Peter Jamieson's personal website

Introduction

This set of pages tries to capture information about all the families that originated around Hatfield, Thorne, nearby parts of the Isle of Axholme (originally a fenland area on the border between the South-Eastern edge of the West Riding of Yorkshire, the north-western corner of Lincolnshire, and the northern tip of Nottinghamshire) and Doncaster, starting in the late 1600s.

**Much of the detail on Thomas GOODWORTH 1823-1890 and his descendants, and all of the photographs of that line, kindly provided by his descendant Ruth E WELD. In fact, her notes provide much more detail on sources than I have provided here.

The Goodworths originating with William Goodworth and Dorothy Renard in Whitgift (to the  north-east side of the Isle of Axholme) are listed on a Whitgift page - although some of them seem to have passed through Hatfield and Thorne (notably John Goodworth who married Mary Dawson and their children), most seem to have migrated to the Howden/Goole area. I am now convinced that the Whitgift Goodworths originated in Hatfield/Thorne with William son of John Goodworth and Susan Womock.

A bit of background

The lie of the land in the Axholme area to the east of Hatfield and Thorne changed radically in the 1600s when the Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden persuaded the king to let him drain the fenland areas, altering the course of the river Don and much else in the process.  It was a huge undertaking, creating large areas of valuable, fertile farmland and leaving a number of towns and villages that were previously on the edge of fenland "high and dry".  Vermuyden's first attempt was a complete failure, actually flooding large areas of land and contributing to an already volatile situation in which many people were being relieved of their ancient rights by corruption and opportunism in high places. Vermuyden was forced to do a large amount of additional work to fix the problems (I believe the so-called "Dutch River" was part of the solution). He was financially ruined and ended his life in poverty. Curiously, although his name is famous in the area, there are no pictures of the man - unless the family tale that a painting we have of a man smoking a churchwarden (pipe) is true - but since there is no way to check without another picture I don't suppose we'll ever know.

It is worth bearing in mind when trying to work out why individuals and families might have moved from A to B is that up until the 19th century and the introduction of the railways, the vast majority of travel in this part of the country would have been by water. Lots of small places were ports, and even a trip to London might have been via river, the Humber estuary, around the coast to the Thames, then up river. The 18th and 19th centuries saw a massive increase in maritime activity as the industrial revolution spread and the number of people leaving for North America and other parts of the world increased. The port of Goole was purpose built in 1828 because of this expansion (previously Goole was a tiny village). Population drift to the industrial cities of Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster, and Rotherham is also visible from the family trees here.

Most of the information on this page comes from parish registers, Bishop's Transcripts, Monumental Inscriptions, and so on. So far I've only seen the detailed transcripts of the registers held at the Doncaster Archives and other notes and info. there, but even when the information has come from elsewhere I've only used it if I can identify the source. I really just want to establish a framework that will make it easier to do further research. As with the other pages here, there is quite a bit of guesswork - some of it may turn out to be wrong. I have also probably been a bit over-zealous trying to make connections where perhaps there are none. But then, everyone had to come from somewhere - if it isn't obvious where someone came from, it's not unreasonable to assume that they were the son/daughter of someone recorded elsewhere rather than someone who wasn't recorded at all.

Dates and references from the England and Wales Civil Registration indexes  (which I've also looked up in Leeds) are in the format
bmd Mmm year Placename Volume Page,
e.g.
bmd Dec 1888 Leeds 1b 456