Letters of Mrs Lucy Browne of Gorleston: 1835 & 1836

Two letters in the collection that I describe in The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830) are filled with news from Gorleston in Suffolk.  

They were written from Gorleston on 8 May 1835 and 22 July 1836 by Mrs Lucy Browne to Mrs Elizabeth Williamson – she features in the blogpost about her uncle the Revd William Atkinson.

Mrs Lucy Browne is almost certainly the widow of William Atkinson's friend the Revd Thomas Browne, late rector of Gorleston.  Mrs Elizabeth Williamson is her friend and former neighbour, now living in Baxtergate in Whitby.

Mrs Browne's handwriting is not of the clearest, but I expect somebody who knows the area would recognise the names which my colleague has found illegible.  There are many names – her friends the Miss Brownes, Mrs Oliver, Mrs Sewell, Mr Worshop, Mr Salmon, to name a few – as Mrs Browne is anxious to keep her friend up-to-date with all the goings-on in Gorleston.  She includes such little snippets of news as:

My poor friend Mr Morrison's Death is much lamented, he was a kind friendly Man

Mrs Price is at present in the same Lodgings with Miss Tapp whose Mother is dead.  I hear the Match is quite off between Mrs P and Mr Wake. 

But I think the most tantalising bit of gossip must be about the Spalding-Astley marriage.  Mrs Browne herself was an Astley by birth, so she must have a very good source here:

You could not be more surprised than I was in the Marriage [of] Miss Astley.  Till after the sons Marriage then I thought it might take place, they have almost ever since been residing in a place that he purchased at Stockton about 17 miles from hence.  Mr Spalding is in bad health confined to a weakness [?] in his heart, and is attended by Mr Smith who recommends abstinence.  

She is never seen and I hear nothing more of her than if she was not residing in the Parish, she is certainly in a more respectable situation since her marriage, but I fear she will have reason to repent.  There is not any communication between her and her Brother, this affair has given him very much concern.  

Daniel Spalding and Mary Ann Elizabeth Astley had been married on 16 October 1834 at Gorleston.  Perhaps Mr Spalding tried abstinence – perhaps he didn't – but at any rate his health worsened and he died in June the following year at the age of 60.  In 1836, Lucy Browne wrote

the late Mr Spalding's House is still upon Sale – his Widow lives at present in part of a Farm House near [Haddiscoe?] but I hear she is going to leave shortly

Contact the North Yorkshire County Record Office at Northallerton, which holds the collection of letters, if you're interested!

Thomas Barlow Allinson writes a letter: 1836

Thomas Barlow Allinson's letter of 1836 was among the small collection mentioned in The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830). These letters survived apparently by chance, but very probably because of the intervention of Mr John Gaskin, MBE, of Whitby.  He was a solicitors' clerk for many years with Buchannans of Whitby and may have come across the letters in their offices and thought them worth preserving – possibly for their unusual postal markings, as he had a keen interest in philately.  The collection is now in the Northallerton Archives.

This is the story of one of those letters, as far as we can make it out.  I say "we" because I'm indebted to my collaborator for contacting me in the first place and for all the research she has done.  I hope this chance survival from 1836 might help the people who are trying to disentangle their Allinson forebears.  The Allinsons you will meet in this blogpost lived in Whitby and near Penrith, in the parish of Dacre in Cumberland.

I'm quoting below from a transcript and I have made some alterations for readability's sake.

It's a story which begins with Dickensian echoes and goes to darker places …

Billiter Square: O.S. 1840s-1860s.  National Library of Scotland

It's 4 April 1836.  The writer of the letter is a 24 year old solicitor's clerk called Thomas Barlow Allinson.  He's an unhappy and worried young man, marked by a series of disappointments and trapped in a job he doesn't like.  When he came to London from Staffordshire in 1830, he had thought that his uncle Josiah Allinson would help him to a clerkship in a trading or banking house.  Six years later, he's still with Messrs Druce in Billiter Square off Fenchurch Street in the City of London, in a job that was supposed to be temporary.  It's the Easter vacation for the law courts, and he's writing a personal letter from his employers' offices in the City.

Thomas is only a few months younger than Charles Dickens, who is now beginning his startling career as a writer – the first instalment of The Pickwick Papers appeared in print only weeks before Thomas started his letter.  But Thomas's story has echoes of Dickens' much later and darker novels and the dark and dirty London of Bleak House is the one that Thomas knew.

Thomas is writing to a relation he has never met, a Miss Nanny Ellerby Allinson of Whitby.  He is offering her information she wants and he has carried out a favour she has asked for – and between these two sections of his long letter, he has sandwiched a tactful and carefully-written account of the financial difficulties and disappointments beneath which he, his mother and his 7 siblings are labouring.  Miss Allinson is now under something of an obligation towards him, and she might be able to help them.

Jane Atkinson of Kirkleatham (1751-1817), wife of Captain Thomas Galilee

I've revised an earlier post of May 2013 and, as it belongs with the preceding posts, I'll post it here as well.  

The two letters quoted below were among the small collection of letters referred to in the previous post about the Revd William Atkinson.  I have made some alterations to spelling and punctuation for readability's sake.

Jane was born in 1751, the daughter of Thomas Atkinson of Scaling Dam (a hamlet on the Whitby to Guisborough road) and his wife Elizabeth Featherstone.  She grew up at Kirkleatham where her father was Master of the Blue Coat Boys at Sir William Turner's Hospital.  Her younger brother Thomas  Atkinson was a surgeon who wrote a journal of a whaling voyage to the Davis Straits in 1774

Jane married Thomas Galilee on 4 June 1775.

The Newcastle Courant of Saturday 17 June 1775 records: 

Last week at St Mary’s Church, Rotherhithe, London, Capt Thomas Galilee of Whitby, to Miss Atkinson of Kirkleatham 

St Mary's Rotherhithe by Rob Kam

Jane and Thomas spent many years in Rotherhithe, where their daughters were born and baptised, living in a house that Thomas owned in Princes Street.  They were living there in 1788 when he wrote to his wife from Narva in Estonia on 21 May.  At the time, the main trade with the Baltic was in timber and Thomas was taking on a load of sawn boards ("deals").  

Narva, May 21st 1788

My Dear Jane, 

I have now the pleasure to acquaint you that I am all Loaded except one pram of deals which I hope to get on board to night.  We have had a very troublesome time of it in the Bay and very cold weather that several of my people is laid up.  I hope in God this will find you in good health and all my dear children as bless God I am at present and I hope soon to have a happy meeting.  I have no news to tell you as this is the first time I have been in town since I arrived – it seems to be a poor place and every thing is very dear so that I have not bought you anything.  Please to acquaint Mr. Richardson of my being loaded and not to forget the Insurance 

I hope soon to have the pleasure to see you, pray give my love to my children &c, I am your ever affectionate and

Loving Husband

Thomas Galilee

It seems he had two passengers with him – perhaps they were there for the experience – but they hadn't enjoyed the trip much.  He ends his letter

My Two young Gentlemen is very well but I fancy this Voyage will make them sick of the sea.

It seems very likely that, when the Ship News in the Kentish Gazette on 20 June 1788 reported that the "Amphion, Gallilee, from Narva" had passed Gravesend on 16 June, it was Captain Thomas Galilee returning home. 

Thomas Atkinson, surgeon (b1753) of Kirkleatham, Canada & Honduras Bay

This replaces a piece about Thomas Atkinson posted in November 2012.  As it belongs with the preceding posts about the Atkinsons of Scaling Dam & Kirkleatham, I thought I'd publish it here too.  

With many thanks to Stella Sterry for her information

Thomas Atkinson, the writer of the Whaling Journal of Thomas Atkinson of Kirkleatham, 1774 was a young man of 21 when he made the voyage to Davis Straits.

He was born in the spring of 1753 in Kirkleatham, a North Yorkshire village a couple of miles from the mouth of the River Tees. 

His father Thomas was Master at the Hospital founded in Kirkleatham in 1676 by Sir William Turner for the relief of ten "poor aged" men and women and the relief and upbringing of "ten poor boys and ten poor girls". 

The "poor boys" and "poor girls" usually entered the Hospital at the age of eight and left at sixteen.  At this time most of the boys came from the North Riding, from Scarborough to Askrigg, but some came from much further afield – from Ticknall in Derbyshire, Bristol and Hertfordshire.  They included the sons of a local clergyman, a Darlington bookseller and a Northallerton attorney, which must indicate that, in addition to the poor children, the school was taking paying scholars.  This was usual in schools that began as charitable foundations. 

Thomas Atkinson's mother was Elizabeth Featherstone (c1720-1805).  His parents were married in Westerdale in 1749, so Elizabeth may have been the Elizabeth, daughter of Peter Fetherstone, who was baptised in 1720 at Danby in Cleveland.

It seems very likely that Thomas Atkinson's sons were taught alongside the boys of the Hospital.  Wherever they went to school, he and his brothers clearly received a good education; Thomas's second son William was to become a Doctor of Divinity and Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. 

The career chosen for young Thomas may have been influenced by the surgeon employed at the Hospital (at a salary of £50, compared to the £45 paid to the Master), but the Hospital was also in contact with the York Infirmary whose surgeons pronounced one boy's "scrofulous disorder" as incurable in 1773.  

In his mid-teens Thomas's parents sent him to Ripon to be apprenticed for 6 years to William Chambers of Ripon, described by Thomas's father in the family Bible as "an eminent Surgeon and Apothecary".  Then on 27 February 1774 at the age of 21, he went to sea as a surgeon on the Hope of Whitby, on a whaling voyage to the Davies Straits.

Whitby whalers in the Davies Straits (from Richard Weatherill's book)

We don't know why he decided to make the trip.  Perhaps it was a hankering for adventure; perhaps he wanted to find out how he would cope in harsh conditions.  We don't know how he came to choose the Hope, but it's interesting to see that at this time one of the boys at the school was Thomas Peacock, son of the Revd John Peacock, curate of Stainton in Cleveland.  Perhaps they had a family connection to Captain Robert Peacock of the Hope.

It is clear from young Thomas Atkinson's journal that it wasn't the sea that took his interest, but the strange new lands he encountered and, above all, the Inuit. 

So it isn't surprising to find that, the following year, his curiosity and love of adventure led him to work for the Hudson's Bay Company

At the beginning of June 1775 he took up his post as a surgeon at Moose Fort (now Moose Factory), 

the Company's oldest settlement in Ontario, established in 1673 about 11 miles from the mouth of the Moose River on the shore of James Bay.

This was the home of the Cree and Anishinaabe peoples, but from the 17th century it was where the British and French fought over the fur trade.  (For more, see Tracing the History of Northern Ontario at the British Library by Shaelagh Cull)

In 1776 the Company was planning to establish a post on Lake Superior.  So they sent out a party of 5 men – Thomas was one of them – with two Indian families and instructions to "Build a Halfway House".  They set out on 16 October 1776 from Moose Fort and travelled about 200 miles by canoe along the Moose River, and by sledge, until on 11 December they reached "Wapuscogamee" Creek.  

Thomas chose a site for the Company's post – it was half a mile or so from the mouth of the creek, on the west bank of the Missinaibi River, which flows into the Moose River.  On 14 December they began to build a log tent in which they were to spend the rest of the winter.

When the spring came, they laid the foundation for the post and by early August 1777 Wapiscogamy House was ready for occupation.  Thomas was in charge there until 31 May 1778.

Early C19: Trading at a Hudson's Bay Company Trading Post, by Harry Ogden

I hope he was a good doctor, because he wasn't very good at choosing a place for a trading post, or at planning its building.  

A report to Edward Jarvis, chief at Moose Fort, in 1781 described a site vulnerable to attack with no way of seeing the attackers coming.  There was a large creek within 200 yards of the back of the house and a ridge of high land within 100 yards, and at one end of the small, inconvenient house (it measured 26 feet by 18 feet) there wasn't a window or a port hole.  

The foundations were laid direct on the ground, so it wasn't possible to dig a cellar without undermining either the chimney or the frame of the house.  They couldn't find anywhere to keep the gunpowder except "directly under the fireplace" and the summer heat spoilt their "Salt Geese".   Edward Jarvis decided it would be better to build a new post somewhere else.

By this time, Thomas Atkinson had been moved on to Henley House, a transit post on the junction of the Albany and Kenogamy Rivers.  He was Master there for 3 months from September to December 1779.  Perhaps he was filling in for the arrival of another man because he dropped down to Assistant for the next few months.  From June 1780 he was Assistant at Albany, the company fort on the James Bay, and then he left for home on the Royal George on 21 September 1781.

On 21 September 1788, when his father repaired the family Bible and recorded the most recent details of his children's lives, he wrote proudly that his eldest son had been "sometime Governor" of one of the Company Forts and was now "Surgeon at the English Settlement in Honduras Bay".  

So Thomas, having experienced the extremes of heat and cold in Northern Ontario, had taken a post in Central America, where the British were cutting logwood and mahogany.  There had been a British settlement in Belize for over a hundred years.  

An undated entry in the family Bible records that it was there that Thomas died. 

The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830)

This account of a quiet life is thanks to information from Stella Sterry, and to letters that were found years ago in a house clearance in Leeds.  They seem to have survived by chance, possibly because of Mr John Gaskin, MBE, of Whitby.  He was a significant figure in organisations in the town in the first half of the 20th century.  He was very interested in local history and philately and for several decades was a solicitors' clerk with Messrs Buchannan and Son, and then with the successor firm Buchannan and White.  However he came across the letters and whatever his reason – local history or the unusual postal markings – he kept the letters and they are now to be found at Northallerton Archives.  I'm quoting below from a transcript and I have made some alterations for readability's sake.

William Atkinson was born on 16 May 1755 at Kirkleatham, where his father Thomas Atkinson (1722-92) was Master of Sir William Turner's Hospital.  Perhaps he was named for his father's brother William, who died only two months later in the fever epidemic that swept through Scaling Dam.

William's elder brother Thomas went out to look for adventure, and worked as a surgeon in Canada and Central America.  His brother Daniel died in New York and his brother John on the coast of Africa.  But William Atkinson was a studious young man.  He became an academic and clergyman.

Bookplate of Revd William Atkinson

At the age of 21, on 10 October 1776, he was admitted to Catharine Hall, Cambridge as a sizar.  At a time when attending Oxford and Cambridge was only for the very well-to-do, this was how someone from a humbler background could go to one of the universities.  Originally a sizar paid his way by doing fairly menial tasks; as the centuries went on colleges might offer small grants.  But it was essentially for the poor and deserving, and it was a lowly social position.

William matriculated in the Michaelmas term 1778.  He was made a deacon in 1778 and priested in 1781.  He took his B.A in 1781, his M.A in 1784, and his B.D in 1792.  

These were eventful times in the outside world.  In 1783, King George III was forced to accept the loss of Britain’s American colonies.  In January 1788, the first convict fleet arrived in Botany Bay carrying 1,480 men, women and children.  The Greenland whale fishery was in full operation, with 21 vessels leaving Whitby that season.  Across the Channel, France was in the grip of runaway inflation and ever increasing economic turmoil and on 14 July 1789 the storming of the Bastille would mark the beginning of events that would shake Europe.  Meanwhile, back at home in North Yorkshire, Whitby was a major centre of shipbuilding, ranking third after London and Newcastle in the early 1790s.  Along the coast and the escarpment of the Cleveland Hills, men were mining alum, a valuable commodity and vital to the textile and leather industries.  

St Catharine's, Cambridge (called Catharine Hall until 1860)

Meanwhile, William was elected Fellow of Catharine Hall in 1781 and in 1807 he was a curate at Sawston, 7 miles south of Cambridge.  But from 1790 William became involved in a feud among the Fellows.  It lasted 20 years and involved petitions to the College Visitor, exchanges of acrimonious letters and finally a pamphlet war.  William and his friends were pitted against Dr Procter, the Master of Catharine Hall, and his supporters.  William's friend Dr Browne, Master of Christ's College, was also involved.  In 1808 William left Catharine Hall.  

Then on 2 July 1808 William was elected Fellow of Christ's; it was the first election in the time of his friend Dr Browne's Mastership.  It is all very convoluted.  William Jones, in his A History of St Catharine's College, Cambridge (CUP 1936) comments that  

One finds it difficult not to suspect that much of this feud was due to sheer idleness.  The Fellows at St Catharine's at this period were not busy with research.  They had no undergraduates, or practically none, to teach.  Unmarried, they had no home interests.  Satan, indeed, found work for idle hands to do

At the time of the feud, William wasn't living in College.  By 1788, he was living in the village of Whaddon, a dozen miles south-west of Cambridge.  By 1806 he had moved to Stapleford, about 5 miles south of Cambridge.  There he lived at the Grove at the fork in the road near Sawston Bridge.

1888-1913 O.S. Stapleford
CC-BY-NC-SA National Library of Scotland

Apart from being Mildmay Preacher between 1816 and 1818, Christ's has no record of him holding a College office, or a benefice, or being resident in College, though he never missed a meeting until his last five years.  

Christ's College, Cambridge: Fellows' Garden, showing rear of Fellows' Building

How did he spend his time (apart from taking part in the College feud)?  He must have lectured, perhaps he had pupils and he seems, on occasion at least, to have taken duty for another clergyman.  He certainly farmed.  He had his library, which was a typical middle-class collection judging by the inscribed volumes that have passed down through the years – and Jane Austen would have been pleased to see that he didn't disdain novels.  He had Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison.  We can imagine him working away at the system of shorthand that he invented.  It was a quiet life.

Thomas Atkinson (1722-92), Master of Sir William Turner's Hospital, Kirkleatham

This follows on from the preceding post, The Atkinsons of Scaling Dam in the 17th & 18th centuries

Thomas Atkinson was born on Friday 13 April 1722, between 9 and 10 o'clock at Night.

We don't know where he was educated – perhaps in one of the Whitby schools – but he clearly was something of a mathematician (for example, his answer to a problem was printed in Miscellaneous Correspondence, in Prose and Verse Volume 4, 1764).

He married Elizabeth Featherstone (c1720-1805) on 21 September 1749 in Westerdale.  Elizabeth may have been the daughter of Peter Fetherstone, who was baptised on 2 February 1720 at Danby in Cleveland.

On 9 May 1751, when Thomas was 29, he took up the post of Master of the Blue Coat Boys at the Turner Hospital at Kirkleatham.  When he and his family moved into the master's house, the Hospital – which consisted of almshouses, boys' and girls' schools and a chapel – had only recently been extended and remodelled by Sir William's great-nephew Cholmley Turner.  Thomas must have been very pleased with his new situation.  He and his family stayed there for nearly 25 years.   

Sir William Turner's Almshouses by Mick Garrett

He was clearly an able and meticulous man, and in 1774 he drew up a map of the parish and manor of Kirkleatham for his employer.  So perhaps when he left Kirkleatham a year later at the age of 53, and went to Marske Hall on the Cleveland coast, it might have been to become steward for Lawrence Dundas.  Dundas was an ambitious and forceful Scottish businessman and politician who had bought the Marske Hall estate a dozen years earlier, at about the same time as he bought the Aske estate in Richmondshire.  

By 1788, Thomas was in retirement and he and his wife Elizabeth were with their son William in Whaddon in Cambridgeshire.  

He now had time to repair the family Bible that had been spoilt and defaced after his father's death in 1755, when it had been 

clandestinely taken away from my Mother, by one Hudson who had not the least Right or Pretention of Right to it; after having kept it several Years in his Possession, I obliged him to return it; but it was in such bad Condition by his writing his own Name a vast Number of times, and a Repetition of the Names of his Children and many Sentences too ridiculous to be seen in a Book of this Sort; I thought proper to cut out the Pages he had so Contaminated and to introduce several Leaves of fresh Paper in their Stead; whereas I shall transcribe such Particulars as my Father thought fit to leave on Record in this Book relating to our Family; and do hereby earnestly recommend this Book to the Care of my Children, that they never suffer it to go out of the Family for the future. 

Example of Thomas Atkinson's repair to the family Bible

Thomas Atkinson and Elizabeth Featherstone had 6 sons and 2 daughters:

• Jane Atkinson, born 9 March 1751
• on 4 June 1775 at Rotherhithe, she married Captain Thomas Galilee (1744-97) (for more on his family see here) 
• they had 6 daughters who survived infancy: Mary, Elizabeth, Margaret, Jane, Harriet & Henrietta
• Jane died on 19 December 1817 aged 66 and was buried at Whaddon, Cambridgeshire
• for more on Jane and her daughters see later post, Jane Atkinson of Kirkleatham (1751-1817), wife of Captain Thomas Galilee

• Thomas Atkinson, born 16 April 1753
• trained as a surgeon, worked for the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada and as surgeon at the British Settlement in Honduras Bay, where he died  
• for more on Thomas's life see later post, Thomas Atkinson, surgeon (b1753) of Kirkleatham, Canada & Honduras Bay

• William Atkinson, born 16th May 1755
• academic and clergyman
• he died at Stapleford near Cambridge on 28 May 1830 aged 75 and was buried at Whaddon, Cambridgeshire
• for more on William Atkinson's life see later post, The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830)

• Isaac Atkinson, born 5 March 1757
• was a London wholesale linen draper with premises in Cheapside, while living out of town in the country air of the parish of St Mary, Islington
• he died aged 46 on 6 July 1803 and was buried with his father at Whaddon on 13 July 1803

• Daniel Atkinson, born 7 February 1759
• he is known to have married and had 3 children, because they are mentioned in his brother William's Will, made in 1828:
• Thomas (a letter from Thomas to his uncle William survives, see later post, The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830) .  He went to New York in 1830 and it is not known what became of him
• William 
• Mary, who married a Mr Thompson
• An undated entry in the family Bible says that Daniel himself "Died at New York"

• John Atkinson, born 12 February 1761
• an undated entry in the family Bible says that John died on the coast of Africa

• Robert Atkinson, born 8 February 1763
• he died in infancy and was buried on 14 June 1765 in Kirkleatham

• Elizabeth Atkinson, born 18 February 1764
• she was baptised on 29 Feb 1764 and died 3 days later.  Buried at Kirkleatham

Thomas Atkinson died on 1 February 1792 at the age of 70.  A note in the burial register records that he was "late of Marsk near Gisborough N Riding Yorks died at the Vicarage house at Whaddon Feb 1"

Thomas's son William wasn't the vicar of Whaddon, so that wasn't why Thomas was living in the vicarage house.  William isn't recorded as having held any benefice, and I think a Revd Thomas Wilson was vicar at the time.  According to the Victoria County History 

In the 1790s the vicar had only a room in an old cottage, probably the old vicarage, which was enlarged in the early 19th century, and again c1877  

Robert Hurlock, who succeeded Mr Wilson and was vicar from 1797 to 1852, also held Shepreth.  It must have been more comfortable at Shepreth before the Whaddon vicarage was enlarged, because by 1807 he was recorded as living at Whaddon.  So perhaps Thomas and Elizabeth were renting the old cottage that had been the old vicarage.

St Mary's Whaddon, Cambs by Alan Kent

Elizabeth survived him by 7 years.  She carried on living with her son William at Whaddon and it was there that she died on 19 November 1805 aged 85.  

Thomas and Elizabeth were both buried at Whaddon.  

Elizabeth had also outlived her son Isaac, who died aged 46 in 1803.  Though he lived in the parish of St Mary Islington, he was buried with his father at Whaddon on 13 July 1803.  Whaddon was to become the place of burial for all of the family who lived in Cambridgeshire:  Thomas and Elizabeth, their children Isaac, William and Jane, and their granddaughter Harriet.

When Stella Sterry visited Whaddon in 1970, she was able to read the inscriptions on the gravestones of Thomas, Isaac, Elizabeth, Jane and Harriet.  William's gravestone, with its Latin inscription, was not very legible.  

Excerpt from insert in Atkinson Bible

The Atkinsons of Scaling Dam in the 17th & 18th centuries

This is the sort of thing that one always hopes for – in 2013 I posted the Whaling Journal 1774 of Thomas Atkinson of Kirkleatham and articles about the Atkinson family of Scaling Dam.  And recently I was contacted by Stella Richmond Sterry, a descendant of Thomas's sister Jane Galilee (as I am myself) – but she has the family Bible!

And so, armed with all that lovely information, I've been able to do more research on the family.  I hope it's (a) of interest and (b) of use to people who are trying to disentangle their own Cleveland Atkinsons.  

An extra bonus for me is that I get to go back again to the Civil Wars, which I left reluctantly after finishing work on Alice Wandesford in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms 

………

The young Thomas Atkinson who took the whaling voyage in 1774 (you can find it here) was the eldest son of Thomas Atkinson (1722-92), Master of Sir William Turner's Hospital at Kirkleatham.

In 1788, towards the end of his life, Thomas Atkinson senior repaired his father's family Bible, which had been damaged after his father's death in 1755.  And in it, very wisely, he left a written record which he entitled "From Oral Tradition".  He began with the story of his great-grandfather Atkinson, who was a soldier in the Parliamentarian Army during the Civil Wars – the Wars of the Three Kingdoms – and who lived afterwards at Scaling Dam.

Scaling Dam was (and is) a hamlet more or less half way along the moors road between Guisborough and Whitby.  Then, the North Riding of Yorkshire was thinly populated and the moors were wide and empty.  The antiquarian Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S., (1658-1725) took the moors road in November 1682 and didn't like it at all, recording in his diary that he travelled "over the rotten Moors for many miles without anything observable."

O.S. map 1888-1913

CC-BY-NC-SA National Library of Scotland

The hamlet's name doesn't come from the reservoir which was built there in the 1950s – it appears, for example, as Skallingdam in the 1675 map of John Ogilby.  I suspect the hamlet was given its name to show it was a sort of outpost of the village of Scaling but near the dam – the Dam Bridge can be seen on the map above.  It was, of course, a very practical place for a settlement, being on the moors road at the junction with the road to Staithes.  It isn't surprising to see that the 1888-1913 map shows both a pub and a smithy, both of which must have been there for very many years.  Both Scaling and Scaling Dam were in the parish of Easington in Cleveland.

Atkinson the Parliamentarian Soldier

The family didn't remember the Soldier's Christian name, but knew that he had been at the battles of Marston Moor (1644), Naseby (1645), Preston (1648) and Dunbar (1650).  The fact that Marston Moor seems to be his first major battle suggests the Soldier was a Northerner, and the fact that he spent the rest of his life in Scaling Dam seems to me to show that he was almost certainly an East Cleveland man.  It's hard to think an outsider would find his way to Scaling Dam in the middle of the 17th century.

The Soldier used to talk of the battle of Dunbar, Oliver Cromwell's miracle victory.  The histories say that when the right wing of Scottish cavalry broke under the English attack, Oliver Cromwell and General Lambert didn't allow the English troopers to go in pursuit and, as the troopers regrouped, they sang the 117th Psalm

O praise the Lord, all ye nations:
praise him, all ye people.
For his merciful kindness is great toward us:
and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever.

When the Soldier looked back on the battle, Thomas wrote, he used to say of the singing

their Notes were more pleasing to Him who is the Giver of all Victory than the Clashing of Swords and roaring of Canon.  

The Soldier was very probably a member of one of Cleveland’s Trained Bands, the local militias made up of householders and their sons, who were obliged to turn out when summoned for training and action.  The ability to read and write was spreading fast among the common people at this time, but the sort of family that was liable for Trained Band service would certainly produce a literate man like the Soldier, whose constant reading of Scripture led him to have, as Thomas wrote, "the Bible and Testament almost by Heart".

Soldier Atkinson was in the minority in the North Riding of Yorkshire, which was almost entirely Royalist in sympathy – though many, if not most, people didn't want to choose a side at all and simply wanted to be left in peace.  The North Riding gentlemen who supported Parliament had a difficult time raising troops and the troops, when assembled, weren't keen.  Sir Henry Foulis reported that a Cleveland foot regiment that had mustered 500 men at Yarm had rapidly dwindled to 80 at the approach of the enemy.  (see War in Yorkshire: 1642-1643)

Parliamentarian gentry included the Foulis brothers, whose father Sir David Foulis had been put in the Fleet Prison for several years because he opposed the King’s man, Sir Thomas Wentworth (the story can be found here) but their family estates were at Ingleby on the western escarpment of the moors.

A Parliamentarian gentleman from the close neighbourhood of Scaling Dam was Nicholas Conyers.  In fact he came from the parish of Easington itself, being the son of Nicholas Conyers of Boulby, and, like Soldier Atkinson, he was at Marston Moor.  Two of his brothers died fighting for the King.

Nicholas Conyers was in the Scarborough garrison under Sir Hugh Cholmley of Whitby when Cholmley changed sides and took the town over to the Royalists in 1643.

Cholmley first made sure that anybody wanting to leave Scarborough before it became Royalist had left the town.  Many did, including Nicholas Conyers.  If Soldier Atkinson was there with Sir Hugh's forces, he too will have left for the Parliamentarian garrison at Hull.

Atkinson the Soldier was clearly one of the Godly – a Puritan – and committed to Parliament's cause.  This makes him an interesting figure in the overwhelmingly Royalist North Riding.  Perhaps there were many more like him among the ordinary men of Cleveland, but we only know about the gentry and we don't know how many of the Soldier's neighbours and relatives shared his views.  And we don't know what his views were – how ardent a Puritan he was, how radical a Parliamentarian.

Thomas describes the Soldier as a subaltern.  I've checked with Phil Philo (do not miss his new blog Of Things Trent-North) and this was not a term used at the time.  I think all we can say for definite is that his family remembered that he had men under him.  So he could have been a junior officer, or a sergeant or a corporal.  Nor do we know if he fought in the foot or the cavalry.

Pikemen.  Photo by John Beardsworth

In the same way, Thomas thought that he lived to a very great age "being near a hundred before he died".  This isn't any help in identifying him, as the Easington parish registers for the time are fragmentary and don't record the age anyway.  But we can certainly say that he was notable in the area, with his past history of bloody and brutal warfare, his command of the Bible and his great age.  

After the fighting stopped, everyone must have had to learn to live together and mend the divisions within families and neighbourhoods.  It can't have been easy after so many deaths and so much destruction. 

We don't know how the Soldier made his living before and after the wars, but we can guess that if his father was a farmer then he wasn't the eldest son, because then he would have been needed on the land.  So he would have had a trade.  At some point the Soldier married and had at least one son, whose name was John, who was "brought up to the business of a Tanner", so perhaps the Soldier was a tanner himself.  

Tanning was a vital industry at this time, with leather necessary for so many things, from boots, shoes and gloves to horse collars, and Scaling Dam was a good place for the tanning process, with water from the Dam Beck nearby.  Tanning was done in pits lined with timber.  The bark of young coppiced oaks was used, or lime, and the process took time, hard manual labour and skill.  Most villages had a leather worker and they were to be found in much larger numbers in towns.  Tanners often farmed on the side.