Family History

By Sherlene Hall Bartholomew

What did your family (those of you in the USA, that is) do over the long Labor Day weekend?

Some of us hit the road in an effort to enjoy a last-ditch vacation.  Others enjoyed a backyard barbecue with family or friends or spent some time lounging–resting from our labors.

This year, however, as my husband Dan finishes a battle with bronchitis, we stayed home, while I planted mums and puttered around the garden.  Later, while I clattered away at this keyboard, we actually talked about why we celebrate Labor Day in the first place.

“That strength will become a part of you . . .”

Dan recently checked out a video at the library–John Ford’s film adaptation of Richard Llewellyn’s novel How Green was my Valley, named “Best Picture” of 1941.  This classic was produced one hundred years after my ancestors were listed in the British Census, as living in a workhouse. This provoked lingering reflection over our Labor Day weekend-as it would on any day, for that matter. 

The novel and film depict life in Wales, where coal miners worked backbreaking hours under extremely filthy and dangerous circumstances, yet were progressively less able to put food on their tables.  Also memorably illustrated are the terrible consequences workers there suffered, when they finally got courage to unionize, in an effort to improve their work conditions.  Even with all these trials, the simple values and basic integrity manifested in the lives of his parents and many villagers make rich the narrator’s memories of life in the verdant valley of his childhood.

Mr. Gruffydd, their minister, is portrayed as a man in love with the narrator’s sister (played by Maureen O’Hara).  He feels he cannot marry her, fearing that she and their children would suffer, living on his pitiful salary, while he concentrated on his ministry.  His was the task to try and keep faith alive in a people losing hope.

Some of what he says to them (and us) is indeed memorable, as when he declares that “My business is anything that comes between men and the Spirit of God.”

When the workers impress on him their intent to form a union and fight harsh employment conditions, Gruffydd anticipates some of the results, but finally offers this counsel that today’s union leaders might well consider:

Very well then.  Here is what I think:  first, have your union.  You need it.  Alone you are weak.  Together you are strong.  But remember that with strength goes responsibility to others and yourselves, for you cannot conquer injustice with more injustice-only with justice, and the help of God.

Also:

 As your father cleans his lamp to have good light, so keep clean your spirit . . . By prayer.  And by prayer I don’t mean shouting and mumbling and wallowing like a hog in religious sentiment.  Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking.  When you pray, think.  Think well what you’re saying.  Make your thoughts into things that are solid.  And that way your prayer will have strength.  And that strength will become a part of you-body, mind and spirit.

Family Home Wheeling

This next Labor Day Monday, while holding a traditional FHE or, if on the road, what might be called a “Family Home Wheeling,” we might take occasion to remind our children about the contributions of those migrant ancestors who did so much to build a better life for us–often under their own similarly harrowing conditions.

Waves of immigrant labor to this country, somewhat in sequence, included the poor of Britain and Western Europe, including Scandinavians (and Africans!), and multitudes from China and eastern Asia, followed by Irish, Italians, and the poor of Eastern Europe.  These laborers and successive generations, in turn cleared and worked (and in the west, irrigated) the land, sweated in the textile industry and other factories, built the transcontinental railroads, fought the wars, and worked in the mills and mines of a burgeoning industrial economy. What they came to was often not much better than the work conditions they fled.

Learning about the occupational lives of our ancestors can be humbling, as well as illuminating.  Where possible, it is worthwhile to visit the town where she was born or where he lived before emigrating-or, we might study historical accounts about the region.  Often much of the town embraced the same industry. So by visiting or reading about a local museum that has preserved and sometimes demonstrates machinery or tools used in early times, much can be learned about how our people lived.

Sweet harvest

What the prophet Joseph Smith and his family learned through sad experience, as bad weather and other difficulties forced them from place to place in pursuit of a good harvest, was the lot of many early colonists and settlers, trying to earn a living off the land.  Many had to move on, again and again clearing land and building homes, while struggling to survive by hiring out to neighbors or harvesting maple syrup.

Framed

Several years ago Dan and I visited Leicestershire, England, where both of us had ancestors who, with their neighbors, endured miserable labor conditions.  My Burdett ancestors lived in Countesthorpe as frame work knitters (F.W.K.).  They labored, when there was work, at knitting machines, as part of their community’s industry, making stockings, underwear, and shirts. These they fashioned in often freezing or overheated sheds, with very poor light, working often as much as sixteen hours a day for very little recompense.

What they did earn often was controlled by employers who, instead of paying them in cash, gave credit to buy goods with inflated prices, at the company store (a custom that migrated with them to many factories and work shops in the New World).

We visited the Framework Knitters Museum in Wigston, a town near Countesthorpe, where we got to sit at such a knitting machine, trying to imagine what it was like for my Burdetts and Shentons to sit like that, working such long days.  (Tap this link at https://www.lrmf.org.uk/m_26_wig.htm [https://www.lrmf.org.uk/m_26_wig.htm] to see some of this framework knitting machinery.)  

“Poor fellow won’t trouble them long!”

As mentioned in an earlier column, Dan and I did not learn until years after our marriage that Dan’s ancestor James Mellor was the area branch president in Leicestershire when my Burdetts were also new converts there!  So you might imagine the interest with which I read James Mellor’s own account about some of what he and his family also suffered, trying to earn a living, before they emigrated.

What James experienced was not at all uncommon for factory workers at the time.  Writes Edna J. Gregerson, Mellor family researcher, who had access to James’ personal diary and those of other family members:

“When he was about eighteen years of age and still living in Leicester, James met dark-eyed Mary Ann Payne, daughter of Charles and Charlotte Squires Payne.  They were married about a year later, and the first fruit of this union was a daughter, Selina Ann.  When little Selina was only two weeks old, James experienced a painful accident at Mr. Chapman’s factory:

I had a serious accident at the factory the Machine that I was working at, called the Devil or plucker going at such speed flew all to pieces even to the hareshaft and the spikes caught me in many parts of my Boddy the report of the braking of the machine was so loud that it was heard in another factory one hundred rods off they stopped their Engine to come see what was the matter when the people came I was lying covered with Blood as though torn all to peaces my clothes all torn to taters they took me off to the infermary or hospittle.  when they got me their patients all that saw me Said that poor fellow will not trouble them long. for three days and nights I lay and heard the clock Strike its rounds and tell the hour for I could not close my eyes to sleep for pain as the Doctor Said three day I would Either change for life or Death My Brother John came to see me and when he Saw me he commenced to cry as he thought I should die as our nephew William Ward my oldest Sisters Eldest Son who was killed at the same factory but a short time before My wifes mother Came to see me and she asked how I was She thought I was deranged as I said I was very well for I had never Cause to see anything hailed me.  My wife did not see me for she was sick in the bed at the time at the end of three Days, I changed for the better and I began to feel that I wanted to have my diet changed Low diet to something better I was so that I could not help myself to eat drink or anything Else but after changing I improved so rapidly that I was out of the Infirmary in two weeks from the time going in and was soon at my work again.

“. . . Late in the year 1843, James moved his wife and three children, Louisa, Charlotte Elizabeth and Mary Ann (Selina had died in 1839) to Bradford, Yorkshire, England, where he obtained work as a wool comber.  While living at a place called Bowergreen on the Leeds road about one mile outside of Bradford, James received his first tidings of the Mormon gospel which was been proselyted in the area by the ‘Elders of Israel.’ 

“James was a profoundly religious man, and he searched in the Bible most diligently in order to determine if the things these men were preaching were true.  The more he studied and read in the scriptures, the more he became convinced of the truthfulness of the Mormon gospel. . . .”

Edna Gregerson explains, in her book about the family, that in 1847 there was a great depression in Yorkshire, so James’ father-in-law sent for them to return to Leicester and live with him, though conditions there were also at a low level. 

‘Can’t kill these darn Mormons!

After returning to Leicester, James got work on the railroad and in the tunnels, having to travel around quite a bit with his employment.  Quoting again from the Mellor history: “While James was working in the tunnels one day, the chains snapped on the hoist, letting it down on him.  The men working called, ‘A man killed!’  When they raised the shaft James jumped up like a jack-in-the-box.  ‘Oh!’ said the winchman, ‘You can’t kill these darn Mormons.’ 

“Conditions became much worse, and while James was trying to find work, Mary Ann had to apply to the parish for relief in order to feed her young family.  When James again returned to Leicester he was arrested and confined to debtor’s prison for six weeks ‘for no crime only being poor and out of work but I obtained favour in prison and was treated kindly.'”

In 1849 James returned to Yorkshire in search of employment; his wife and children remaining in Leicester with her father.  In Yorkshire James combined work as a woolcomber with preaching the gospel, those seven months.  After the market improved in Leicester, James returned to work there at dyeing yarn (I gather, piecing together this story, that James returned to Leicester city, county of Leicester, about the time my ancestor Thomas Burdett, Jr. married Maria Herbert, another Mormon convert, in nearby Countesthorpe, on 29 July 1850).

So it was that my husband Dan’s ancestor, James Mellor, Sr., was ordained an Elder and presided over the Blaby Branch, which included four or five villages, the nearest one, approximately five miles from his home.  “Every Sunday,” says the Mellor history, James “walked to these villages to give his message to the people,” who included my Burdetts in Countesthorpe!

“Sharks will follow the ship” 

After serving as president of the Blaby Branch for two years, James was released and appointed as president of the Leicester branch.  He held this office for over two years, after which James and Mary Ann felt compelled to gather to Zion in 1856, leading the way for Thomas Burdett Jr. and his family to also emigrate in 1861.  

Mary Ann gave birth to twins before they left Liverpool, but both tragically died.  Mary Ann herself was so ill, the captain refused to take her aboard, after the doctor said her dying would invite sharks to follow the ship.  Mary Ann insisted she would live, and their faith indeed saved her.  She not only survived the voyage, but they and all seven of their living children managed to survive their trek west in the ill-fated Martin Handcart Company.

Missionaries who had known the Mellors in England came to meet them on their arrival in the Valley, but did not recognize their former branch leader.  Hardships of their journey had turned James’ coal-black hair stark white.[i]

Also “Poor” in spirit

My ancestor, Elizabeth Shenton Burdett, first in the family to join the Church, had a hard life.  She died only a year after seeing the active Church members in her family, including Thomas Jr., emigrate with many of her grandchildren.  How she must have sorrowed at news that Thomas and his wife Maria buried her granddaughter, little Fanny, in Wyoming, as they crossed the plains.  For reasons we can only guess, branch records seem to indicate that Elizabeth’s husband Thomas Sr. did not join the Church until shortly after her death.

I wondered why I could not find Elizabeth and her family in the 1841 Countesthorpe Census, so did an area radius search.  The English were not as mobile then-if they did move, they often settled within ten miles of where they were born.  We can therefore often find them by searching all census records of towns within a ten-mile circle around their home town, as plotted on an early map.

Their older children were probably married or apprenticed out.  My ancestor Thomas Jr., at age thirteen, is the oldest child listed in that Enderby Workhouse census.  With him and his parents are listed five others of his siblings, including one-year old Mary Ann (the second by that name-another daughter Mary Ann died the year before).

(See a five-generation photo, showing Thomas Burdett Jr. in Utah, and in more prosperous times, as posted in my last column:  https://meridianmag.wpengine.com/churchhistory/030724pioneer.html .)

“Houses of Terror”

Accounts about those poorhouses indicate that infants and their youngest children were removed from parents, so those left in a family (who were often so ill and impoverished, they were barely able to work) could be divided by age and gender into seven separate labor camps.  There their lives were made miserable; to make sure they would never want to return, at parish expense.

English “workhouses” are defined in Fitzhugh’s Dictionary of Genealogy as “parochial ‘convenient houses of dwelling’ for the impotent poor . . . set up as a result of the Poor Law Act of 1601, but workhouses became numerous only in the eighteenth century.  An Act of 1723 enabled parishes to set them up either singly or in combination with neighbouring parishes.  Generally, they were so ill-administered that they were said to be either ‘houses of terror’ or ‘houses of debauchery.’ 

“Gilbert’s Act, 1782, forbade the admission of able-bodied paupers.  In 1834, under the Poor Law Amendment Act, newly constituted Poor Law Unions took over responsibility for the poor from the parishes, and each union was obliged to set up a workhouse.  Except in serious cases, relief to the poor was confined to those who would enter the workhouse.  The records of these institutions and the Minute Books, are at the county and borough record offices.”[ii]

A “Workhouse Homepage” that I cannot now access,

welcomed visitors with this quote, attributed to The Revd. H. H. Milman, speaking to Edwin Chadwick, in 1932:  “The Workhouse should be a place of hardship, of coarse fare, of degradation and humility; it should be administered with strictness, with severity; it should be as repulsive as is consistent with humanity.”

I have heard President Boyd K. Packer speak movingly about how we, as Latter-day Saints, must never judge, nor be ashamed of these tender souls, our ancestors, who may have found themselves in such desperate circumstances as these.

Riches in Poorhouse and Other Records

It can be an information bonanza to find your people in a poorhouse, for they often kept good records.  However, my limited search at the Central Record Office in Leicester, while there in 1997, did not locate information telling why my Burdetts were at the Enderby Workhouse.  Dan and I did learn that in the early 1840s there was widespread depression and unemployment among the framework knitters and that at times most of the parish was on relief of some sort. 

It is always worthwhile to study the times-to learn what we can about what else was going on in the country where our ancestors lived.  In such a study I learned that in 1837 Victoria became queen at age eighteen, the age my Thomas Burdett Jr. joined the Church (granting me a much more royal legacy).  In 1839 William Henry Fox Talbot printed his first photograph, and so I am able to share photographs of some of these, my people.

Continuing with some signposts for the times:  In 1840 the world’s first sticky postage stamp-the Penny Black-went on sale.  In 1841 a nationwide census was taken where, as just discussed, I found my Burdetts at the Enderby Workhouse.  Women and children were finally banned from working in mines in 1842. That same year a report revealed that half of all children in England died before their fifth birthday.  In 1845 there was famine in Ireland when the potato crop failed.  Tom Deary additionally explains that “Death was very common in Victorian times.  In the 1880s a quarter of all people died in their first year, a half were dead by the time they were twenty, and three quarters were dead by forty.”[iii] 

Tragic as it was that some of our ancestors lost children, crossing the plains, their chances for survival were not much better, had they stayed in England.  In fact, in terms of projected longevity, those families who emigrated fared much better than had they stayed behind.  In similar fashion, many of our ancestors escaped death or maiming in the Civil War by having the faith to follow Brigham Young on the trek West before it erupted, fulfilling Joseph Smith’s prophecy.

Uncivil Welcome

An ancestor of mine who did not escape the Civil War was Hans Nadrian Chlarson, a Swedish convert who served a mission in Sweden, baptizing his future wife, my namesake Johanna Charlotte Scherlin, and her mother, as Latter-day Saints, after which they were disowned by their family and forced into Hans Nadrian’s willing care.  Hans was a man of great talent and industry, able by plying various trades and his knowledge of five languages, to earn enough to send his own mother, his mother-in law, and Hannah, with their baby Heber Otto ahead, on three different ships, while he stayed behind to earn passage for his loved ones and, finally, himself.

Hans Nadrian had quite a few adventures just getting to New York, where his hard-earned savings were stolen from his hotel room.  A financier from the Old Country promised him a job translating for the Union Army, but when he got off the train, he found he had been sold to bleed in the place of some rich man’s son. 

Not wanting to start his life in the States as a deserter, Hans stayed, fought, and was severely wounded.  Hospitalized for some time, he recovered enough to return to New York and beat up the man who sold him into the War.  For this, the story goes, he went to jail, which only further delayed his eventual return to Hannah, who with absolute trust, waited for him in the Valley, supporting herself and their young son by weaving beautiful cloth and blankets for a living.

Hans limped until the day he died from his war wounds.  I hope that we, his descendants, will also never forget those who fought our wars–not always as volunteers.

Finding the Middle Ground

Dan’s Mellors settled first in Springville, in 1857, following the rescue of their Martin Handcart Company.  Several years later, they moved with several other families, including that of Dan’s ancestor Joseph Bartholomew, Sr., to a place called “Warm Springs,” near Gunnison, Utah.  Through their efforts, Warm Springs became the little town of Fayette. 

Following the Mellor emigration from Leicestershire only a few years later, Thomas Burdett Jr. and his family settled in the Ogden area, where they, too, helped the desert blossom. 

Dan and I, their descendants, were both essentially raised in the middle of those two places, in Provo, Utah, where we met, both served (different) German missions, came home and courted, and married in the Salt Lake Temple, before migrating to Illinois.  There Dan achieved a MS in Information Science at the U. of Chicago, while also working part-time at Bell Labs.  After six years, Dan began a career with AT&T in New York, and New Jersey, where we finished out our twenty-three years in the East and from where our two children also served missions in Ecuador and Guatemala and then graduated from BYU. Our pioneer heritage has taught us how to work hard, but conditions, doing so, are so very much better, thanks to hardships suffered by our ancestors, as they paved the way.

Dan took early retirement a decade ago, and we returned here, where Dan has employed his computer skills at BYU, while I went back there to school (after our children left the nest and married) to get an MA in British and American studies.  What a blessing this training has been, in the search after my kin!  How some of our ancestors must have craved the learning opportunities we too often take for granted!

We are glad to be near my parents, Dan’s widowed mother, and both our children and their mates, as well our two grandsons.  It feels good to have returned to our ever-more-greening Valley, rich as it is with opportunities to learn, serve, and grow. All is certainly not perfect here, but in general, we appreciate an atmosphere where, as Mr. Griffydd hoped, there’s “lots of good, clean, direct thinking,” as we continue the quest to conquer injustice “with justice, and with the help of God.”

We praise their names!

Thanks to pioneers like James Mellor Sr., Thomas Burdett, Jr., Hans Nadrian Chlarson, and their incredible wives, there is much for hundreds–probably thousands of their descendants to retain in grateful memory.

God bless us to be more worthy of our ancestors’ rich legacy of faith, prayer, labor, and love!