Hello Lancs Rootschatters,
Does anyone else have Mancunian ancestors who were originally from other parts of England?
My 3xG grandparents, Thomas and Sarah Newman, moved to Manchester some time between 1847, when they were married somewhere in the Bristol registration district, and the time of the census in 1851. Thomas seems to have been born somewhere near Bristol and Sarah in Bradford-on-Avon, but I don't have any exact information on this yet. (Sarah's maiden name was Jones, which makes things rather difficult!) In the 1851 census, Thomas and Sarah were sharing a house in Beswick with another family from Bristol - perhaps they had come together?
I heard that there was one episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are' in which Jeremy Paxman traced some ancestors who had migrated from one part of England to another at about the same time as my Newmans. (Unfortunately I couldn't watch the programme myself because I live abroad at the moment.) It said that people from towns in the south of England were recruited by agents from large industrial towns in the north, that their travel was organised for them, and that records were kept of who went where. It seems that these records are still available, but I've no idea how I might get to see them. Does anyone else know?
