William Highley, the runaway convict

The following article appeared in The Maryland Gazette on the 21st and 28th June 1764.

Given that this was written in 1764, and that William's age was given as about 40 and that he had been in the country for about 4 years, we can say he was born in about 1724 and had sailed from Liverpool in about 1760, and was aged about 36.

It has not been possible so far to find out anything about William before he left England but we know more about his life after he was transported to the British Colonies.

William's service was bought by John Frederick Augustus Priggs of Prince George's County, Maryland but after 4 years William ran away and despite Priggs's newspaper adverts was not apprehended. 

There are records of a William Highley and his family in Virginia from 1765 onwards and since there are no other men of the same name living in the colonies at this time, this is likely to be the runaway convict from England. William married and five of his children lived to be adults. Along with his three sons William worked in the iron industry. 

William died in the 1790s. His descendants have since formed one of the main collection of Highley families in the United States today.

John Hiley the convict

Welcome to a new year of Hiley/Highley posts!

I am often asked if I have any rogues or criminals amongst my ancestors! This month there are two posts, each one about a Hiley who committed a crime and was transported to another country. But neither of the two is from my own family tree!

Today's post features John Hiley who received a life sentence for an unknown crime and was transported to Australia in 1800. So far it has not been possible to discover any details about John's life before the trip or what happened to him after he arrived in Australia.

John was convicted on 10th March 1800 at the Kent Assizes and received a life sentence, officially given as 99 years, His crime was not recorded. He was transported aboard the vessel Earl Cornwallis and was one of 296 convicts, of whom 77 had been given life sentences, and with an average sentence of 31 years.

The first convicts to arrive in Australia were part of the First Fleet, which sailed from England in 1787 and arrived in Botany Bay in Sydney in January 1788. The convicts were transported in poor conditions, with limited space and a lack of supplies. Many died from illnesses like cholera during the journey. Between 1788 and 1868 the British penal system transported about 162,000 convicts from Great Britian and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia. Captain Arthur Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales, hoped the convicts would rehabilitate themselves and provide labour for the new colony.

From the collections of the State Library of New South Wales

The Earl Cornwallis was a three-decker East Indiaman launched in 1783 on the River Thames. She made seven voyages for the British East India Company. She then made one voyage transporting convicts from England to New South Wales. The ship set sail on 31st July 1800, was in transit for 316 days, and arrived in Port Jackson in Sydney, New South Wales on 12th June 1801. 27 male and 8 female convicts died of dysentery on the voyage and many of the survivors arrived weak and feeble. One officer and 20 men of the New South Wales Corps acted as guards on the trip.

Earl Cornwallis
By Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) - Yale Center for British Art
Paul Mellon Collection, USA, Public Domain
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36841826

Website sources

Convict Records

Wikipedia

National Library of Australia

Mary and Miriam

This is the final post of 2024 and completes the 6th year of this Blog.

The Blog has already featured articles about Charles William Highley from Walsden who was killed in WW1. Type 'Charles William Highley and Mary Carr' in the 'Search This Blog' box to read more about him.

Charles and Mary were married on 20th March 1915, their daughter Miriam was born on 23rd May 1916, and Charles was killed on 22nd June 1917.

The photograph below shows Mary and Miriam. It was obtained by Simon Last and featured in his website 'Charnwood Genealogy'. Simon collects and researches old photographs and postcards and tries to reunite them with a family member if possible.

Mary and Miriam Highley

Written on the back of the postcard
Mary Highley & Miriam
Friend of Grandma's
Great War widow

At the time of the census of 1921 Mary and Miriam were living at 33 Rock Nook, Littleborough. Mary is described as a Cotton Weaver at Sladen Wood Mills, employed by Fothergill & Harvey, Cotton Spinners & Manufacturers, although 'not working' is written alongside her entry in the census.

In the 1939 Register the couple were living at 57 Kinross Street, Burnley. The entry for Miriam's occupation is 'Incapacitated. Unpaid Domestic Duties'.

Miriam died in 1942 aged 26 and was buried in the graveyard at St James's Church in Calderbrook, Littleborough. The site of her grave is shown below but there is no stone to commemorate her.

Mary died in 1972 aged 81. Her death was registered in Littleborough but there is no record of a burial with Miriam at Calderbrook. Charles William's parents John and Mary Ann Bray are buried in the same graveyard.

Ivor John Hiley

 The following article appeared in The Western Mail on 19th December 1918.

Western Mail 19th December 1918
Newspaper image © The British Library Board. All rights reserved.
With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)

Ivor, his wife Maud and daughter Molly were victims of the 'Spanish Flu', a pandemic which spread rapidly at the end of World War 1 and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Ivor was the son of a butcher in Barry in South Wales. He ran his own drapery business before the War and married Maud Williams in 1912. Their daughter Molly was born 2 years later. Ivor enlisted with the Royal Field Artillery and served in France as a Gunner with the 63rd Division Ammunition Column.

Following research by Steven John of the West Wales Memorial Project, Ivor was accepted for commemoration by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in 2019 just over 100 years after his death, and his name was added to the CWGC website.

The Life of Henry Hiley Part 10 - life in Littleborough (Slaughterhouse, Tripe Shop, Peg Factory)

Today is the last post in Henry's description of life in Littleborough as he was growing up.

United Gathering on the Square, Littleborough
Whit Friday 1909 

The Slaughterhouse

At the top of Victoria Street there was a slaughterhouse. Milner Eastwood was the pork butcher and he would buy little pork pigs, keep them for a day or two, perhaps a week or two, I don’t know what, and that was in a place down at the very bottom of Victoria Street. Then when the time came for the pigs to be killed he would drive them up, a couple at a time. There would be Herbert, as I think of him now he was a weedy sort of chap, but there was Charlie, he was much stronger, and he was much better at actually killing the pig. We used to look through a crack in the wall, and with a poleaxe Charlie would stun the pig and then he’d cut its throat. Then he had Herbert to help him put the pig into a big bath of very very hot water. That allowed him to shave it. He took off all the bristles and then he went through the process of taking out the inside and all the rest of it.

The Tripe Shop

There was a tripe shop in the village as well. I can’t remember if that belonged to Milner Eastwood as well or whether it was a different man but he boiled his tripe in a little place, I would say in our back yard . It was a good 50 or 60 yards away from our back door, but he would boil up the tripe and then he’d take it to his tripe shop to sell. I never had a great fondness for tripe but of course there was a lot of waste and that was put on a little midden and that attracted the mice, and often enough I would take a mouse trap across there, catch a mouse and feed it to our cat.

The Peg Factory

There was a little shuttle peg factory across there as well. That was a noisy business but the metal was hotted up just like in a blacksmith’s smithy, for shoeing the horses. I won’t try to describe that process but it was interesting to watch, and it was pretty noisy – bang bang bang all the time as the hammer came down to shape the metal to make the shuttle peg for the weaving, for the cotton industry.

Views of Littleborough c 1930

William Hiley Bathurst

This Blog is mainly concerned with people who bear the Hiley (or Highley) surname, or who are related to a Hiley (or Highley). But there have been several instances over the years where Hiley has been used as a forename. One of these was William Hiley Bathurst, 1796-1877, an Anglican clergyman and writer of hymns.

William Hiley Bathurst

There were some notable people amongst William's ancestry. He was the son of Charles Bathurst and Charlotte Addington and the grandson of Anthony Addington, a Royal Physician, and Mary Hiley - from where his second forename came. Charlotte's brother Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, was the U.K. Prime Minister from 1801 to 1804. Mary Hiley was the great great granddaughter of William Hiley, Rector of Poole at the start of the 1600s, and Eleanor Haviland, a member of a prominent family with a history going back to Norman times.

Type 'Prime Minister' in the 'Search This Blog' box to learn more about Anthony, Mary and Henry.

Type 'Rector of Poole' in the 'Search This Blog' box to learn more about William and Eleanor.

William was born near Bristol and educated at Winchester and Oxford. He was ordained a priest in 1820 and served as rector of Barwick-in-Elmet in Yorkshire until 1852, leaving the ministry due to being unable to re­con­cile his doc­trin­al views with the Book of Com­mon Prayer. For some time he was M.P. for Bristol. He retired into private life occupying himself with literary pursuits, firstly in Derbyshire and later in Lydney in Gloucestershire.

He wrote a number of works and volumes of poems, and was one of the early Church of England hymn writers and compilers, producing many hymns and versions of psalms.

One of W H Bathurst's most popular hymns

W H Bathurst Christmas Card

The Life of Henry Hiley Part 9 - life in Littleborough (Market Day, Easter, Bonfire time)

Henry continues his memories of life in Littleborough as a young boy - this time, events at different times of the year.

Market Day

We used to like Market Day. All the children liked the Market Day. When I go back to Littleborough now it’s such a tiny spot. I can’t imagine that there were so many stalls there. Every Friday evening I remember Charlie Bottle. He was the man who brought in the naphthalene flares, one for each market stall, to light the place up so that people could see what they were going to buy. There were grocery stalls, sweet stalls, patent medicines, all sorts.

I remember one of the patent medicine stalls where the man said that he had a specific that would cure anything in the world, any ailment except for cancer, consumption and sugar diabetes. He made no claim to be able to cure those three ailments. Another remedy he had for anybody with bronchitis. There was plenty of bronchitis in Lancashire, in Littleborough in those days, people with bad chests and bad coughs, and his remedy for that was for to go out into the field, locate and scoop up a convenient cowpat, bring it back, slap it on the child’s chest, and he claimed that that would cure bronchitis. I don’t know of anybody who tried it.

Easter

Everything happened in its season. At Easter time we might expect little troops of players to come and act out the pace egg play on the street, of St George slaying the dragon. I remember Saladin always used to get knocked down and call for a doctor. ‘A doctor, a doctor, £10 for a doctor’ and the doctor would stride up with a top hat and tell us that he could cure anything. He said he could cure ‘the itch, the pitch, the palsy and the gout. If you’ve got 19 devils in your skull, I’ll drive 20 of them out.’

In the pace egg play I don’t think it was Saladin because before the fight there strode into the arena – ‘Here come I the Turkish knight. Come from the Turkish lands to fight’. And then there was a set-to with Saint George. The Turkish knight of course was defeated, and then he had to call for the doctor. 

Bonfire time

Before bonfire time, we might ourselves go around the streets singing, just like carol singers go now, collecting money for a good cause but in our case it was ourselves. We would collect money in order to buy fireworks. The ones that the boys liked were little demons. They cost a ha’penny apiece and went off with a big bang. There was a thunderflash as well. That was a ha’penny firework. That made a big bang. We liked less noisy fireworks. Snowfire was a particular favourite. That made a splendid white light – beautiful. Chrysanthemum fountains, they were a bit more sparkly. The pinwheels were alright as long as you could get them to go round. The jumping jacks – they were favourites. We had sparklers as well – they were alright. We never went in for sky rockets. I don’t know why.