Neither Edwin Smith nor his parents or siblings have been identified yet in the 1841 or the 1851 Census Returns, and nor have any church or other records helped identify the family before this point. What we know is that the record of Edwin Smith’s first marriage to Alice Wood in 1852 states that his father was also called Edwin and that the 1861 Census Return (after the death of Alice when he was already a Widower) shows that Edwin (named Edward on the Return) was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire in or around 1818. Details of any further close family await discovery and we do not know the identity of his mother. The Marriage certificate (and confirmed later in March 1861) further shows that Edwin was a stone-mason when he married a widow Alice Wood (nee Birchall) a washerwoman from Monks Coppenhall, (now Crewe) in Cheshire with two children from her previous marriage.
Alice Birchall meanwhile had been born in 1811 into a long-standing Cheshire farming family but was now on hard times and we have DNA links back to the Birchalls of Cheshire. Alice had been born in Willaston just outside of Nantwich in Cheshire, the fourth of eight daughters and a further four sons born to Charles Birchall (born in Willaston in 1784 but from a long line of Birchalls who had been farmers for generations across the Cheshire Plain between Nantwich, Northwich and Chester). Her mother was Sarah Massey from another farming family but from further away. Sarah was born in 1793 in Stanton upon Hine Heath, 23 miles south, but just north of Shrewsbury, although their wedding took place in Much Wenlock, another 20 miles further on and south of Shrewsbury on the road to Bridgnorth, all a good distance from Nantwich.
The Birchall name is widespread across Cheshire, although there is a concentration also across the Mersey into Lancashire where there are far more Birchalls than anywhere else in Britain. It is often suggested that the “origin” of a surname lies in the area where there are most bearers of that name but this is not always true and can just reflect a particularly successful child-rearing family that can just as quickly die out where daughters predominate or death takes its toll. Various Heraldry web-sites link the Birchalls to two towns in Derbyshire called Birch Hill, and another links the name to an ancient family seat in Kent well before the Norman Conquest. Wikipedia suggests that the name Birchall originates from the settlement of Birtle (Birch Hill) between Rochdale and Bury, yet Birchall Brook and Birchall Moss in Cheshire will have been named after elements of the folk bearing the Birchall name. In the wider world it is generally economics and employment, health, plague and famine, wars and religion that are all factors which determine whether a family moves or stays. And where does “origin” start? Surnames were originally introduced into England by the Normans in 1066, after which, as the population increased and taxation and ownership made identification important the practice began to spread. Initially, surnames could be fluid and change from generation to generation, even where a person just changed his job. But by 1400 surnames in England had mostly settled down and largely become hereditary – and there were many Birchalls. On the Cheshire Plain the 1723 Oaths of Allegiance to the Protestant Succession show Birchalls in Newhall, Over, Whitley, Halton, Lymm, Audlem, Appleton, High Legh, Tattenhall, Hatton, Barthomley and elsewhere.
For the moment at least the furthest back in time we can trace our Birchall family is to Samuel (1743-1831), probably the Samuel baptised in Wybunbury near Nantwich and who married Mary Perrin in the church there. It may well be possible to take this line further back, as the baptismal record in Wybunbury for a Samuel shows his father to have been Robert Birchall and certainly a Robert Birchall baptised six children – including a Samuel – in Wybunbury between 1735 and 1747, all nicely spaced by 2 years. It is possible therefore that they were all the same family. But there are two Robert Birchalls recorded as being married in Wybunbury in 1735, one to Mary Wormhall and one to Jane Higginson. Additionally, further back, there were two Robert Birchalls baptised in Wybunbury in 1709, one as a son to William Birchall and another to Francis Birchall. There is no mention in the church records of the names of the wives or mothers in either of these baptisms. And there was a Robert Birchall in Audlem, and another in Tattenhall (both of whom left wills neither of which mention sons called Samuel). And Robert is not a name in common usage in the known descendants of Samuel (1743) thereafter. Nor is Francis. In all there were several families of Birchalls in and around Wistaston and Willaston in the early 1700s and telling between them is hard.
But Samuel (1743) we are happy with as we have a number of distant cousins providing DNA evidence up to this point.
When Samuel (1743) married 23 year-old Mary Perrin in 1778 he was 35 years old and was described as a “Yeoman of Wybunbury”. Mary came from a successful farming family in Willaston and perhaps their combined families, contacts and experience enabled the couple to take over the lease of Brassey Hall Farm in Colley’s Lane, probably from the Hassall family and probably on a “Three Life Copyhold Tenancy” under which the leaseholder can name the next tenant, and who, when his turn comes, can do the same although at the third change the Landlord is entitled to cease the tenancy and appoint a new leaseholder. Mary died in 1812 and is buried in a family grave at Wistaston. Samuel married again in December that year to Jane Holding and they had 20 years together. At Samuel’s death aged 88 in May 1831, and after leaving Jane her choice of furniture and possessions and making sure that she was financially sound, his Will describes a large and successful farm containing “all my stock of cattle, corn, hay, straw, fodder” and “implements in husbandry, dairy, brewing vessels”. Samuel had farmed that land for over 50 years and was buried in the family plot alongside Mary.
Samuel’s Will, as was customary, by-passed three elder daughters who were all now in their 50s and who had anyway been married into other farming families for 30 years. Instead he left Brassey Hall Farm to his eldest son Charles (1784-1839) who moved back with his family of 11 children from Whitegate, near Winsford, to take charge (see later). Samuel’s younger son George (1789-1831) had married Mary Austin in 1815, a daughter of a Baddiley farming family and now managed the land at the Crab Mill in Baddiley. George however died aged 42, only six months after his father and was buried in the family grave back at Wistaston while his wife and family lived on in Baddiley. Charles died 8 years later in 1839 aged 55, followed by Samuel’s widow Jane who died in 1844. Both are also buried in the family grave.
At Crab Mill Farm George was followed by his son Samuel (1817-92) who married Mary Ravenscroft (from a Tarporley farming family). Other descendants of George and Mary went on to run farms not only at Baddiley but also across the local area at Church Minshull, Wrenbury, Shutt Lane, Cholmondeston, Wettenhall, Hatherton and Blakenhall.
Of the daughters of Mary and Samuel (1743), Hannah married Joseph Wood and lived at Over raising a family of 9 children. Alice married Ralph Pennel, the Churchwarden at Wistaston (and at least one of their sons became a substantial farmer at Newhall). Mary we think married John Williams, while Elizabeth/Betty married Joseph Moss in 1792, an Excise man from Lytham. The role of Excise Man was not popular back then either. Salt Tax was levied and William Pitt the Prime Minister had introduced Income Tax in 1799 to pay for the King’s French Wars, although his Backbenchers forced him to withdraw it. It was however re-introduced in the peacetime of 1842 by Robert Peel and has been with us ever since. Elizabeth received a special gift of £150 in her father’s will.
Charles (1784) married Sarah Massey – a Shropshire farmer’s daughter – in 1805 when he was only 21. Sarah is record as baptised in Stanton-upon-Hine-Heath north of Shrewsbury, although the wedding is registered somewhat further south at Much Wenlock. They had 11 children in the next 23 years of which only one – Hannah – is known to have died in infancy (1817) and there is no trace of two others – Sarah or Jane. The places of baptism of these children suggest an initial move away from Nantwich to Over or Whitegate near Winsford. The first daughter Mary Ann was baptised in 1806 from the family home at Willaston (this is often the case for a first born) but all the remaining 10 – Sarah, Susannah, Alice, Jane, Martha (who died), Samuel, Martha, Esther, Charles and finally Edward in 1828 were baptised in the Over/Whitegate/Winsford area near to where Charles’ sister Hannah and William Wood lived. Their life and exact location there is not recorded but when his father’s Will left Brassey Hall Farm in his care, Charles now aged 47 moved his family back to Colley’s Lane.
By this time their daughter Mary Ann had already married William Astbury in 1825 in Whitegate (a Potter – the family moved to the pottery industry in Burslem) but the impending move back to Nantwich seems to have brought on some decision-making amongst Charles’ other teenage daughters as back in Whitegate in December 1830 Alice (aged 19) married William Wood, possibly a cousin related her Aunt Hannah’s family, and in January 1832 Susannah (aged 21) married William’s brother Samuel Astbury and took over a 79 acre farm at Salterswall near Over. Both weddings were by licence so with the permission of their parents. In 1841 Hannah married Samuel Trickett – again by Licence and ran a 79 acre farm at nearby Rope. The marriages of both Suzannah and Hannah were initially sworn under the Holy Evangelists.
Of these daughters it was the marriage of Alice (1811) that was the least well starred. Alice had two children with William Wood before he died probably in 1850. A year later Alice shows in the March 1851 Census living in Monks Coppenhall, Crewe as a Widow, a Charwoman with her two daughters Jane (1847) and Sarah (1850) but within 3 months she married Edwin Smith, a Stone Mason, 7 years her junior from in Dewsbury, Yorkshire where he was born around 1818. In May the following year they had a son Edwin. It appears that Alice then died in 1854, the timing being right for it to have been because of complications of further childbirth although it could just as easily have been from one of the cholera or TB epidemics that periodically swept across the area.
By the time of the 1861 census Edwin (1818) and his son Edwin (1852) had moved to Birmingham on the Chester Road as lodgers in Boldmere, somewhere just off the top of Court Lane in Erdington. There is no sign of his daughters from his previous marriage who would have been aged 14 and 11 and, if they still lived, were probably in service back in Crewe. In 1866 Edwin (1818) remarried to a widow Catherine Pyatt (nee Hodgson) who previously had conceived 5 children of her own. By 1871 they lived on Falkland St in Wolverhampton with Edwin (1852) now also a stonemason, along with the youngest 2 children from Caroline’s first marriage and newly born Thomas (1868).
The younger Edwin (1852) married Mary Ann Anslow in Walsall in 1875, the daughter of a Walsall Miner. Between them they had 7 children of which three died early. In 1894 tragedy struck when firstly Edwin died in January by falling from a scaffold in Shrewsbury, and secondly ( I have yet to see documentary evidence) in the same year his wife Mary Ann and their 7th Child May also died leaving 4 orphaned children under the age of 16. The eldest, Alice Maud Smith aged 18, was old enough to be put into Service as a maid at a local farm, Flora/Florrie then aged 19 married a coal miner, James Jones in Pelsall in 1898 (witnessed by Alice), John Burchall Smith age 22 married Mary Holmes in Wolverhampton in 1903 and Andrew age 26 married Sarah Hadley in Wolverhampton in 1910.
Alice – perhaps named after her Birchall Grandmother who had been born on a farm in Cheshire 65 years earlier – was put into service with the Wells family at the nearby 160 acre Kings Vale Farm at Kingstanding. It seems she felt at home because in 1904 aged 28 she married Oliver Wells, 5 years her junior, one of the sons of the Farmer Robert Wells at Kings Vale farm and whose family and other relatives also owned and ran so many of the other farms in the area. With Oliver she had two sons, William in 1905 and Harold in 1906. Oliver and Alice eventually inherited the farm at the end of WW1 when Oliver’s parents died, and although the farm was compulsorily purchased by Birmingham City Council in 1928 building works did not immediately start so they continued to live there and to farm the land. Today the farm (as do many other old farms in the area) lies beneath the new Kingstanding Housing Estate, where many of the roads still bear their historic names.
Alice Wells (nee Smith) died on Kings Vale Farm in 1936. Oliver married again in 1939 and died in Essex in 1951.
But Came They All to Birmingham 