THE YORKSHIRE BRANCH (please
scroll down to see all the pictures)
"Many years ago my father said that our family
came from Yorkshire,
he thought near Halifax, and that the name meant a 'black
bog' or 'black stream'.
Once the web came along,
I was able to search, and I found it:
not Blackledge
Road or Blackledge Street, but just BLACKLEDGE."
(John Blackledge, 4 East Street,
Atherton, M46 9AU. dob 03/04/1952. johnblackledge@gmail.com)
(son of William
Blackledge of Ordsall Lane, Salford. dob 27/04/1920)
BLACKLEDGE- In 1751
it was a country footpath from
Wards End.
BARUM-TOP, in 1606, was called Bourame, and Berum in 1797,
where the old " Watergates " are shown in one of the
corporation pamphlets,
another reference is to S. King
being fined 39s. 0d. for not letting the water have its
course,
and Roger Foster 'payned' the same amount for not
letting the water flow into Blackledge.
(Ref: Yorkshire Directory of
Streets)
|
And Google Maps provided:
So
my daughter Sonia and I took a road-trip to find it:
|
So,
for better or for worse, I thought that this Yorkshire branch eventually became
the Salford (Lancashire) Protestant branch.
Then I was contacted by my
cousin Lucy Dowling (her mother is a Blackledge), who explained
that the Blackledges have always been a Lancashire line,
not Yorkshire, and she had the family tree to prove it!
(Thank
you, Lucy!)
The family tree is now reproduced on this website
(see left menu).
We now realise that the main Blackledge line
have always been staunch Catholics, and we think that my line of
the family branched off as Protestants during the Civil War.
|