FREEMAN Family Wellington

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Bobmacq
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Joined: Tuesday, 13-09-2011

Hello - Can i just introduce myself as i have just joined the group. I have been researching my father's family - MACQUEEN -for some time and seem to have hit a brick wall so have turned my attention to my mother's family - FREEMAN. I know she was born in Old Park Dawley in 1908 and her father was Timothy FREEMAN who worked as a head heater i think at the LIlleshall steel company. They lived in a large house on Kettle Bank.

I would love to know how he came to be fairly well paid and in an important position as his father was a miner - Samuel FREEMAN and his Grandfather George FREEMAN. I have managed to go back one more generation to a Thomas FREEMAN but do not know his birth date or date of death. George was born in about1826.

Any pointers as to where to start looking for more information, parish registers - where are they kept? Any information on the ~Lilleshall company would be interesting.

i also understand that Timothy FREEMAN might have been an Alderman and a school govenor but where I do not know.

I think that is enough for now!

thank you

Regards
Bob MacQueen

Atcherley.org.uk
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Last seen: 4 years 19 weeks ago
Joined: Sunday, 14-08-2011

Just to confirm details of the family from the 1911 census, which shows them living at the strange-sounding El Makattam, Ketley Bank, Oakengates, Salop. (El Mokattam is a mountain in Egypt.)

Head: Timothy Freeman, 33, married, heater steel rolling mill, born Dawley.

Wife: Margaret Louisa Freeman, 32, married (10 years, 5 children, 4 living), born Wellington.

Daughter: Florence Lilian Freeman, 8, born Dawley.

Daughter: Margaret Edith Freeman, 6, born Dawley.

Daughter: Elizabeth Kate Freeman, 4, born Dawley.

Daughter: Ellen Freeman, 2, born Dawley.

There are various possibilities as to how Timothy acquired the position he did, possibly he just happened to find an opening in an industry in which he excelled and was rewarded appropriately. The recent Who Do You Think You Are? on Emilia Fox showed that one of her ancestors started his working life in a very lowly position but through hard work and ingenuity ended up running own businesses and making a fortune, a real 'rags to riches' story.

Shropshire Archives in Shrewsbury is your best bet for parish registers. Those which have survived and are no longer in use should be deposited there. For background information on Shropshire's industrial past the first source that comes to mind is Discovering Shropshire's History, though I'm sure there are many others:

http://www.shropshirehistory.org.uk/

Steve

angela35
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Last seen: 9 years 17 weeks ago
Joined: Wednesday, 15-06-2011

 

Lilleshall Company

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The Lilleshall Company was a large engineering company in Oakengates Shropshire founded in 1802. Its operations included mechanical engineering, coal mining iron and steel making and brickworks. The company was noted for its winding, pumping and blast engines and operated a private railway network. It also constructed railway locomotives from 1862 to 1888.

 History

The company's origins date back to 1764 when Earl Gower formed a company to construct the Donnington Wood Canal on his estate. In 1802 the Lilleshall Company was founded by the Marquess of Stafford in partnership with four local capitalists.[1]

In 1862 the company exhibited a 2-2-2 express passenger locomotive at the 1862 International Exhibition in London.[2]

In 1880 it became a Public company. In 1951 the Lilleshall Iron and Steel Co was nationalised under the Iron and Steel Act but denationalised in 1954 and sold back to Lilleshall Co.

Lilleshall Company Railways closed in 1959. [3]

In 1961 they were described as 'structural and mechanical engineers, manufacturers of rolled steel products, glazed bricks, sanitaryware, Spectra-Glaze and concrete products', with 750 employees.[4]

The company began to decline during the 1960s. Many of its artefacts and archives are preserved by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust.[5]

 References

 

This might help with the Lilleshall company,

Martyn Freeth
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Last seen: 11 years 44 weeks ago
Joined: Saturday, 4-06-2011

There is an official history of the Lilleshall Company 1764-1964 (not the exact title) by W Gale and C R Nicholls. Make an exact woirds Google search against [ history of the lilleshall company ] to see stockists. Comparatively slim book.