Is moving all over the UK common in the early 1800s?

[BenRalph]

It isn't very common but did happen. My 4x great grandma was:

Born in Ripon
Child 1 b Cambridgeshire
Child 2 b Ripon
Child 3, 4 and 5 b Botany in Lancashire
Married in Boroughbridge
Child 6 b Leeds
Child 7 b Weeton in Yorkshire
Child 8 and 9 b Ripon
Child 10 b Appleton Wiske further up than Ripon
Child 11 and 12 b Leeds
Died Leeds.

So she got all over the place.

[lmfamilyresearch]

Regarding "FindMyPast have an image of the marriage record, which might give more information than the transcript, but their link is not working at the moment." posted by MaecW, I have this image, but it doesn't give too much information. It's hard for me to say for certain that this Margaret Cochrane and John Riddel are mine.  The only way I am able to connect it is through an entry in the "History of the Ancient Ryedales, and Their Descendants in Normandy, Great Britain, Ireland, and America, from 860 To 1884" book.  In it it's mentioned that they were in Portsea at some point and moved to London.  However, this entry does have errors in it so I can't be sure how accurate it actually is.

[Maiden Stone]

Some factory owners in Midlands and north of England who were short of workers recruited them from other regions. Some owners made arrangements with parishes to take groups of children from workhouses as apprentices. The factory owners might pay a bounty to the parish for each worker or apprentice who signed up. The arrangement was beneficial to the parishes; they got rid of some poor people who were or might have become a burden on the parish and they made money on the contract. Some adults settled in the new area, some returned home after a while. The apprentices had no choice; they had to stay until the end of the apprenticeship.

[ThrelfallYorky]

Once the railways really got going, travel was a lot easier. But don't forget that prior to that time, the Canal network provided a practical, if not very swift, mode of travel. There's a Colin Dexter "Inspector Morse" that hinges on canal transport in 1800s, and although there probably were not scheduled runs, it certainly was possible to "hitch" for a smallish cost, aboard a canal boat and / or barge to get from one area to another.
Expanding industrial areas, and the demand for workers there, as well as other social pressures made lower class movement perhaps a bit more frequent than we might have expected.

[Sloe Gin]

I do know that Margaret Cochrane married John Riddel in 1816, and the only instance of a Cochrane marrying a Riddel occured in Portsea in 1816. 

Taking another angle on this, have you checked in Portsea and other parishes in the area for any post-1819 baptisms to a John & Margaret Riddel?  Just in case there was another couple of the same name.

[Maiden Stone]

Glancing at list of accounts for vagrant passes in catalogue of Lancashire Archives. Titles include "Account for Scottish Vagrant passes" (1834);  "Liverpool - Account for vagrant passes to Scotland" (1833).
Surnames of some of my Irish lines were among vagrant passes to Liverpool to board ship for Ireland in first 3 decades of 19thC. A few were noted as being discharged soldiers returning home. Others may have been seasonal labourers. There were males and females. Settlement laws didn't apply to Ireland as in England. There was anxiety in England in 1830s about a potential influx of Irish people seeking work after a series of bad harvests in Ireland.

[BumbleB]

My apologies, in advance, for this - BUT are you basing ALL your knowledge of the family on this book on the History of the Ancient Ryedales?

Have you done your own research on this family?  And Cochrane or Riddel(l)?

[Creasegirl]

Could be to do wth napoleonic war as many local militia or fencibles were recruited and they went to Portsmouth ramsgate etc to defend.  I  have an ancestor who married a Scottish woman in ramsgate around this time

[lmfamilyresearch]

My apologies, in advance, for this - BUT are you basing ALL your knowledge of the family on this book on the History of the Ancient Ryedales?

Have you done your own research on this family?  And Cochrane or Riddel(l)?

I have done research of my own.  I know that Margaret Cochrane's family was in Dunbar for a couple of generations before she was born (I have births, marriages and deaths of her family).  The Cochrane's did however come from somewhere else in the late 1600s to early 1700s and settled in Dunbar.  I know that Margaret Cochrane and John Riddel did go to Canada with their son Archibald (I have all of his information from the time he settled in Canada...marriage, death, children's baptisms...) as I have the passenger entry transcript. 

Regarding John Riddel, I have nothing other than what information was published in the book and I don't even know how much of that was actually correct.  I cannot find a baptism or death for him.  I also have the possible marriage for him and Margaret in Portsea, but even that I wonder about because of the long distance from Dunbar (for Margaret) and Aberdeenshire (for John), hence this forum post.