lived to be 75 years old, dying of ‘old age’ on 13^th April 1802 in Catton. The record of his burial describes him as a labourer. Margaret died in 1794.

The family lived in Catton, a tiny village near Topcliffe, There were seven children. George, the eldest is our direct ancestor. He was baptized on 2^nd June 1758. The next child was Elizabeth, born at the end of 1760 and baptized on 1^st January 1761. Matthew was born in 1762, and Ann in 1763. Then in 1770, twin boys, James and William, were born. They were christened on 18^th February, but both died in April. James was buried on 7^th April, and William on the 10^th. The youngest child in the family was Thomas, christened on 6^th March 1772.

George, mentioned above, a tailor by trade, married Mary Almgill on 22^nd May 1782 at the church in Topcliffe. Mary’s father was John Almgill of Dishforth, a cooper.Their first child, John, was born in February of the following year. Five more children followed: Ann, b. 1785, James, b. 1787, Matthew (our direct ancestor), b. 1790, Ellen, b. 1792, and Anna b. 1795.

Mary died of a fever on 9th June 1797, at the age of forty, and just over a year later George married again, on 26^th June 1798 at Sandhutton by Thirsk. His second wife was Jane Yellow, 32 years old. She was possibly a widow, formerly Jane Yanwith. They went on to have seven more children: Anna, b. 4^th March 1799, Thomas, b. 26^th December 1800, Mary, b. 18^th January 1802, William, b. 17^th March 1804, died 4^th March 1805, Rachael, b. 5^th January 1806, Willy, b. 18^th May 1808, and Martha, b. 14^th April 1811. George would be 53 years old and Jane 45 by the time Martha was born.

George died in August 1830 at Catton and was buried at Topcliffe on the 10^th. In 1851, according to the census, Jane was living with her daughter, Martha and her family in Catton. She died at Skipton Bridge in May 1858, aged 94.

The story then moves much closer to York, with the marriage between  George’s son, Matthew, and Sarah Teale in Haxby. The village of Haxby was founded in the when  Haac the Dane settled with his family on the low ground beside the river Foss, in the ancient forest of Galtres, some four miles north of the city of Jorvik.  Now, more than a thousand years later, the forest has dwindled but the Domesday village of Haxebi has flourished, with a population of over 9,000 at the 1981 census. The land around Haxby was ideal for agriculture, and over the centuries, as the forest was cleared, more land became available for farming. In 1831, of 92 males in the village over the age of twenty, 63 were farmers or labourers - amongst them, our ancestors.

Matthew married Sarah Teale on 13^th December 1814. Sarah was the daughter of ‘John Teale and Mary Hardcastle of Wigginton’. She was born in August 1792, making her 22 years old when she got married.Witnesses at the wedding were William Burrill, Matthias Millington, and Hannah Teale. Her siblings were William, b. 1788, Mary, b. 1791, Elizabeth, b. 1794, Jane, b. 1798, John, b. 1799, Rachel, b. 1801, and John, b.1802. William died in November 1788, and another William, born in 1799, twin of John, died on June 11^th 1799 when he was just two days old. As a second John was born in 1802, it seems that John the twin probably died, too. I have noticed on more than one occasion that when a baby died, a further child of the same sex would be given the same name.

Matthew had eight children, of whom four survived: Mary b.1816, George (Direct ancestor) b.1818, James b.1827 and Thomas b.1833. This was rather an uncanny piece of research. The gaps between the four children in this family – the eldest a daughter, followed by three sons - i.e. 2 years, 11 years, and 17 years, are the same as the gaps between the four children in Colin Wilson’s family: Shenagh, b. 1946, Alan, 1948, Christopher, 1957, and Daniel, 1963.

The next record of the Teales and the Wilsons is the 1841 census for Haxby. Sarah’s parents were still living in the village. John was 75 years old by this time, and Mary was 80. In the house with them at the time of the census were their daughter, Rachel Stokes – she had married Thomas Stokes, a farmer, in 1823 – and Mary Stokes, their grand-daughter, who was 3 months old. Elizabeth, their other daughter, married William Snowden in September 1814, shortly before Sarah’s marriage, and  William Burrill was a witness, as he had been at Sarah’s marriage, along with Thomas Linfoot.

Matthew and Sarah were also still living in Haxby. Matthew, an agricultural labourer, was 50 years old, Sarah, 45, and the three chidren at home on the night of the census were Mary, 25, James, 14, and Thomas, 8. George would be 23, and so would be already working as a carpenter.

In 1861, Matthew was 71, and Sarah, 67. James was with them, now 33, and down as a blacksmith. The last mention of Matthew and Sarah can be found in the 1871 census, when they were 80 and 76 respectively – more ancestors who lived to a ‘ripe old age’.

George, son of Matthew and Sarah, christened on 11^th January 1818, married Ann Whincup from Long Marston in 1843. The wedding took place on 29^th November at Overton Church, near Shipton. George, 25, was a servant and Ann, 21, a ‘labourer’. Witnesses were Charles Carr and William Whincup, who made his mark on the certificate.

In 1851, according to the census, they were living in Shipton, 5 miles north of York, and had three children, Mary, 6, Sarah, 4, and James, 6 months. (Polly,b.1843, had died.) Ten years later, they had four more children, Rachel, 8, William, 5 – later to become a butcher in York, and father of Harold Wilson -  Elizabeth, 2, and Matthew, ’under 5 months’. By the time of the next census, in 1871, the youngest child had been born. This was Alfred, 7 years old. Apart from Alfred, the only other child still at home was Matthew, aged 10.

The 1881 census found George, now widowed, living as a lodger at Sow’s Farm, also known as Wood Farm, Shipton, in the household of Matthew Lofthouse, a gamekeeper. Also in the house were Matthew’s wife, his three children, and four other lodgers: George’s son, Alfred, now 17 years old, his daughter, Mary Nicholson, 36, Mary’s husband, Francis, 38, and George’s grandson, Francis W. Speck, aged 9. (Sarah, George’s second daughter had married John Speck in 1868).

At the time of the 1881 census, there were 430 people living in Shipton, of which 187 were under 18 years. There were 70 men and 70 women who were married, though not necessarily as couples; and also 5 widowers- one of whom was George – and 15 widows. The numbers of unmarried men was proportionately high at 54 males to 29 females. This was due in part to single men ‘living-in’ as farm servants and agricultural labourers but this was also a period when the whole family existed as an economic unit, and consequently marriage was often deferred. Of the 67 young people (11 – 17 years) recorded in Shipton, there were 28 classed as scholars; others were either at work, or, in the case of girls, at home. There were 97 children recorded as scholars(42 boys and 55 girls) and 51 babies or infants. The census ‘offers a snapshot of Shipton and Overton that suggests busy, self contained villages. The rural economy involved all but a handful of workers; and there is little evidence of the great depression which from the mid 1870’s affected agriculture nationwide. There was very little unemployment recorded in the villages which benefited from being part of the Dawnay estate….The opening of the main railway line between Darlington and York (1841), with a station at Shipton, had provided another source of employment.’ (“Shipton, Aspects of a Village”, produced by the Shipton and Overton History Group)

By 1891, George’s circumstances had changed again. He was now living at Beningbrough Grange. He was named as the head of the household, 73, and still an agricultural labourer. Also still living with him were Francis Nicholson and Mary. A separate household is listed at the same address: Alfred Wilson, Sarah, his wife, James 2, and Henry, 8 months. Alfred’s age is given as 21. This piece of research provided a happy ending, after the sad discovery, in the 1881 census, that Ann had died, and George and Arthur were living in lodgings.

The discovery of Mary Nicholson solved a puzzle. According to family hearsay, when talking about his childhood, Harold Wilson often mentioned visiting his ‘fat aunt’. Unfortunately, he never mentioned her christian name, but it was known that she was married to someone whose name was Nicholson. After much research, the trail had gone cold, until, during more recent searches, her name leapt off the 1881 census. 

A description of Beningbrough Grange can be found in “Three Yorkshire Villages”. It was mentioned in an inventory attached to the will of John Wilson (Not a relation, as far as we know!) in 1695. Again, it was a large and impressive house, which was demolished, presumably in the 19^th century, as the present Beningbrough Grange is ‘a typical estate farm of the mid-nineteenth century’.

Topcliffe Church
Photo by S Linton

Haxby Church (19th)
The former church at Haxby, destroyed by fire 1878