Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (43 page)

Most factories were set up and owned by local entrepreneurial businessmen who were not connected to the traditional aristocratic families associated with old wealth. Factories tended to be self-financing, with investments sought from relatives or friends and profits reinvested into the industry. Banks invested very little money in industrialization. This system meant that British manufacturing companies were relatively small scale, unlike in America, with the exception of a few very wealthy companies such as the nineteenth-century cotton-spinning corporation Arkwright & Peel, the tobacco firm Wills, and Coats who manufactured sewing thread.

Manufacturers and industrialists often dominated local councils right into the twentieth century, and as a major employer they would have had a strong influence on local society. If you believe your ancestor was part of the industrial elite that emerged during the nineteenth century then surviving family and business papers may be of interest to you. These will often consist mainly of accounts, which can give you a perception of how well the business did and how wealthy your ancestor was, but may also contain personal letters.

•  The National Register of Archives has a Personal Name search engine to help you locate the repositories of private papers, or a search of the Corporate Name database may be able to find surviving business records.

•  Your ancestor may have been a member of an organization for the protection of employers' rights, such as the Oldham Textile Employers' Association that has an archive located in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester. Ask at the local county record office and consult the libraries mentioned later in this chapter to find out if there were any such organizations operating locally in your ancestor's area of work. Such records may have details about members and will give you an insight into your industrialist ancestor's economic priorities and beliefs.

•  The records of local councils will be held at the County Record Office and meeting minutes will contain any input your relative had regarding local issues. Search the name index cards available at most local record offices to see if relevant documents about them can be found quickly.

Prior to the Great Reform Act of 1832, which gave all men with property the right to vote, very few manufacturers entered Parliament as MPs. However, after this time their numbers grew steadily. If your industrialist ancestor was a Member of Parliament then a trip to the Parliamentary Archives is in order, where you will find biographies and some photographs of MPs and can use the sources there to find out whether your ancestor tried to oppose any of the factory legislation discussed in Parliament. Hansard's transcriptions of the Parliamentary Debates, covering select debates from 1803 and reporting all in full from 1909, may be useful for this, as will the Parliamentary Papers that are now available online from The National Archives' computer terminals.

The
Who's Who of British Members of Parliament
, published in the 1970s and 80s in several volumes covering MPs since 1832, may contain biographical information about your ancestor. Maurice F. Bond wrote a
Guide to the Records of Parliament
(HMSO, 1971) that is worth consulting if you intend to visit the Parliamentary Archives.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 attracted 6 million visitors to London in the six months it was open between May and October. Over 100,000 exhibits were displayed under the four categories of Manufactures, Machinery & Mechanical Invention, Raw Material, and Sculpture & Plastic Art. You can find out whether your ancestor was among the many manufacturers proudly exhibiting their products by visiting the National Art Library at the Victorian & Albert Museum where plenty of catalogues and descriptive publications from the time are held. The National Archives holds some original documents for the event, which can be searched in the online catalogue, though these mainly consist of administrative records, and the London Metropolitan Archives has a large collection of colourful prints depicting the spectacle.

While some records that shed light on the employment of individuals do survive, the majority of material you are likely to come across in your investigation will concern the history of the trade your ancestor was employed in, general working conditions at the time, the products that were produced and the buildings they were manufactured in. Local history sites are sometimes a fruitful source for the impact of industry on the area. Check the local council's website for information about the area's history and look out for links to websites set up by local businesses and historians about the background to buildings in
the region, like www.oldmerthyrtydfil.com, which tells the history of iron foundries and factories in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. The GENUKI website at www.genuki.org.uk also has advice about locating subject-related records, including occupations, specific to each area of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Have a look at the relevant county page for your ancestor's place of work to find out whether any local sites have been set up specializing in a local industry or company you are trying to research. There is a website directory, with links to local history sites too, at www.local-history.co.uk.

The majority of records concerning private companies that owned factories, foundries and mills will be found in the county record office for the area in which your ancestor worked, but there are some regional
institutions that have archives preserving the history of industries native to the local area, which can be found by searching the ARCHON directory via the National Archives' website at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archon.

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Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust is responsible for Kelham Island Industrial Museum, Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, and Shepherd Wheel. The Trust cares for a unique collection of archive material recording the heritage of the Industrial Revolution in and around Sheffield. Material relating to the people, products and manufacturing processes of steel, iron, cutlery, tool making, silver and holloware (galvanized steel ‘hollow' items such as dustbins and buckets) manufacture are stored primarily at Kelham Island Industrial Museum. The documents, plans, technical drawings, books, photographs, equipment, clothing, advertising, machinery
and original art that form the Trust's archive can be accessed at the Collections Management Centre if an appointment is made by telephoning 0114 272 2106.

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John Rylands University of Manchester Library in Manchester city centre houses the Greater Manchester Textile Mills Survey Archive, formed between 1985 and 2000. The survey consisted of maps identifying around 2,400 mill sites, field surveys of around 1,000 sites, and research using archives and library material. The findings of the survey were published in
Cotton Mills in Greater Manchester
in 1992. The library also contains records of several industrial organizations based in the area as well as some company papers. Detailed catalogues of the library's archive collections can be searched from the Electronic Gateway to Archives at the Rylands (ELGAR) at http://archives.li.man.ac.uk.

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Spinning the Web is a website developed by Manchester Library and Information Service to give access to around 20,000 items gathered from libraries, museums and archives that tell the story of the
Lancashire cotton industry. The website, at www.spinningtheweb. org.uk, has plenty of digital documents, photos, newspaper articles and original reports that can be searched by keyword as well as indepth historical accounts of what life was like in the industry at different points in time and from the perspective of mill owners, managers and workers. Use the Full Search facility to locate specific items from the 17 institutions that have been involved with the project, such as the Lancashire textile museums. There is information about both living and working conditions, leisure time and major reforms within the cotton industry. You can look at the effect the Industrial Revolution had on individual towns in Lancashire and how the manufacture of cotton developed during this time, and find examples of the goods that your ancestors made. This is a brilliant resource for anyone researching ancestors involved in the Lancashire cotton industry at any level and can give you guidance about the archives you should visit to find out more.

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Glasgow City Archive, the University of Glasgow and Glasgow Museums have combined their resources into the Glasgow Story website using images from their collections and the expertise of some of Scotland's best writers to tell the history of the city. The website is split into six historical periods, one of those being the Industrial Revolution where you can learn all about the impact of industry on the Glaswegian way of life between the 1770s and 1830s. Iron and steel manufacture, shipbuilding and the textile and leather industries helped Glasgow to rival Edinburgh in industrial and economic growth during the nineteenth century. The project can be found at www.theglasgowstory.com.

There is very little concerning industrial trades at national-level archives because they were private enterprises that were not required to deposit their papers with any governmental department. The National Archives in Kew, however, does hold the records of the Factory Inspectorate established as part of the 1833 Factory Act to protect children employed by manufacturers, and later to monitor the conditions of all workers.

The Factory Inspectorate comprised of four inspectors who reported to the Home Secretary on the state of factories within their district and the conditions of young people employed in them. In 1844 sub-inspectors were also appointed to ensure factory regulations were being met. A central office, later known as the Factory Department or Factory Office, was established at this time. In 1878 a chief inspector was appointed who was responsible for the central office and directly answerable to the Home Secretary. In 1946 the Factory Inspectorate was transferred to the Ministry of Labour and National Service.

•  Registered files of the Factory Department and Inspectorate, including minutes of meetings and conferences of factory inspectors, files concerning the arrangement of their districts and other records relating to factory inspection, are kept in The National Archives series LAB 15 for the period 1836 to 1975.

•  If you find a death certificate of an ancestor who died as a result of lead or anthrax poisoning, then consult the Registers of Lead Poisoning and Anthrax Cases arranged chronologically between 1900 and 1951 in LAB 56.

•  There is a large amount of paperwork relating to factory inspectors in HO 45, and Factory Entry Books of out-letters to inspectors of factories and orders relating to the administration of Factories Acts covering 1836 to 1921 are kept in HO 87.

It is also worth browsing through results for Factory Inspectorate in the online catalogue to see if there is anything of interest to your area of research.

Whether or not company archives survive for your ancestor's employer, there are plenty of museums dedicated to preserving the heritage of Britain's industrial age found dotted around the United Kingdom, and these are the best places to find out about your ancestor's life and times. Find one relevant to your ancestor's occupation so you can see what their working and living environment would have looked like. Local councils and archives have information about the museums in their area. If you are very lucky there may be a museum dedicated to the history of the local industry in your ancestor's hometown. Here is a selection of some of them.

In 1771 Richard Arkwright constructed the first successful water-powered cotton spinning mill in Cromford, Derbyshire. The mills at Cromford had a large workforce with a factory village to house them and became a model for factories across Britain and Europe. To celebrate Arkwright's status as the ‘father of the factory system' and to maintain the World Heritage Site at Derwent Valley where the communities who supported Arkwright's mills lived, the Arkwright Society has been working hard to conserve the industrial buildings that have been standing now for over 200 years. You can find out more about visiting the Derwent Valley Mills at www.arkwrightsociety.org.uk.

‘
Specialist industrial museums are the best places to find out about your ancestor's life and times
.'

The Weavers' Triangle is a modern name given to an area of the Leeds and Liverpool canal, built between 1770 and 1816, that was once the heart of Burnley's textile industry and where a largely untouched Victorian industrial landscape survives. The Weavers' Triangle Trust, formerly the Burnley Industrial Museum Committee, has several museums within the area of the triangle, including a Visitors' Centre where you can find out how cotton was made and have a go at weaving to get a real experience of your ancestors' working life. There is a weaver's cellar dwelling where you can see what living conditions were like for weavers a hundred years ago. A short walk from the Visitors' Centre is Oak Mount Mill Engine House, which produced cotton from 1830 until 1979. The engine house and chimney were built in 1887. As well as the museums there are foundries, warehouses, domestic buildings, workers' houses and a school that have been preserved as part of Burnley's industrial heritage. You can go on guided tours along the canal towpath that take you through all the areas of the Weavers' Triangle. Visit www.weaverstriangle.co.uk to find out about opening times and view the online picture gallery.

While Lancashire was the heart of England's cotton industry, other counties are equally as proud of their textile heritage. There are plenty of museums where you can learn all about your ancestors who were employed on the other side of the border in Yorkshire. The Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills is a living piece of history for the Yorkshire textile industry where the working environment of mill
employees has been reconstructed. The website at www.leeds.gov.uk/ armleymills is great for finding out more about the history of the mills and the textile industry in Leeds. There is also an interesting web gallery with an online exhibition looking at the lives of working children in Britain.