Halfway between Wolverhampton and Stafford in south Staffordshire but only three miles from the Shropshire border lies Brewood, an ancient market town in a rural backwater near to the River Penk which drains the area eventually into the River Trent and from there to the Humber estuary. Watling Street – today the A5 – crosses just to the north. Local watermills on the River Penk were profitable but the coming of the industrial revolution largely passed Brewood by as it moved from wood power to coal. The weekly market ceased and the Market Cross fell down by 1810. Local iron-working disappeared altogether. The early 1800s found the village lying on the Shropshire Union Canal and three miles from Four Ashes on the Staffs and Worcester Canal as each waterway journeyed southwards to meet at Autherley Junction outside Wolverhampton. In 1841 a new canal junction at Calf Heath took the Hatherton Canal across to the Coal mines at Great Wyrley and by 1863 from there into the system that became the Birmingham Canal Navigations. But railway development only grazed Brewood calling instead at Four Ashes and the main Stafford Turnpike road went through Coven.
In the 1851 census, Sarah Gaunt aged 70 states she was born in Calf Heath in Staffordshire but it was in nearby Colwich, ten miles northeast next to Rugeley where she married William Roberts in St Michael and All Angels Church in 1788. Her husband William’s baptism had been in Brewood in 1767, born to William Roberts and Elizabeth (nee Hall) who had married there in 1763. Their marriage and the baptisms of many of their children, although recorded at Brewood suggests he too was from somewhere in the parish and it is a reasonable guess that his family were based around Calf Heath. William and Sarah had at least nine children but it was daughters Mary (born 1795) and Elizabeth (born 1797) who appeared to maintain contact. Mary married an Irishman William Cook and went to live in Walsall where William was a Victualler. They may have not had any children of their own but in the 1841 Census they seem to have two of Elizabeth’s living with them and in 1851 one was still there as was their mother Sarah who was by now a widow. Sarah Roberts (nee Gaunt) died in 1855.
Elizabeth meanwhile, in West Bromwich in 1825, married Charles Perry, an Inge-Filer who worked all day in a forge.
Almost everyone in Birmingham with Perry ancestry would like to find their link to William Perry, The Tipton Slasher, born in 1819 in Tipton who was a bare-knuckle boxer, a heavyweight prize-fighter who claimed the Championship of England twice in the 1850s. Albeit they were in the right area, to date we have not found such a link. Our Perry family were tough men, as they were Iron Founders and Inge-Filers working long hours in local factories and hot and dangerous furnaces when we find them in the 1841 and 1851 censuses. They lived in the back-to-backs around St Paul’s in Hockley just to the North of the centre of Birmingham. We have DNA links through from our direct line to Charles Perry born around 1800 and through Joseph Perry born in 1816 who in 1841 lived near to each other in St Paul’s, one in Charlotte Street and one in Northwood Street. For this reason, and the additional information following, I suspect that these two are probably brothers.
My problem comes in that there is no birth record yet arisen for Charles, plus he appears to have been born 7 years before the marriage of his father Charles to Ann Richdale (both Charles and Ann would have been 30 years old) in Aston Juxta (St Peter and St Paul) in April 1807. Charles and Ann are almost certainly the parents of Joseph. However there is locational support for them being brothers in that there is a Charles Perry (1) born around 1770 in Bilston, Staffordshire who shows in the 1841 Census with his wife Ann, and they are living next door to the above Joseph in Northwood Street in Hockley, both only just around the corner from Charles (2) in Charlotte Street. In addition, in 1844 Charles Perry (2) had his son Charles (3) baptised in St Martin’s Birmingham on the same day as Joseph Perry baptised his daughter Mary although sadly both Charles Perrys (2 and 3) died at the end of that year, as did George’s daughter Mary. In the 1851 Census Charles (1) appears again, now in Handley Street where he is now a Widower where he appears to have an unmarried daughter Hannah living with him, potentially with two grand-daughters Mary Ann and Clara. In 1851 there is also an Ann Perry aged 34 but I have yet to find a birth record for any of these children.
Charles Perry (2) born in 1800 married Elizabeth Roberts from Calf Heath in West Bromwich in December 1825 and had 5 children although the youngest two, both boys, may have died early. Of the other daughters of Charles Perry and Elizabeth, Jane married William Reeves, a Carpenter and continued living in Charlotte Street in Hockley, while Harriett married James Devereux, a Gun Smith and lived around the corner on Newhall Hill.
But their first-born, Sarah-Ann Perry (b.1829) became a Japanner, an occupation involving the application of a hard black lacquer onto household items made of wood, leather or tin. Unmarried at the time Sarah-Ann had a daughter Emily in February 1851 and it was almost two years later when she married David West, a Turner, at All Saints Church in Hockley. David West had recently moved up to Birmingham from Kiddington between Oxford and Banbury in Oxfordshire after the death of both of his parents, where he was to join his brother George in the Brass trade. It is not known who Emily’s father was, but the timing makes it unlikely to have been David. Whatever is the case, upon marriage David took on Emily as his own, and from 1861 she shows in the Census returns with the West surname. When she was 26 Emily married a Jeweller, William Mintridge in 1877. David and Sarah proceeded to have 8 more children over the next 20 years. Of the three daughters, Elizabeth married Edward Crump, a Toolmaker from nearby Summer Lane, Jane married Henry Humphries, a carpenter from Springfield Street, and Sarah married Fred Dent, a Gun-Stocker from Nechells. For the sons, apart from the final twins – Fred who died aged 12 and George, who joined The Durham Light Infantry and whose career I have not yet found, the others went into the Brass Trade. Joseph, William and Harry all became Strip Casters presumably working for Henry Wiggin but it was William who seemed to develop firstly into German Silver (with a higher nickel content) and then to be in a position to set up his own business as he approached the turn of the Century.
Sarah-Ann West (nee Perry) will have seen the start of this new venture and was probably living with her son Harry and daughter Sarah in Ingleby Street when she died in 1904, having outlived her husband David West by 12 years.
But Came They All to Birmingham 