The adjoining towns of Oswaldtwistle and Church lie between Blackburn and Accrington in Lancashire and this area, associated as it is with James Hargreaves who invented the 'Spinning Jenny', was extremely important in the Industrial Revolution. These extracts show the development of many industries and the change from handloom weaving at home to the employment of hundreds in large mills and factories.
This site should contain all the entries in the two towns for the HAWORTH surname and its variants such as HEYWORTH and HOWARTH. With the exception of 1881-1901 it should also contain all references in Oswaldtwistle only for surnames such as HARGREAVES, TATTERSALL, SIDDLE and many others. For full information on the surnames covered please refer to the introductory page for each census year.
The census extracts can be accessed in two ways; either click on the link to the relevant census year on the left toolbar and search through all the entries using the find function of your browser or, if you are looking for someone with a HAWORTH surname, you can use the HAWORTH Index link. Using either method you can access more details on a member of a HAWORTH family, e.g Baptism, Death etc., by clicking on their Reference or Family Number. Please note that all family data links are not yet working properly
DISCLAIMER!
Where I claim to have included every reference to a certain surname please consider that I may be in error. As anyone who has 'done' a census will know, it's easy to miss people out and also to be unable to read the ennumerator's handwriting! It must also be remembered that some people avoided the ennumerator, that the ennumerators misunderstood what they were told or were even deliberately misled and that some of their spellings were very quirky indeed!
So it should come as no surprise that ages are not consistent, Christian and Surnames change and even birthplaces vary from census to census!
The HAWORTH FamiliesI am interested in Oswaldtwistle because my HAWORTH family lived there right from the start of the 19th Century. They worked in the cotton printing industry and were also devout Methodists being involved in the foundation of the Hippings (latterly known as Mount Pleasant and now Rhyddings) Wesleyan Methodist Chapel. The surname of HAWORTH in its vatious forms is extremely common in Oswaldtwistle and Church so when I was looking for information on my particular branch of the family I kept every piece of data in case it would be relevant to my research later on. In conjunction with the census data I have been able to attribute some of these facts to nearly 700 individuals who lived in Church or Oswaldtwistle who possessed the name of HAWORTH at some time in their lives. Using the HAWORTH Index and Notes which contains entries for all the 1600+ members of the HAWORTH families you can compare their census entries across the years and access any further infomation I have on them and and their family. This detailed information can also be found at HAWORTH Trees.
I think that I have managed to track down most of my own particular Haworths in the 19th Century and their story can be found at My Haworths
Let others know you are out there!If you find an ancestor on these pages please sign the Guestbook if you would like others researching the same family to contact you. You can also mail me if you want to ask any questions or challenge my assumptions. If you report any errors or problems with the site I shall try to rectify them as soon as possible.