Calling all Paper Makers...

[lizone]

Looks like those Sheffield Hearths and/or Selbys may have been long-distance travellers then - who would have thought it?

Liz

[BeeJay]

I have paper makers in my tree: James, Edward, Joshua and Josiah MASON. They moved from Winchcombe, Glos. to Maidstone around 1815.

One of Josiah’s sons was born in Rickford, Somerset in 1843 but his family only stayed there for a year or two before moving back to the Maidstone/Boxley area.

[Coromandel]

The paper making industry in Eynsham, Oxfordshire, can be traced back to 1682 according to the Victoria County History of Oxfordshire (Vol. XII), which names several manufacturers.

I have been looking just at a snapshot of the parish at the time of the 1861 census. William Swann, 50, was described as a retired paper manufacturer & rag merchant. Then there is Thomas Routledge, 41, paper manufacturer employing 28 men, 10 boys and 25 women. He had been born in Kilburn, Middlesex, and had presumably only quite recently arrived in Oxfordshire since his youngest child, aged 5, was born in Camberwell.

Of the 63 people Routledge employed, one was presumably his stepson Frederick N. Miller, also described as a paper manufacturer. From the Eynsham census returns another 28 can be identified:

Elizabeth Phillips, 23, fiber picker at paper mill
George Phillips, 19, lab at a paper mill
Ann (Russell?), 14, fiber picker at a paper mill
Eliza Brooks, 22, fiber sorter at a paper mill
G. Hayes (male), 25, paper maker
John Butcher, 23, paper maker
Elizabeth Wiggins, 43, working at the paper mill
Eliza Wiggins, 16, working at the paper mill
Sarah Russell, 52, paper sorter
Hannah Russell, 24, paper sorter
John Ashton, 26, paper maker
Edward Cantell, 44, paper maker
George Taunt, 34, millwright paper mill
Matthew Bond, 38, paper maker
Thomas Bryant, 12, worker at paper mill
James Bond, 47, paper maker
Harriet Davis, 49, paper makers widow
John Slade, 32, paper maker
Henry Allaway, 20, labourer at pap: mill
William Allaway, 17, ditto
Thomas Masters, 47, fibre sorter at paper mill
Emma Masters, sorter fibre paper mill
Edward Hedges, 47, paper makers lab
John Basson, 43, paper maker
Elizabeth Harper, 20, paper sorter
Joseph Basson, 21, paper maker
William Gardener, 64, paper maker
Harriet Harper(?), 17, paper sorter

Some others could have been mill workers but their job descriptions aren't specific enough to tell: for example, there was another millwright, a machine maker, an engine fitter and a 'blacksmith machinery'. Some of the other 'missing' employees were perhaps from adjacent parishes.

Even though this isn't a complete list of those working at the mill, it gives some idea of the range of jobs involved.

[Mutley]

Thanks Cormandel, you sent me off a'hunting.
I've just spent a good few hours, (when I know I should have been doing something else) following the history of paper making.

We use paper virtually every day, in one form or another. Certainly old paper made in the early 1800s and used for many of the documents we search for, is something that is connected to our hobby but I've not really thought about how it was made, back then.

In Victorian paper mills, women and children worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week to cut up cotton rags for the paper making process so rag sorters would also have been involved in the industry.
As were a coucher, a layer and a vatman, these skilled men, it is claimed in 1816, could make 4000 small sheets of paper in a day!

[BeeJay]

In Victorian paper mills, women and children worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week to cut up cotton rags for the paper making process so rag sorters would also have been involved in the industry.

My 2xgt-grandmother was a rag cutter/sorter. This description is from BBC History magazine (Dec/07):

“Rag sorters and cutters, exclusively women, prepared rags for pulping to produce the raw material for papermaking. They sorted the rags by material and colour and removed buttons and other objects. They then cut them up into small strips so that the beating machines, used to degrade the cloth in water into a thick cellulose soup, could work more efficiently. This was the final stage in a process that began with the door-to-door collections of the rag and bone men. The women were not spared the dirt, fleas and ticks of the original owners. They worked in a separate area of the mill.”

[lesleys]

Not exactly paper - but derived from - I have relatives from a long line of Padburys making cardboard and boxes in London, still operating today under a different name due to marriage in 1875

[mfwebb]

My late wife's father was a paper maker at The Star Paper Mills in Barnsley, South Yorkshire -- now, sadly, built over by an ASDA superstore.

All the best,
Malcolm Webb
Lincoln UK

[Jan1954]

Paper making was a large industry in Apsley, near Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire and even I can remember John Dickinson's mills being there.

Another interesting website about paper making can be found at:
http://www.
thepapertrail.org.uk/
Click on "History and People" in the sidebar on the left.

[Rove]

John Coxhead (b 13-04-1784) married Sophia Matthews 1810, of Speen, Newbury Berks. (Speen is west of Newbury)
John died 31.7.1838 aged 55 yrs. John Coxhead’s Will dated 17.10.1836,
(bapt entry, of Sophia Matthews 2.8.1795, - d/o James & Hannah Matthews.)
John Coxhead was a ' papermaker '

[emeltee]

My King ancestors were also paper makers by trade. The family were in Hemel Hempsted in 1807 when my 3 x gt grandfather was christened aged 5.The family originated from Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire. Sometime after 1807 they moved to Durham and then later the son Thomas moved to Richmond, Yorkshire. So Thomas King, his brother James and father Francis were all papermakers. If anyone has details of paper mills in Durham and Richmond I'd be interested to hear about them.

Margaret