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Harriet Dunkerley
Introduction Link to Family Tree
At first sight, Harriet Dunkerley was just another of the common folk that made their lives in the complex industrial society of the cotton towns north of Manchester during the nineteenth century, and never seemed destined to deserve special notice. But happenchance made her the common ancestor of extensive families who now live in the western United States. This is her story.
She was the first-born of a family that would ultimately number ten siblings – although only six survived into adulthood. Her father, Joseph Dunkerley, the son of a cotton handloom weaver from Oldham in Lancashire, had joined the milita that was recruited to defend England from the threat of a Napoleonic invasion, and was demobbed near to Bristol in Somerset. The evidence indicates that he stayed on in that city, perhaps practicing the trade of shoemaker, and he married a local girl, Hannah Spencer, on the 27th July 1809. Harriet was born in Bristol on the 10th of June in the following year.
At least the next two, possibly three, siblings were also born in Bristol, but by 1816 the family had fallen on hard times and Harriet had accompanied them to Oldham, where they were interned in the local workhouse.  Harriet survived, but the three siblings who followed her did not. The first thirty years, or so, of Harriet’s life were those most difficult of times when an increasing population could be sustained only by moving to the industrial towns that were ill-prepared to receive them. Political strains, that started with the French Revolution of 1789, dragged on through the Napoleonic Wars up to 1815 and then turned into social agitation for a more representative government, exacerbated the hardship.
Harriet and her generation became resourceful and learned to survive this period of unprecedented change. The struggles that they experienced eventually bequeathed to their descendents opportunities that they could not themselves have imagined. Harriet lived long enough to see signs of the improvements although she died in penury, probably in the second quarter of 1885, aged about 74.
Early Days
Harriet must have remembered Oldham Workhouse, where she was most likely separated from her parents, for the family only emerged from its confines in 1818 when she was about seven years old. Her father initially continued working in his old trade of hand-loom weaving, although pay was probably very poor; curiously, after escaping from the workhouse the family never lived more than a mile or so from its walls. In 1820 William Varley of nearby Higham wrote: ‘Alas, poor weaver, thy fond hopes of better days always proves abortive; distress and scorn is thy true companions; thy haggard and meagre looks plainly indicate thy hard usage, slavery which knows no bounds’. Varley’s pay was then half what it had been when times had been good, but within six years it would reduce by half again[1].
Harriet would no doubt have been sent out to work from about the age of seven, probably in one of the local cotton factories. Though economic conditions slowly improved, a crisis developed when she was about sixteen years old and the working classes had to resort to picking wild nettles to mix with the oatmeal that was their staple diet in an effort to stave off hunger. Mobs attacked some of the cotton factories, convinced that they were taking work away from the handloom workers. About this time Joseph Dunkerley gave up the handloom and was working as a shoemaker – the trade I suspect he had learned in the militia. The following years saw the birth of Joseph and Hannah’s last three children.
One of the remarkable things about Harriet Dunkerley is that she married four times (see the family tree). In reality marriage and re-marriage may have been as much a survival tactic as an affair of the heart, because a single woman, especially one with children, would have found life particularly difficult. The fact that she was able to find four husbands suggests that there was much about her that was admirable, and may even hint that she was a good-looking girl in her time!
According to information on the International Genealogical Index, Harriet’s first marriage appears to have taken place in Oldham in 1829, when she was about 19 years old. She might have been a non-conformist because the marriage does not appear in the records of St. Mary’s, the parish church. Her husband was William Goddard who was probably about two years older than her. The couple seem to have had two children, Mary and Ester, born respectively in 1830 and about 1833. Mary Goddard eventually made her way to America and died there in 1910 (as described below), but we do not know what happened to Ester. She may have married a William Smith in Oldham in 1852.
Harriet was apparently widowed before 1838, for she married again on the 16th of July of that year. Her second husband was Edmund Buckley, and the marriage took place at Saddleworth parish church, just to the east of Oldham. The couple are recorded as living at the time at Strines, a settlement situated about 12 miles SSE of Oldham in the shadow of the soaring Pennine Hills. Edmund was a ‘twister’, which means he probably prepared cotton warp for use in mechanised weaving. Neither Harriet nor Edmund were able to sign their names on the marriage certificate.
Harriet and Edmund appear to have had a son called John soon after their marriage, and two other children, Henry and Harriet, followed in 1840 and 1843 (see below). These last two, like their half-sister Mary Goddard, were to immigrate to the United States and start substantial families there. Two other daughters, Jane and Mally, were born in 1846 and 1849; Mally too was to travel to America. However Edmund died, perhaps in the second quarter of 1852, and Harriet was once more left a widow with young children to care for.
 This situation did not last long, for on the 6th of November of the same year Harriet was married for the third time, to Joseph Andrew. Joseph was a widower, a cotton weaver (he would have worked on a mechanised - or 'steam' - loom) who was living in Glodwick, the same part of Oldham as Harriet (see map). At that time Harriet was earning her living as a cotton winder, which probably means she was looking after a machine that wound bobbins of cotton ready to be used in the loom. Perhaps Harriet and Joseph met in the factory where they worked. The following year a daughter, Hannah Ellen Andrew, was born, and she too would one day travel to the United States.
At the time of the 1861 census the family was living at Jackson Street, near Lees Road, north of Glodwick. With Joseph and Harriet was Hannah Ellen, four of the Buckley children – Henry, Harriet, Jane and Mally – and Harriet’s widowed father, Joseph Dunkerley, now 78 years old but still working, as a ‘watchman at a cotton mill’. It was not to be a good year, for Joseph Dunkerley died only months later and soon after, it seems, so did Joseph Andrew. Harriet was widowed for the third time.
Mormonism and the American Connection
Mary Ann Dunkerley and John Gregory
In 1830 Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – usually known as the Mormons – in New York State. From 1837 Mormon missionaries began recruitment campaigns in the industrial towns of northern England and arranged for groups of converts to emigrate from England to the United States. In 1844 Mary Ann Dunkerley, Harriet’s youngest sister, married John Gregory and six weeks later, having saved up in advance, the young couple sailed for America in one of the Mormon parties. They stayed for several years in Mormon communities in Illionois but later travelled west to Cedar City in Utah and then on to California, where they arrived about 1854. Their descendents live there to this day and their story can be read here.
Manayunk, Philadelphia
Harriet Buckley and Joseph Ball Higham
Perhaps it was in knowledge of the exodus of Mary Ann and John Gregory that other members of the family became interested in Mormonism and the hope of a better life in America. Be that as it may, in 1864 Harriet’s daughter Harriet Buckley married Joseph Ball Higham at the parish church of St. Mary in Oldham and two years later, as Mormons, followed John and May Ann Gregory to the New World. They left Liverpool on 30th May on the American ship ‘Arkwright’ of 1,266 tons, captained by D. Caulkins. Their party comprised 450 ‘souls’ and was led by Justin C. Wixom; it arrived safely in New York on 6th July after a passage of 37 days. The couple had met through working at the same cotton mill in Oldham and were described as ‘weavers’ on the passenger list. Joseph was 25 years of age, Harriet 22. After arriving in New York they travelled south to Manayunk, a district of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, where a well-established cotton industry could provide them with employment[2]. Henry Buckley and Sarah Ann Gledhill
The following year, 1865, Harriet Higham’s older brother, Henry Buckley, married Sarah Ann Gledhill in Oldham’s parish church and their first daughter, Jane Elizabeth was born in August 1866. The next year this young family followed in the footsteps of Harriet and Joseph Ball Higham and they too embarked, as Mormons, for America. In Henry's own words: “I Henry Buckley, sailed from Liverpool with my wife and child on the 10th of September 1867 on board the steamship Tariffa, Cumard Line and arrived at New York on the 22nd and at Manyunk on the 24th about 11:30 PM. In good health but a little fatigued. Rested a few days and then began to search for work but found trade in a very bad way. After walking about for two weeks, I commenced to work in the Picker house for the firm of Rafford and Winterbottom of Manyunk at $8 (eight) dollars per week.” [3] In Manayunk they presumably joined the Highams, and the following May their son John was born.
Harriet Dunkerley in America
Following the death of her third husband, Joseph Andrew, in 1861 Harriet must have soldiered on as best she could, probably living with different members of her family. Letters from her children, Harriet Higham and Henry Buckley, probably told her about life in America and persuaded her to take a chance. The Tarifa made another voyage from Liverpool to New York in 1868, arriving on September 8th and Harriet was on board, together with her daughters Mally Buckley (wrongly listed as ‘Mary’), Hannah Andrew and a seven year old girl called Harriet Buckley. It must be presumed that they went to Manayunk, although there is no direct evidence. Harriet eventually returned to England, perhaps when the rest of the family moved west. I have not found her in England on the 1871 census, but she appears again by 1878, of which more below.
Moves to Provo in Utah
By late 1874 the Highams and the Buckleys were on the move again, probably together, travelling west from Manayunk to ‘Zion’ – the Mormon communities that had been established in Utah State from about 1850. Evidence for the timing of their move comes from knowledge that their children William Edward Buckley and Harriet Higham (junior) were both born in Provo, Utah, respectively in early February and August 1875. By 1878 the Highams had moved to Gunnison, San Pete, Utah[4].
Mary Goddard and John Williams, and their families
Other descendents of Harriet Dunkerley were to move to the United States. Mary Goddard, Harriet Dunkerley’s firstborn child, married John Williams of Liverpool in St. Peter’s church, Oldham, in 1853. John was an engine fitter who appears to have travelled around Lancashire probably in connection with his work. Over the following years he and Mary lived mostly in Oldham and had six  children, four of whom survived. The only surviving daughter, Emily Williams, apparently immigrated to the United States in about 1880 when only about eighteen years old. She probably went to stay with the Buckley or the Higham family and on 26th July 1883 she married Charles Thompson Duke. The marriage may have taken place at Provo; certainly by 1884 the couple were living there when their first child, Mary Jane Duke, was born.
Emily’s parents, John Williams and Mary nee Goddard, seem to have travelled, probably in company with their oldest son William Edward Williams and his wife Mary Ann nee Sutcliffe, and a younger son, Henry Williams, to join Emily in about 1884. We can estimate the date of their journey from the facts that William Edward and Mary Ann’s fifth child, a daughter called Lucy Williams, was born in Oldham in July 1883, but their sixth child, a son called Richard, was born in Provo in September 1885.
There thus seems to have been an accumulation of the family in and near Provo. In later generations many of the family stayed in Utah, but some dispersion inevitably took place as family members married people from other areas, or perhaps travelled to seek work. Certainly, however, a family presence has continued in Utah down to present times. It appears that many of these descendents are still adherents of the Mormon faith.
In England Once Again
Harriet Dunkerley did not fully adapt to life in America and returned to England, perhaps in 1874 when the Higham and Buckley families moved to Utah. This supposition is supported by the fact that I have not found her in England on the 1871 census, but she appears again by 1878.
On the 1881 census she is living at Wellington Street, Ashton under Lyne, a few miles southeast of Oldham, next to the Wellington Inn on Oldham Road. She had married, for the fourth time, to William Berry, in the second quarter of 1878. William was a coal miner, originally from Wigan in Lancashire, and was a couple of years younger than his wife.
The couple did not have things easy and it is apparent that about late 1882 Harriet had written to her niece, Harriet Augusta Gregory (the youngest daughter of Mary Ann and John Gregory in California), to ask for help. The letter said they were very poor and in very poor health, her husband was out of work and it was very hard for them to live. Harriet Augusta had sent ‘a little money, and hoped to send more’, and had also written to Henry Buckley, Mary Williams and Harriet Higham to ask them all to try and help their mother. Copies of the letters can be found at the end of the article on Mary Ann Dunkerley and John Gregory.
Things did not improve. In a letter of 14th February 1884 the writer said that Harriet was 'no better she is very poor she would be very glad to receive a little of something from any of you’. It appears that Harriet’s death record is in the June quarter of 1885 and her age is given as 73. William Berry seems to have died at the end of the following year.
Thus ended the long life of a woman who was torn between two worlds. She saw the hardship of the difficult years of the industrial revolution in one of the most remarkable cotton districts of England, and the improvements that came with time during ‘the golden age’ of the Victorian period. These did her little good, however, for she probably never enjoyed much ease. She had four husbands and at least eight children, three of whom immigrated to the United States as members of the Mormon Church. Although she sailed across the Atlantic Ocean herself she seems not to have adapted to the American way of life and returned to her own country to spend her declining years. She must have appreciated the correspondence that was maintained – even if inadequately – with her American descendents, and was no doubt thankful when she received some small alms from them during the last years of her long life.
So far as I know, there is no memorial to Harriet Dunkerley, but there are innumerable living descendents in the United States who would not be alive were it not for her. Let that and this short record of her life and times mark her memory.
References [1]. Aspin C., Lancashire, The First Industrial Society, 1969, Helmshore Local History Society, p. 44 [2]. http://www.workshopoftheworld.com/manayunk/manayunk.html & http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~dynamo53/Manayunk/manayunkfamilies.html). [3] Quoted to me by Jerry Harris from family papers. Henry kept 'a little brown book' to record important dates, the last known keeper of which was Edith H. Rammell nee Bahr. We are still looking for the present keeper of this important book. |
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