The Family Tree

Stretham Branch

Little Thetford Branch


The Dewsbury family of Cambridgeshire

The earliest record of the Dewsbury family comes from 1696 when my 8xGt. Grandparents, Bartholomew Dewsbury and Hester baptise a Bartholomew Dewsbury at the Stuntney parish church in Cambridgeshire, just a couple of miles North of Ely and within the clear view of the magnificent Cathedral.

After what appears to be just three children, the family shifts to Stretham and nearby Little Thetford. Most of the family lived in Stretham, Cambridgeshire but by the end of the 19th Century, some branches had moved to London and the Isle of Wight.

Dewsbury of Little Thetford

In nearby Little Thetford (described as a hamlet of Stretham), another Dewsbury family seems to exist but at this time I have struggled to really link the two together. Geographically, there's only a mile or two between them, so it seems unlikely that the families are two separate ones, especially as the surname isn't particularly a common one. Of this family, Laura Dewsbury, the daughter of Henry Jones Dewsbury, a miller and publican, and his wife Mahalah Randall, married into my Yarrow family in the same village.

This large Dewsbury family lived at The Water Mill in Little Thetford, Cambridgeshire and the family operated the chain bridge (as remembered by my Gt. Grandmother, Maude) which was usually very busy as it was used as a handy shortcut across the river. On one side of the River Ouse is Little Thetford, the other, Barway. Henry James Dewsbury ran The Water Mill and his wife Mahalia ran the Chain Ferry between the two places. Years later, one of Elsie Dewsbury's (Henry's daughter) sons recalled that Henry James Dewsbury had a beard "just like Father Christmas".

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