(DWG) Most of the images below were provided to me after Robin Press published his book by a descendant from the only surviving 2nd set of twins Lily Marr (b.1880) who married Joseph Sanderson Waide in 1912. In an attempt to be consistent with the Marr section I have left the Marr text below as written by Robin Press. Many of the images below confirm that there was much connection between Joseph (Jo Marr -Ponterfact) and some of Harry Marr’s second family.
(click on images)
David Marr, in 1988, clearing a desk which had belonged to his grandfather Joe (above tree) and to his gt.grandfather Thomas Norrison Marr, (above tree) found a notebook in which Thomas Norrison recorded details when taking over a farm (identified for me by Aaron Wilkinson as Grange Farm) at Wrangbrook, some 5 miles south of Pontefract. Dated 4th March 1850 it says that the incoming tenant is to pay £527-6-2, the outgoing tenant being Thomas Hickson. There are details about various field cultivations which I do not understand, and an apparent additional payment of £321. The notes imply that the farm was of 364 acres, but the census in April 1851 says that TNM, then aged 40, farmed 324 acres, employing 11 labourers. Abigail, was 39, with 3 children, Sarah (Sallie) age 4, Thomas Norrison (Tom) age 3 and Esther 2. There were 6 labourers living in, 2 of whom had been born at Kingthorpe, so they had moved with the family. In the household were also an errand boy age 12, 2 female general servants and a nurse.
The notes mentioned above also record the payment of £157-12-3 for fertilizers in 1850 at Wrangbrook. They were bones (£69-3-3, carriage £2-6-0), rape dust (£12-12-0 carriage £1-8-0), guano, 7 tons (£49-14-0, carriage £4-4-0), dove manure £6, ashes and shoddy £4-15-0 and labour £2-10-0. This was before the availability of manufactured or artificial manures and guano from Peru was a fairly recent introduction.
2 more children were born at Wrangbrook: My grandfather Henry, always called Harry, on 27th June 1851, and Joseph (Jo) on 28th October 1854. No doubt these 2 helped on the farm, with Thomas Norrison 11, until he married Mary Shillito (born at Woolley) on 10th November 1869, and moved to his own North Elmsall Lodge Farm. (DWG All 3 on tree above).
We have a mahogany chest, whose drawers have the Leeds Mercury pasted as linings. One drawer has ‘News from the Crimea, by electric telegraph’, on the 6th October 1855, and another, a report of troops disembarking in England on return from the War, on 5th July 1856. I suppose that this piece of furniture was in the Wrangbrook house and descended to my mother on her parents` retreat from Barton. We also have a set of 6 dining chairs which I bought from Muriel`s Estate, believing that they went with a carver in which my grandfather always sat. When asked by Muriel what I would like her to leave me in her Will I made a bid for that carver as a memento of him, and because its elegant shape pleased me, and it`s very comfortable. This was in fact left to me, but only on condition that when I die it shall be returned to Alan Marr`s son Philip. I believe that Duncan had this carver`s fellow, which he referred to as `the Wrangbrook chair`, so I guess that there was a set of 2 carvers and 12 dining chairs split between the 2 brothers when TNM retired to Scarborough.
David Marr says that his brother Michael has a silver tankard, won for shire horses by Thomas Norrison at Pontefract show. In letters from New Zealand, sent by the Taylors (who had worked at Wrangbrook), in 1909, to Jo Marr, there are several references to the trade in ‘entires’, so it is probable that TNM and Jo bred stallions.
I imagine that TNM senior took the lease of North Elmsall Lodge Farm, which had been in the hands of William Liversidge (sometime spelt Liversedge) who farmed 220 acres in 1851, for Tom when he married Mary Shillito (at Woolley). In the 1871 Elmsall census Tom and his family are at Lodge Farm, with Rose age 4 months who had been born there. Also in the house were a 19 year old domestic servant and 4 farm servants.
Sallie (Marr), (tree above) had married Mary Shillito`s brother, Joseph (born at Pollington), in 1868 or 69. By the 1871 census they had a son of 2 years, Frederick Michael (who did not survive into my mother`s memory). There was also Martha Elizabeth age 10 months. In their household were a farm pupil, Bevis P Coulson, a cousin age 16 (born at Drax which is now an enormous power station), 2 domestic servants, 3 farm servants, a groom of 16 and another servant boy of 13.The Shillito family continues later.
Benjamin Shillito, father of Joseph and Mary, was a farmer at Woolley. Sometime between the 1861 and 1871 census Joseph Shillito had taken over a farm from the Browns at Wrangbrook. I think this was Manor Farm. (In 1851 Brown had been farming 398 acres with 10 labourers). Olive Thomas says that the name Shillito is derived from the River Schelde, and that the family (who were probably weavers) migrated from that region at the time of religious oppression of Protestants by the Spanish, the Inquistion, in the Netherlands, in Queen Elizabeth 1st’s time.
In the 1871 census neither Harry Marr nor his sister Esther (Ettie) is at Grange Farm. Harry could have been a farm pupil elsewhere as was the normal practice. Thomas Norrison and Abigail had 7 farmhands and 2 domestic servants.
In 1875 Thomas Norrison senior took the tenancy of another farm at Wrangbrook, and we have the actual agreement which was preserved amongst my grandfather`s papers. I am confident it was taken for Harry on the occasion of his marriage to Elizabeth (Lily) Sanderson Waide (see tree above) in that year. I have not in fact been able to find a record of the marriage,(DWG – Mar quarter 1877) but the first children (twins Jo and Tom) were born in 1877, (DWG – December quarter 1877) so the year, and the agreement, and the apparent acquisition of a farm for Tom (TNM`s first son) all suggest the truth of this assumption. The trauma of the birth of Harry and Lily`s 2nd twins (Lily and Gertie) in 1880 was the cause of her death a few days afterwards.
This new farm consisted of 220 acres. The previous tenant was John Liversidge, and the landowner Sir Charles Strickland: £3,600 was paid for the ‘whole of tenants rights, corn and clover in stacks, with wheat to sow, mangols, turnips, seeds, tares (= sainfoin), manures spread and unspread, all live and dead stock, and fixtures of every description with furniture agreed to’. The agreement says ‘the above named farm’ but unfortunately it is not named, however, Aaron Wilkinson, local historian of South Kirkby has identified it as Brookside, which lies cheek by jowl with Grange. Dr A Harris of Hull University comments that the price paid for the tenants rights must have been at the peak of such valuations. Thereafter they plunged into the ‘great depression’, caused by the gathering flood of imported food, aggravated by disastrous weather in the latter years of this decade. In 1879 there was no harvest because of calamitous weather.
Now I go back to Thomas Norrison senior`s brothers and sisters but I have removed from here the section on Henry of Willerby Wold, because this section became unmanageable.
(DWG -TNM’s sisters) Esther Lee died on 14th September 1874; Martha Mary was a servant in the household of Thomas Sample at Bishop Burton in the census of 1841, and she died on 2nd March 1859. Anne Jane (Janey) born 18th December 1824 who looked after her parents until they died in 1865, remained a spinster, living at Clifton Villa, Wellington Road, Bridlington, with a companion until 1899 or 1900. Philip Marr had let me see his tree which dates her death as 1901, which could still fit the legal adjudication on the allocation of Henry`s Trust for her after her death of which more later. At one time TNM had a mortgage of £200 for her on a house at Skipsea, so presumably she spent some time there too.
Finally in that generation was Richard,(DWG – brothers John died in 1843 aged 27 and Charles in 1839 aged 22)for whom Thomas Norrison, perhaps acting as agent for his father, had acquired Farmanby Farm of 270 acres at Thornton-le-Dale in 1845/6. In 1851 as a bachelor he had a housekeeper and a maid with 4 living in labourers. On his 32nd birthday, 5th February 1852 Richard married Anne Hetty Browne, (the rector`s daughter?). His wife was granddaughter of Col. Thomas Browne who claimed compensation from George III for the loss of his estates in Carolina, and of monies expended in raising and supporting troops against the ‘rebellion’. To evade creditors he had to escape from England to St. Vincent, where he was able to live on a son`s estate, another son, Hetty`s father, was a clerk in Holy Orders, rural dean of the West Indies. The family laid claim to the viscountcy of Montague, with what success I do not know.
Their children, all born at Thornton-le-Dale, were Richard Alexander 30th October 1853, George baptised 16th August 1856, and Anne baptised 8th January 1864. In the 1871 census the family was listed under Eastside Maltongate, and included daughter Ann(sic), but no boys, who might have been away at school or farm pupils or articled. Lucy Scott age 20 from Cottingham was governess. The farm consisted of 350 acres.
I think that Richard and his family probably left Thornton-le-Dale in 1871 perhaps moving to another farm. On 23rd July 1873 he was living at Thorpe Bassett, near Malton, for that was the address to which he was sent a list of deeds and other securities held for the Trustees of the first Henry Marr, (DWG – i.e. his father) by a firm of solicitors. He died on 6th April 1876 and is buried in Ellerburn Churchyard. A Trust set up in that year revealed he had a 2/64th share in Ganos a screw brig steam vessel built in 1864 in Hull. His share was valued at £1,147. (She was lost in a collision on passage from Matanzas to Boston in 1881. She might have been carrying sugar which would be in keeping with his wife`s family`s interests). A letter to R A Marr of Osborn House, Albany St, Hull, with a squiggle as a date, from a Pickering solicitor, advising him about valuing his share of farm stock which was to be taken ‘by your brother as part of his legacy’. That suggests that George may have been a farmer, but Derek doubts the truth of this idea. Richard Alexander was founder of Marr and Loveridge, corn merchants, of 32 High St., Hull. He lived and died (3rd June 1916) at Thornton, Eldon Grove, Beverley Rd, Hull.
Later I shall give some details about Richard`s descendants but at the moment I want him out of his farm, because Tom (TNM jnr – above tree) is moving to Thornton-le-Dale. I cannot say if the transition from Elmsall was directly into Farmanby Farm, but I imagine it was, and that the move was before 1871. In Thornton, Tom`s family increased steadily. Birth dates are mostly deduced from the 1881 census, so are a bit suspect, but for my purpose they are adequate. After Rose in 1870 came another Thomas Norrison in November 1871 (to die 10th March 1872), then Arthur Norrison baptised 5th December 1872, Mary Lilian (Lily) in 1875, Edith Daisy in 1876, Herbert Coulson on 24th October 1877, Violet Ethel on 21st March 1879 and Olive, who died aged 1 month on 30th September 1880. This section was intended to go no further than 1880, but for convenience I will list 3 more children added after the 1881 census, May (1883), Elsie (1884) and Tom. I think the last, Tom, who died very young, may have been the ‘cause’ of his mother`s death 23rd April 1885, she having born at least 11 children in 15 years.
I have gone through all the detail before allowing the first Henry, and his wife Martha, to die, as they did in 1865, (she on the 31st March and he on the 20th October), in order to give meaning to the destination of his legacies. I do not know when he left Bishop Burton but his address at the time of his death was no. 1 Wellington Terrace, Beverley Rd., Sculcoates, Hull. We have a letter from Abigail to Janey written on 13th October (1865 guessed) saying how sorry she was that dear Norry (I don`t have the crust to call Thomas Norrison snr that for he sounds a tartar – both my grandmother and mother were frightened of him), had had to leave his father in such a precarious state, and her regret that she, Janey ‘would so soon have to lose her only prop’. She sent her sympathy to him in his suffering and much Christian advice.
The Will was proved most expeditiously on 1st December 1865 and under its provisions he left: to Thomas Norrison snr ‘my 2 closes of land, Skidby Ings and Skidby Carr 16 acres’, and a 3 acre Close known as Hull Bank field in Cottingham, plus £2,000: to Henry of Willoughby Wold £3,500: to Richard of Thornton £3,500: to Esther widow of William Lee £1,500: the residue to Anne Jane in trust. Janey lived so long that in 1901 a further legal decision was needed to sort out the inheritors.
After Thomas Norrison`s death the documents supporting his Will suggest that he might have built houses on the Closes left to him by his father, although the names Ings and Carr suggest rather boggy ground. The list of documents sent to Richard, above, indicates that Henry`s trustees for Janey held title deeds relating to a house in Beverley Rd., Sculcoates, Hull, which he purchased from Samuel Cunliffe Lister (perhaps the wool magnate), another property in the same road, 14 shares in the Hull Dock Co. and bonds worth £4,800 in that same company.
Between 1875 and 1878 there were 3 wet summers to be followed in 1879 by no real summer at all, with disastrous consequences for both hay and corn harvests. Coupled with falling prices for grain due to a rising tide of imports, farming prospects were grim.
