This very short piece looks at the next younger children of Edward and Betsey (nee Hodgetts) Alsop , having dealt with their eldest daughter Hannah in my last piece. This piece covers Sarah, John, Thomas andMary. Joseph will be looked at in the next piece, as he has turned out to have quite a lot of information available about him, and the remaining children Edward, Mary Ann and Rhoda will be in the final piece.
This picture (copyright unknown) shows the view to Turners Hill from Hawes Lane which would have been very familiar to the Alsop family, their farm was just over the wall! They must also have had good views of Turner’s Hill, and this was before the hillside quarries really ate into the hillside, and their own quarry also created a very large hole! I am not sure what the enormous heap on the right is, as I am not aware of any mining in this immediate area which would create spoil. Perhaps it was material from their quarry or perhaps it was Alsop’s Hill which appears on the 1902 OSMap. I think that the houses on the left are in Tippity Green and it is possible that by this time, the mill and farm may have disappeared.
Sarah Alsop (1805-1884)
Sarah was born early in 1805 and baptised on the 2 June 1805 at St Giles. In 1841, 1851 and 1861 censuses she was living at Mill Farm, one of several unmarried children of Edward. In 1871 she had moved to Mincing Lane where she was living with her sister-in-law, Eliza Alsop (widow ofJoseph) . In this census she is described, at the age of 69, as an ‘idiot’ which does not have quite the same meaning as it might today but implies some sort of mental condition or handicap. However, by 1881 she had moved to 93 Rowley Village where she was living with Jesse Patrick, a tailor and his wife. By now Sarah was 77 but there is no mention in this census of any health issues. Whether Sarah was suffering from dementia we cannot tell nor whether any health issues might have prevented her from marrying but it seems unlikely that she would have lived to such a great age if she had suffered from Downs Syndrome or some such disability. It is possible that she had some degree of learning difficulties and certainly she was looked after with the family until at least 1871. She never married.
Sarah died in Rowley Regis and was interred at St Giles on 27 April 1884, aged 79 and ‘of the village’.
John Alsop (1807 -?)
John Alsop, named presumably for his grandfather John Alsop, was baptised at St Giles on 4 October 1807. And that is the only definite information I can find of him. I cannot find a burial or a marriage for him in Rowley Regis or the surrounding area. The period of his younger life was before censuses, of course, so there are no clues there. There is a possible baptism for a John Alsop, son of John and Mary Alsop at Dudley St Thomas in 1839, the father being a baker who could be the right man. But I cannot find that couple in the 1841 Census so that is also inconclusive. There are three other trees on Ancestry which have John on them but none of them have any further mention. It is tempting to assume that he died in infancy but no subsequent sons were called John, as often happens when an infant dies and a later sibling is given the same name, especially when it is a family name. So John is a mystery!
Thomas Alsop (1809-1865)
Thomas was baptised at St Giles on 29 October 1809. He was living, unmarried, with his family at the Windmill Farm in 1841, in 1851 when his occupation was given as ‘Farmer’s son’ and in 1861 when, at 51, he was the farmer at Blowershill Farm (otherwise known as Mill Farm or Windmill Farm), farming 35 acres. His father had died in 1860 so Thomas had taken over the farm but there is no reference at any stage to him being involved with the milling trade, unlike two of his brothers. He was still single in 1861 and his unmarried sisters Rhoda and Sarah were also living there. John Wright, a labourer and carter born in Rous Lench , near Evesham, Worcestershire, was also living there. Another instance of labour being brought in from outside the area, even for relatively unskilled work for which one would have thought there would have been suitable local candidates.
Thomas Alsop, of Blower’s Hill, was buried at St Giles on 10 July 1865, aged 54, having outlived his father by only five years. In the next census, his sister Sarah, as related above, had moved to live with her sister-in-law in Mincing Lane which would tie in with this.
Mary Alsop (1811-1813)
Mary was baptised on 24 November 1811 at St Giles and buried there less than two years later on 17 October 1813. The entry in the Burial Register has her abode as the Windmill and the cause of death as a ‘bowel complaint’, a very common cause of death for infants, not only then but for more than a century to come, before water supplies and sewage disposal conditions were improved in the area which helped gradually to reduce the number of infant deaths.
The next brother, Joseph, turns out to have quite a lot of information available so he will probably have a post of his own, hopefully very soon.
rowleyregislosthamlets.co.uk 