THOMAS FAMILY
My father, who told so many interesting stories about his forbears, awakened my interest in Ironbridge and Abraham Darby at an early age. On reading a book by Arthur Raistrick entitled Dynasty of Ironfounders, I came across the name, John Thomas. I wondered ……..
I have in my care a framed picture of a cat, worked in wool on canvas by my great grandmother. Whenever, as a small child, I visited my paternal grandmother she would show me this cat. Each time I look at the picture I remember my grandmother and the stories she used to tell me about her childhood and her ancestors.
Shortly before he died my father, Leslie Victor Saunders, gave the picture in to the care of my daughter, Eileen Mary Stewart.
“COPY OF SCRIPT ON THE BACK OF THE PICTURE
41 Fryston Road 25th May 1935
Airedale
This cat was worked by my mother Mary Harris. She had worked it by the time she was ten years old. 1849.
Mother attended school at Wem in Shropshire. The canvas, pattern, needles also wool, and also cedar wood knitting needles also the meshing tools. Were sent from France by her uncle John Thomas.
My Grandmother’s maiden name was Thomas, she married Thomas Harris.
Hannah Saunders neé Dodd”
___________________________________________________________________________
My great, great, grandmother’s maiden name was Elizabeth Thomas, of Wellington. She married Thomas Harris, of Madeley, on the 24th September 1833. The marriage is recorded in the Madeley Parish Register. On her daughter’s marriage certificate Thomas’s occupation is entered as confectioner.
(Her brother, John Thomas, later of Welling Kent, and who wrote the “Welsh Shepherd Boy” book, was the uncle who resided in France and gave the Needlework kit to ten year old Mary Harris.)
Their daughter Mary was one of 5 children. Born at Ironbridge, she was educated at Wem, Shropshire, until she was 18 years of age. She married her cousin, George Thomas Dodd, when she was 32 years old and he was 4 years younger. Her parents were opposed to the match and told her that they wanted nothing more to do with her. Mary and George eloped and were married on the 18th November 1872 at Normanton Parish Church. At that time they were residing at High Street, Woodhouse, Normanton, Yorkshire. George’s parents were Robert Dodd and Hannah Dodd, nee Thomas. His birth on 23rd June 1843 was registered in Wellington, Shropshire.
Robert Dodd, the father of George, was a miner, and George himself started work at the colliery when he was 8 years of age. He was crushed by a fall of roof in the Silkstone Pit at Glasshoughton Colliery on 19th July 1909 when he was 65 years of age. His wife had begged him not to go to work that day but he replied that he had never stayed off work for no reason before and was not about to start.
George and Mary’s first child was named Hannah. She was my grandmother and was born at Woodhouse, Normanton on 14 July 1873.
Mary had a sister, Winifred, who married her cousin, Samuel Edge at St. Mary’s Church Shrewsbury on 6th September 1869.
James Harris, brother of Mary Dodd, was drowned at Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex. The accident occurred on the 3rd July 1877 and he was interred in the graveyard of that town. His sister, Mary, then living at Normanton, Yorkshire, had an intuition about his death and visited her mother in Wem, Shropshire to find out more. She was greeted with the words “What do you want?” having been disowned by her family because of her marriage to her cousin, George. She made her own enquiries and wrote to Mappin and Webb in London, where her brother had been employed. They replied in a letter dated the 22nd August 1877 and verified the tragedy.
According to family history Mary Dodd’s forbears had been associated with the Darby family, iron founders of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire. My father, Leslie Victor Saunders, told me that they were agents and took the first cooking pots to Australia.
Some cousins named Dodd emigrated to Woolongong in Australia. They took passage on THE PERICLES and disembarked on 5/12/1877. Their names were Robert aged 36, Martha, George and Richard. The first three were born in Shropshire. This information has been passed down through the family, which is why I am trying to trace the link. Most of the clues were verbal.
I have been unable to verify the relationship of John Thomas of Welshpool to our family but have a very strong feeling that he may be related. If I am correct in thinking that John Thomas of Welshpool, who discovered the method of casting iron pots in sand, is an ancestor, I feel that I must make some account of his life and times. His daughter, Hannah Rose, nee Thomas, kept a record of what she had been told.
Excerpts from the manuscript of Hannah Rose I will enclose in quotation marks and italicise.
“I have had it on my mind for some years past to leave behind me something concerning my ancestors as far back as I have any account from my parents.
Some may object and say it is pride for thee to write of thy ancestors who were all poor people, but as they were honest and sober, and my parents brought me up to read and write, I ought to employ my pen in their behalf for the Scripture says the Righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance.”
Hannah’s father, John Thomas, was born near Welshpool, Wales in 1679. His mother, Priscilla, was the daughter of Edward and Katherine Evans who had become Quakers in 1662. They had been persecuted and imprisoned in November 1662 for holding to their faith and declining to take the Oath of Allegiance. During one period of imprisonment Edward Evans died.
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE
The group of people who supported the beliefs of George Fox named themselves the ‘Society of Friends’. The epithet ‘Quaker’ was a derogatory name used by their opponents and accepted by the Friends. George Fox was born in Leicestershire in 1642. His father was a weaver and churchwarden. George was apprenticed to a shoemaker who also dealt in cattle, sheep and wool. Becoming disillusioned with the, to his understanding, hypocrisy amongst professed Christians, in 1649 he began to follow the call to spread the news of his own spiritual leanings.
During the years 1652 – 1688 many thousands of Friends were persecuted and imprisoned for their beliefs. ‘The presence of God is in every man’, preached Fox. This assertion was often misunderstood and considered blasphemous.
‘In the eyes of God all men are equal’ believed the Friends. Sycophantic titles were anathema to them. Honour is due to God only, not to one’s fellow men.
In this respect they refused to remove hats in the presence of titled men or officialdom of church or state.
They maintained that Jesus, also the apostle James, forbade oath taking. ‘Swear not at all’ said Jesus. They also held that men could be honest and speak the truth without recourse to oaths. Therefore the insistence on oath taking by the law lessened the validity in everyday life of the spoken word being considered truthful. Oath taking placed a double standard on truth.
i.e. only by taking an oath would a man’s word be truly believed. Where, then, did that leave everyday conversation and business transactions?
Refusal to take off a hat in the presence of a magistrate or other official was interpreted as opposition to the Government. Likewise the refusal to take the Oath of Allegiance to the king was regarded as disloyalty. Even though great loyalty was rendered to the king in all other ways.
Both these charges could result in a Quaker being imprisoned indefinitely. Whipping, stoning and imprisonment were a constant threat to the Quakers at this period.
It is known that under the terms of the Quaker Act of 1662 more than 450 Quakers died in prison. The worst of the persecution was ended on the introduction of the Toleration Act in 1689. Restrictions were still in place against nonconformists in regard to employment in government and higher education, which led to the founding of Quaker schools and, because of the reputation of the Quakers for honesty, banks. Families built up businesses renowned for honesty and fairness to customers and employees.
MARRIAGES
‘Mixed marriages’, i.e. marriage ‘out’ of the Friends was strongly discouraged for two centuries. In 1719 an ‘advice’ was issued.
‘In order to put a stop to undue liberty in contracting marriages with such as are not of our society, it is advised that all parents and guardians of children do take especial care as much as in them lies, to prevent their children running into such marriages. ….‘
Due to the simplicity of the life led by the Friends and their avoidance of the social functions prevalent in the society of the period the young people rarely met others not of their own persuasion. Marriage between cousins was widespread. The practically ‘closed community’ of the Society of Friends was bound together by family relationship as well as religious and ethical beliefs.
To ‘marry out’ was to incur disownment.
When John was about 11 years old his father died and a relative, Thomas Oliver, employed him as a shepherd lad. Thomas Oliver emigrated to Pennsylvania and John went to work for Charles Lloyd of Dolobran who was a farmer and ironmaster. Charles Lloyd the elder had been imprisoned with Edward Evans therefore the boy was especially welcomed by the Lloyd family.
Hannah says:
“After my father had lived for some years with Thomas Oliver, he went to live with Charles Lloyd of Dolobran, where he continued till near 18 years old; and then he had a mind to go to Bristol and bind himself apprentice to some trade, but it being in Queen Anne’s war he was afraid of being pressed for a soldier if out of a place. So he got his master Charles Lloyd to recommend him to some friend; and he did so to Edward Lloyd a wine merchant, a relative of Charles Lloyd, till he could get a place to his mind. In about two months he went to Abraham Darby, a smith, thinking to be a malt mill maker.”
Amongst Hannah Rose’s writings is a paper entitled “some account of the Family of the Darby’s; being what Hannah Rose has heard her parents, John and Grace Thomas say concerning them”.
John Thomas worked for Abraham Darby at Bristol and also at Coalbrookdale for most of his life. Hannah his daughter was born on the 15th of 10th month (December) 1717 the year after Darby’s death.
Hannah says:
“John Darby was a farmer —- lived at a house called Wren’s Nest near Dudley in Worcestershire. He had by his first wife one son and daughter named Abraham and Esther —- He put his son apprentice to Jonathon Freeth, a malt mill maker at Birmingham who was a ‘public Friend’, and while he was there, Abraham Darby and one or two of his master’s sons had a gift in the Ministry. I think that I have heard there were four of them in the same shop that worked together all public and used to sit together one evening in the week. After he was out of his time he married Mary Sergeant. The marriage took place on the 18th day of the 7th month (September) 1699 at a Friends Meeting held at Dudley.”
All other references to John Darby state that he was a small farmer and also a nailer and locksmith. A combination of trades found frequently at that period.
Defoe, describing the Dudley district, states:
“Every farm has one Forge or more; so that the Farmers carry on two very different businesses, working at their Forges as Smiths, when they are not employed in the fields as Farmers. And all their work they bring to market, where the great Tradesmen buy it up and send it to London —- We cannot travel far in any direction out of the sound of the hammer.
Throughout the seventeenth century, pig iron from the furnaces of the Forest of Dean was delivered to the West Midlands and the Severn where it was converted into bar iron in the many forges of that area. The expansion of trade called for more efficient processes than had been previously employed, greater power was needed and in consequence, more fuel.
John Darby, like most of the neighbouring small farmers found it advantageous to build a small forge of his own, in which, naturally his son Abraham would assist the workmen, even before his own apprenticeship began.
Mary Sergeant’s parents were bleachers of linen yarns.
Hannah Rose says:
“And by some accident she (Mary) fell into the Furnace when it was boiling and when taken out they thought her dead or near it; —- Before this accident she was a very strong hearty young woman but after she was married she was troubled with an asthmatic complaint and if her husband was from home, she would sit up all night and sleep by the fire.”
In view of the discrimination against Quakers it would have appeared prudent of John Darby to apprentice his son in an area that already employed many Friends, such an area was Birmingham, a free non-corporate town.
Amongst the Friends, the terms ‘weighty’ and ‘public’ meant a person whose conduct, advice, and mode of living in general carried weight. Such a man was Jonathon Freeth and John Darby chose to apprentice his young son to him.
Abraham Darby set up business in Bristol making malt mills when his apprenticeship ended.++++++++++++++++
Hannah Rose says:
“He journeyed to Holland to study the manufacture of brass pots. He hired some Dutch workmen and set up the Brass Works at Baptist Mills.”
“After some time he had a mind to set the Dutchmen to try to cast iron pots in sand. They tried several times but could not do it, so he was at a great loss in paying wages, for no result. At length, John Thomas, my father, then a young man who came on trial to learn the trade of Malt Mill making, seeing the Dutchmen try and could not bring to perfection, asked his master to let him try, so with his leave he did it, and afterwards his master and him were bound in articles in the year 1707 that John Thomas should be bound to work at that business and keep it secret and not teach anybody else, for three years. They were so private as to stop the keyhole of the door.”
Hannah says:++++++++++++++
“He was offered double wages to leave his master Darby, but would not do so.”+++++
The Articles of Agreement between Darby and Thomas
- It is agreed John Thomas consents to work and labour faithfully for Abraham Darby in the art and mystery of casting and moulding of Iron Potts from the day and date for the term of three years.
- Abraham Darby agrees to pay John Thomas £7 per annum for the last year of the agreement, and to provide for John Thomas, good and sufficient meat and drink, washing and lodging.
- John Thomas in consideration that the making and casting of iron pots is not a trade in which he was employed or brought up in, doth covenant that he will not at any time hereafter serve any other person whatever on or about the casting of iron pots in sand nor will he disclose the method to anyone.
John Thomas, as the original moulder, shared the patent with Abraham Darby at Bristol; he remained all his life at the works.
Arriving at Coalbrookdale in 1708 to commence work at the furnace, Abraham Darby lived at a house called White End. In later years, when Darby moved into Madely Court, John Thomas moved into his old house. In 1939 White End was demolished when the road was widened.
COALBROOKDALE WORKS 1708 – 1717
Basil Brooke built the first furnace in Coalbrookdale used by Abraham Darby; the date 1638 can be seen on a cast iron beam so blasting had obviously been taking place for many years.
Hannah Rose says:
“As to the affairs about the Dale before Abraham Darby’s time I know but little, but have heard that Wolfe of Madeley carried it on before Fox —- The furnace was blown up by the Pool Dam breaking and blew a great piece of iron into the Timber Coppice. There were two men asleep in the cabin but not hurt. I believe it was in Fox’s time he made cannon balls, hand grenades, etc, for the Government. He went over to Russia with the Emperor called Peter the Great, but left his wife and children to suffer great poverty, although he had with her a fortune of £10,000. Mary Ford was very kind to her and employed her in sewing and she taught a few children to read.”
Abiah Darby, Abraham Darby II’s wife, wrote that a man whose father worked at the Coalbrookdale Works had told her that once the badly damaged furnace was repaired, Abraham Darby commenced blasting. He cast Iron Goods in sand instead of loam, which had previously been used.
This method was cheaper and less tedious than casting in loam. The furnace was fired with charcoal. The use of charcoal in furnaces meant a huge supply of timber was necessary. The forges often being situated 20 miles away from the furnaces where they could have their own area of woodland. Pig iron produced from the furnaces was sent to outlying forges, turned into bar and rod iron and sent on to nailers etc, and also to consumers in various parts of the country. This rather clumsy arrangement necessitated each group being spread over a wide area – with the attendant haulage problems. Darby’s new system of locating furnace and forges side by side on a stream with one pool below the other using the same water consecutively was a much more economical system.
Later Darby thought it ought to be possible to use pit coal, but this not working he tried having the coal turned into coke – as was used for drying malt, and this succeeded to his satisfaction. He discovered that only one type of pit coal was suitable. (Shropshire clod coal contained very little sulphur). The Coalbrook is a tributary of the River Severn and, as does the Severn at Ironbridge, it cuts a deep gorge-like valley enabling the thus well-exposed coal measures to be easily obtainable. His use of coke in the furnaces instead of charcoal eliminated the necessity for hauling charcoal long distances. Seams of coal were close by his works. It had been necessary to spend 6 months of the year amassing the huge quantity of charcoal needed for each blast. Blasting could be carried out much more frequently only ceasing between each blast to allow repairs to hearth and furnace.
Grates, fireplaces, kettles, pots and pans were all produced, also the three-legged bellied cauldrons known as ‘furnaces’. These were much cheaper that the copper and brass utensils, usually imported from Holland, which had previously been used. They found a ready market throughout the country and abroad. Many of the cauldrons were exported to Africa.
The success of the sugar industry abroad called for sugar boiling pans, furnaces and sugar rolls all of which were produced in abundance at Coalbrookdale.
The first iron bridge constructed in Britain was built between 1777 and 1779 using iron from Darby’s Coalbrookdale foundry. This was the bridge over the River Severn from which the town Ironbridge takes its name. Today the centre of the 200ft bridge is gradually being forced upwards as the riverbanks move closer together.
The Coalbrookdale Company manufactured the cast iron columns of The Macclesfield Bridge, which spans the Regents Canal in Regents Park, London, in 1820.
Iron was greatly used in industrial architecture culminating in such immense projects as the 19th century railway stations such as Paddington and the unique Crystal Palace that housed the Great Exhibition in 1851.
The text below is copied from The Journal of the Friends Historical Society 1938 vol 35
[JOHN THOMAS OF WELSHPOOL AND BRISTOL, INVENTOR AND IRONMASTER]
John Thomas, the Ironmaster and co-inventor with Abraham Darby of casting cooking pots in iron, was born near Welshpool in 1690. * He was the second of the five sons of Robert Thomas, “who was not a Friend but a sober man”, and his wife Priscilla Evans. The wife was “a fair Latin scholar and for a while in the service of the Countess Conway”. Her parents were Edward and Katherine Evans, said to be natives of Radnorshire, but residing in Welshpool. They were imprisoned in November 1662 for declining to take the Oath of Allegiance, where Edward Evans “being an infirm man and unable to bear the Filth and Dampness of the Place, laid down his Life, the unwholesome Confinement there having hastened his death”. He was buried in St. Mary’s Churchyard, Welshpool. His wife was imprisoned for five years.
Thomas Oliver, Coedcowrid, Dolobran, Meiford, and “a Minister among Friends” first employed John Thomas. Later he was shepherd to Charles Lloyd, the Ironmaster of Dolobran. Here he succeeded in rescuing a flock of his master’s sheep from a snowdrift, and later in the spring of the same year, during heavy rain and melting snow, he swam the river Vyrnwy to fetch home a herd of mountain cattle. These he collected and drove to the river, but the ford had now become a boiling torrent. He nevertheless crossed it on the back of an ox, and brought home the whole herd in safety. As a reward for his courage his master presented him with four of the sheep which he had saved. He sold their wool in order to buy better clothing for himself, and afterwards disposed of the sheep so that he might obtain money wherewith to travel to Bristol to seek his fortune. This was in 1704. Afraid of being taken for a soldier if found in Bristol out of work, it being the time of the Duke of Marlborough’s wars, he requested his master to recommend him as an apprentice to a relative Edward Lloyd, a wine merchant who was one of the partners of the Baptist Mills. The boy was accordingly sent into the brass-works until he should procure employment. As he was looking on during the trials of the Dutch workmen to cast iron he told Abraham Darby that he thought he saw how they had missed it. He begged to be allowed to try, and he and Abraham Darby remained alone in the workshop the same night for the purpose.
Before morning they had cast an iron pot. The boy Thomas entered into an agreement to serve Abraham Darby and keep the secret. He was enticed by the offer of double wages to leave his master; but he continued nobly faithful, and afterwards showed his fidelity to his master’s widow and children following the untimely death of Abraham Darby. From 1709 to 1828 the Thomas family were confidential and much valued agents to the descendants of Abraham Darby. For more than one hundred years after the night in which Thomas and his master made their successful experiment of producing an iron casting in a mould of fine sand, with its two wooden frames and its air-holes, the same process was practised and kept secret at Colebrookdale, with plugged keyholes and barred doors.
John Thomas married Grace Zeane in Bristol in 1714, and died in 1760. Their son Samuel settled in Bristol at Keynsham as a wire drawer, and married Esther Derrick in 1746. They had a son John, born in 1752, who commenced business as a grocer on the Somerset side of Bristol Bridge, the business being still carried on under the name of John Thomas, Sons and Company. In 1776 John Thomas the second married Elizabeth Ovens, of Bristol, and they had ten children. The chief interest of this John Thomas’s life was the promotion of waterways for the facilitation of trade, especially the Somerset Coal Canal, and the proposed Kennet and Avon Canal to connect Bath with London. John Thomas the second retired in 1812 and purchased Prior Park, near Bath, where he died 3rd 3 mo. 1827, aged seventy-five.
Prior Park now belongs to The National Trust and the Mansion is a Roman Catholic school.
The fifth son of John and Elizabeth Thomas was George Thomas the noted Bristol Quaker Philanthropist. He was born 1791 and died without issue 1869.
*Arthur Raistrick in his book Dynasty of Iron Founders 1953, pp20-21 suggests 1679 as his date of birth. ]
Look in , BRISTOL CHARITIES – GEORGE THOMAS
POSTSCRIPT FEB 2015
I have recently discovered that my suppositions are correct. Courtesy of Janey, from Wales, who sent me lots of information and a book written in 1876 by John Thomas of Welling, Kent who was the g.g.grandson of THE WELSH SHEPHERD BOY. This John himself was very inventive. In partnership with two brothers he formed the works for lighting the town of Bridgenorth with gas. Later went to France to work for the European Gas Company as chief engineer.
THE WELSH SHEPHERD BOY is my sixth Great Grandfather
POSTSCRIPT FEB 2016 written by Hannah Rose
George and Ellen Zeane in Dublin c. 1690-92
My mother’s parents named Zeane lived in Dublin about the year 1690 in Dublin about the year 1690 in the wars between William and James. They had many soldiers quartered upon them who were quite wild Irish Catholics. They filled all the rooms above stairs and my Grandfather nailed up some boards in the kitchen to keep their bed a little private and the children and apprentices were forced to sleep in the cellar. The soldiers brought fever to the house. the son died from it and my mother had it twice. When my Grandparents were ill in bed the soldiers would call them names and threaten to fire the house over their heads. Corn was 20/- a bushel and people were forced to eat barley and oats. My Grandfather hid his valuables under the boarded floor of the kitchen. those who did not do so saw all their brass and copper things carried away to make base money, King James being reduced to such great necessity. He used to ride by their door every day but I do not know where he lodged.
These times were so troublesome that if two men were seen talking in the street upon their own business they were in danger of imprisonment. Protestants were looked upon with such suspicion. My grandfather lived in Devonshire the time of Monmouth’s Rebellion and saw the duke and saw the Duke and King out one day. After the Duke was beheaded he said he saw a man very like the Duke. for this speech he had to fly his house to escape being put in the pillory. King James’ soldiers used to walk the streets with oranges on their pikes in scorn of King William. But after the Battle of the Boyne they stole along the streets with their arms under their coats for fear of losing them.My Grandparents went out to see King William’s camp and there was great rejoicing in Dublin. Afterwards King William’s soldiers were quartered upon them and they had to give them food and lodgings but they were more civilised and they were glad to have them.
In 1692 my Grandparents came to live in Bristol.
John Thomas, ‘the welsh shepherd boy’ (1690) who worked with Abraham Darby in iron casting was my 6th great grandfather. John’s father, Robert Thomas who married Priscilla Evans was my 7th great grandfather
Thank you for the comment. Have you any more information you could give me? I am sure there is a family connection but can’t seem to get any further.
Barbara
Your Uncle John was my grandfather(1812 – 1880) You must be a cousin of mine. There is history.
Ida
Will email you.
Barbara