In December 1753, Mary Johnson was baptised to Richard Johnson and Anne (probably nee Millward) in Dawley, Shropshire. No other children are yet identified to this marriage. Richard and Anne were also both likely from local families and had married in April 1749 in Stirchley, Anne’s home parish next door to Dawley.
Dawley is one of the older settlements in Shropshire, mentioned in the Domesday Book as split between Dawley Magna (Great Dawley) and Dawley Parva (Little Dawley). There was a castle there, but it was demolished in 1648 and today no-one quite knows where it was. Dawley is three miles north of Ironbridge with Madeley, Woodside and Coalbrookdale sitting in between, and is four miles east of the Wrekin which rises majestically to over 1300ft on the Shropshire plain.
Nearby Ironbridge sits on the River Severn at the heart of the Ironbridge Gorge and the Coalbrookdale Coalfield where Abraham Darby III first perfected the technique of smelting iron with coke instead of coal and then in 1779 commissioned the building of the first cast-iron bridge in the world that still exists today as a symbol of the dawning of the industrial revolution.
For over three centuries Dawley was a mining town. In 1821 production was stopped when the miners downed tools to protest against their wages being lowered. A large body of strikers marched to ironworks at Madeley and Dawley, blowing out the furnaces, damaging machinery and inciting non-striking workers to join in. The following day 3-400 people moved on to ironworks at Lightmoor, Dawley and Horsehay. By the time they reached Old Park some 3000 striking workers with their women and children were confronted by the South Shropshire Yeomanry who opened fire on the protesters. Many were injured, two protesters were killed and one was later hanged. The six days of protests became known as the Cinderloo Uprising.
This mining for coal and ironstone, and open holes for clay extraction for industrial pipes, brickyards and pottery left the area covered by landmarks of mounds and pits which continued to exist for many years. They only disappeared when large scale levelling was undertaken in preparation for the development of a new town originally in 1963 proposed to be Dawley Newtown. However in 1968 it was instead decided to name the town Telford after the engineer Thomas Telford.
Mary Johnson was about twenty years old when in April 1774 she married Gabriel Garbett, a Collier probably also from Dawley parents Thomas Garbett and Martha (nee Broffan). Mary died aged around 45 soon after the birth of her 10th child Amelia in 1798 while her father Gabriel survived life down the pits for another 15 years. We have DNA connections back to their 4th child Mary Garbett, born in Dawley in 1787. It seems that while the majority of their siblings stayed in Dawley, soon after the death of their mother Mary Garbett and her younger brother William moved 20 miles away to perhaps seek work in the newly developing Black Country. In 1813 William married Hannah Fiddler in Kingswinford but previously in 1809 in Wolverhampton Mary married William Lloyd born in nearby Willenhall. Prior to settling in Willenhall by 1770, the Lloyds appear to have been originally a Tettenhall family, then a small hamlet in the countryside two miles to the Northwest of Wolverhampton in Staffordshire. Even by 1800 Tettenhall was still very rural. It gathered around Lower Green, below the Church of St Michael and comprised of 30-40 mostly tenanted farms supplying the needs of the industrialising Black Country. The main landowners were the Wrottesleys with Sir John being the MP for Staffordshire and a reformist Whig. Later his son became a scientific advisor to Government, was a leading Astronomer and became President of The Royal Society. Other gentry were around. The Wightwicks had moved to Dunstall Hall, the Pearsons lived at what is now Tettenhall Towers, the Fryers were at Wergs Hall and the Fowlers at Pendeford Hall. Meanwhile the ordinary residents worked in the field or walked to Wolverhampton for work, attended church, and watched cock fights and bear baiting. In the early 1770s less than a mile away James Brindley had built the first narrow canal lock in the Country at nearby Compton as he worked on joining the centre of Birmingham to Stourport and the River Severn via the Stafford and Worcester Canal. Eventually this also reached Great Haywood and the River Trent, while the Shropshire Union Canal provided links to Liverpool and Manchester, providing providing a means of transport to worldwide outlets for the new Black Country industries of forges, mills, pits and collieries and for Birmingham, the City of 1000 trades.
William Lloyd’s father Samuel Lloyd had been the firstborn of seven children to his grandparents Samuel Lloyd and Mary (nee Birch) in 1743 probably in Tettenhall. In the records of this village there are dates and locations contained in Church and other records which provide a potential link backwards from here for a further 5 generations in Tettenhall back as far as Thomas Lloyd and Isabel who were born there around 1600. William’s parents, Samuel and Phoebe (nee Hardwick) married in Wolverhampton St Peter in 1765 and there is a Land Tax record suggesting that in 1791 Samuel was a tenant of a Joseph Hardwick in Willenhall (3 miles to the East of Wolverhampton) in 1791. It is likely the family began as farmers or farm labourers, at least initially as the growing industrial revolution took hold and started to offer other employment and there is a 1782 directory listing a Samuel Lloyd as a Knob and Lock-Maker in Willenhall. We have identified ten children to the marriage. Our direct line arises through Samuel and Phoebe’s sixth son William Lloyd born in Tettenhall in 1778, and we have a DNA link through his brother, their eldest son James. Samuel Lloyd died probably in Tettenhall in 1807, and it is possible that Phoebe (nee Hardwick) outlived him by 20 years also dying in Wolverhampton in 1827 aged about 80.
So when Mary Garbett married William Lloyd in Wolverhampton in 1809 she was 22 and he 31. He was likely a coal miner and a number of their children followed this line of work. Over the next 21 years William and Mary had 7 daughters and finally a son James Lloyd who became a Coal Miner living in Bilston and with whom we also have a DNA link. A number of the other daughters died young, and husband William died in 1835 aged 57. Mary married a labourer Titus Fullwood in Sedgley in 1840 and a year later was living with him with her three youngest children in Wolverhampton Street, probably in Bilston. Ten years later she lived without him in, still in Wolverhampton Street (nee Garbett) where she ran a greengrocer’s shop with son James, aged 21 and with four other coal-miner lodgers. Mary Lloyd (nee Garbett died in Bilston in 1865. Our direct line is through their seventh daughter Frances (Fanny) born in Bilston in 1826, who married Charles Colley 20 years later in 1846 in Sedgley. Charles Colley was a Stone Miner born in Bilston whose father had moved down to the area from Loppington, north of Shrewsbury, some 20 years previously, and it was Charles’ mother who was nee Cadman and who came from Oakengates, also part of what is now Telford. It is possible therefore that there was some connection between the Cadman and Garbett families stemming from their connections to the Telford area some years before.
At 1841 and presumably at marriage, Fanny was a Japanner’s apprentice living on Wolverhampton Street in Bilston. By 1841 she lived two doors down from her mother’s greengrocer’s shop in Wolverhampton Street with her eldest son William and two lodgers, one a coal miner and one a stone miner, both from Wem near Loppington in Shropshire. By 1861 they were in Stafford Street, Willenhall with seven of their eventual nine children and by 1871 they were on Market Street back in Bilston where William was now also a Stone Miner, Enoch and Charles were Engine Fitters and James aged 15 was a Colliery Clerk. Ten years further on in 1881 they were in Oxford Street in Bilston where James was now a Corn Dealer and John had started his career as a Pattern-Maker probably already with Tangye’s.
Frances Colley (nee Lloyd) died there in 1896, her husband Charles died 7 years later in 1905.
But Came They All to Birmingham 