Week 12 - An Address with a Story - 52 Ancestors

"An Address with a Story" is the theme of this week's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" Challenge.  Below is my Danson ancestral home,   Trap Farm, Carleton, Lancashire  - but not quite as I envisaged it!

Trap Farm, Carleton, near Poulton-le-Fylde Lancashire, c.1998. 

 

Trap Farm, c.1998

My first knowledge of Trap Farm as my ancestral home came from obtaining the birth certificate of my great grandfather' James Danson.    I found the farm on the current Ordnance Survey Map and set out to find it on a visit to the Fylde c.1998.  

Situated amidst fields on what is now a busy road, it was a sorry sight - dilapidated and overgrown.

In the 1841 Census, 30 year old Henry (my great great grandfather) was living there with his wife Elizabeth (Calvert), five daughters - Betty, Grace, Mary, Margaret and Ellen, his much older brother Peter and two servants.

By the time of the 1851 Census,  it was a household of 13. Henry was described as a farmer of 31 acres. Eldest daughter (now married)  Elizabeth  (Betty)  was there  with her three sisters and her husband Thomas Bailey, whilst second daughter Grace had left home.  But there were now two sons - John and Henry  plus Henry(senior) 's brother  Peter and two servants.   How did they all fit into what looked a small farmhouse?  My great grandfather James, was born 1852 at Trap Farm, 

By the time of the next census in 1861 the Danson family was no longer at Trap.

 

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 But thanks to an Internet contact, Janet,  more details came to light on the Danson family at Trap Farm.  

 

Janet was descended  from John Danson, brother of my great grandfather James.  John as the eldest son had inherited  the family bible which included three pages of scrawled writing.  This took the Danson family  at Trap Farm back an earlier generations - It gets a bit confusing as the same Christian names appear down the decades!

The  page (left)  headed January 4 1827 “Be good to the poor” features, among the  signatures, Henry Danson (my GGG grandfather), Elizabeth (Brown) Danson (his wife)  and James Danson (their son);  also an entry “January 1^st 1827 James Danson, Sone of Henry Danson” – which must mark the death of Henry’s youngest son at the age of 15.   Another entry that can be deciphered is for “Elen (?) Simpson Borne 29 October 1811”

Another page (below)  also features signatures scrawled all ways - ones that can be deciphered are    Henry Danson, Trap, Elizabeth Danson,  Ellen Danson, Carleton, Peter Danson, Ellie Simpson, Carleton, Trap, Servant, 1830.

Ellen and Peter were siblings of Henry. The fact that servant Ellie Simpson  was also included in the activity and signed her name,  somehow casts  a lovely informal light on the household - though the fact they used the Bible for these scribbles  raises other issues !

 

Fifty years on, John (1844-1914),  my great grandfather's brother, made a much neater job of recording births and deaths in his own  family,  with this beautifully written page  which even includes the days of the week when they were born.

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Years later I returned to Carleton,  fully expecting Trap Farm to be wiped off the map and replaced by a modern housing estate.   To my surprise it was still there, but was undergoing a transformation into a modern home.

 

Trap Farm, c.2011 

I searched on the British Newspaper Archive website to see if I could find anything on the farm, but came across only an advert o.nthe sale of livestock.  

 

I have since heard that the farm has been demolished  -  and my ancestral home at Trap Farm, Carleton  is no more,  after being a family home for nearly 200 years.   

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