John Norton’s family had been involved in the wool trade in Eccleshill for generations. His father, grandfather and Great-grandfather, who was buried in Bradford Parish Church burial Ground in 1736, were each named James Norton.
John’s grandfather was a weaver and would likely have made the fine worsted cloth that the area was known for.
In February 1815, John Norton married Hannah Petty, a weaver, in Bradford, in the church beside the graveyard where his Norton Grandparents and Greatgrandparents were all buried.
They were probably unaware that it wouldn’t be long before the family would be gathered there for a less happy occasion. For five months later John’s mother Martha died and was buried there. She was 51.
Then, in October 1815, John and Hannah’s first son Joseph was baptised. Joseph was followed by Charles, Job, Martha, Samuel my Greatgreatgrandfather in and, in 1829, Shepherd, named after their mother’s maiden name.
Like their predecessors, all five of John and Hannah’s sons worked in the wool industry, although the youngest, Shepherd, was later to become a Coal Merchant.
Samuel married Mary Whitby two weeks before Christmas 1852. Mary Whitby was the daughter of William Whitby, comber, and Mary Riley, of Bradford Moor, about two miles north east of Eccleshill.
As a comber, William would impale bunches of wool on the long tines of a wool comb, then pulls them down to the comb head, spreading each successive handful evenly over the comb surface. After repeated combing, dirt and short fibres thus removed, and the wool fibres straightened and aligned, it would be ready to be drawn out into a thread. He would have to take care, as the long sharp prongs of the comb could be vicious.
In his early working life, Samuel was a clothier ie cloth maker. Clothiers often contracted out much of the work involved in producing the cloth to outworkers. By the death of his wife Mary in 1879 Samuel is known as a manufacturer. In 1887 he is listed in a local trade directory as a worsted manufacturer of 38 Town Lane. After his death in 1889, his will identifies him as a flannel manufacturer.
Samuel and Mary married in the church of his ancestors. However, unlike their forebears, neither Samuel nor his parents would be buried there. The family had broken from the Anglican faith and had become Wesleyans. In 1825 the Norman Lane Burial Ground had been opened in Eccleshill, and that is where they and many members of their family would be buried.
links to the Norton family:
The Musicians
Norton family tree