• General Notes

  Blackshaws Moor Farm, Leek Frith, Staffordshire.
  https://www.ancestry.co.uk/boards/surnames.robinson/6588.1.2.2.2.1/mb.ashx
  Source: Geoff Webb
  John Falkenor ROBINSON was christened at Leek on the 6th of October 1759 an illegitimate son of Elizabeth ROBINSON.   Leek is a city located in the northern part of Staffordshire County, central England with a current population of around twenty thousand.  Illegitimate children were quite common in 18th century Britain and Elizabeth ROBINSON is believed to have given birth to several infants out of wedlock, including a Samuel ROBINSON who was born in 1762.  
  
  On the 12th of March 1800 John ROBINSON married Sarah WHITE, who originated from nearby Horton and was sixteen years John's junior.   The couple settled on a forty-acre property named Bank Top Farm in the parish of Leek Frith.   Leek Frith makes up the northern most point of Staffordshire and adjoins the counties of Cheshire and Derbyshire.
  
  This portion of Staffordshire is hilly, picturesque and renown for its bleak and sudden climate changes, which have claimed many unprepared travellers and locals alike.   Today the parish's main village named Meerbrook has a population of just a few hundred and is situated a few English miles to the north of Leek.  Bank Top Farm lies approximately two kilometres to the north of the township of Meerbrook and four kilometres to the south east of the Cheshire county border.
  
  John and Sarah ROBINSON's family was one of three with the ROBINSON surname, who resided in and around Meerbrook at that time.  Another family descended from a William ROBINSON who was born at Meerbrook in 1773, the youngest of six known children of Thomas and Mary ROBINSON.  Thomas ROBINSON is believed to have been a brother or cousin of the above-mentioned Elizabeth ROBINSON.   John and William ROBINSON gave their children similar names including three of their sons Thomas, William and Joseph.
  
  The children of both ROBINSON families were predominantly yeoman farmers; that is owner-occupiers of small properties, some as small as ten acres.   Land changed hands on a regular basis in those days, as folk died suddenly and/or married into neighbouring families.
   
  John and Sarah's sixth and last child Joseph was born in 1812 and around 1815 Bank Top was sold to neighbour James HINE.  The ROBINSONs purchased a property named Blackshaw's Moor Farm (163 acres) from a William RIDER.  The farm was located around three kilometres to the south east of Bank Top.  The estate was originally positioned inside the western parish boundary of Tittesworth, however a border change in 1882 officially moved the farm into Leek Frith.   Blackshaw's Moor Farm is situated two kilometres north east of the outskirts of the city of Leek.  It was at Blackshaw's Moor that Mrs Sarah ROBINSON died on the 8th of October 1822 aged just forty-six years.
  
  The 1841 census named John ROBINSON as eighty plus years, residing at Blackshaw's Moor Farm with his second son also named John and young John's family.   Of the farm's four boarding farm labourers, they included a William and Thomas ROBINSON who were a son and a grandson of the previously mentioned William ROBINSON (b 1773).   Over the years many of the cousins' teenage children worked as agricultural labourers on their relatives' farms.  The 1881 census listed William's youngest son Ralph (b 1822) as the owner of Bank Top Farm (47 acres).
  
  Mr John ROBINSON died at Blackshaw's Moor Farm on the 26th of August 1850 aged approximately ninety-one years; depending on which you believe, his death certificate, his tombstone or the St Matthews Meerbrook church records?  He was buried in St Matthew's Cemetery with his grandson Robert ROBINSON, who died two years later aged eighteen years.
     
  John and Sarah ROBINSON named their eldest son Thomas (b 1801) and Thomas married Ellen WARDLE from Ipstones.   Ipstones is situated around fifteen kilometres to the east of Meerbrook and Thomas is believed to have been working on his Uncle William ROBINSON's farm at the time of the couple's marriage.   Thomas and Ellen had nine children born at a variety of locations between Ipstones and Leek Frith.   Thomas was perhaps the least successful of John senior's four sons, working as a farm labourer much of his life, before living in semi-retirement on a property named Waterhouse, Leek Frith in the late 1860s.
  
  In contrast John and Sarah's youngest sons William (b 1809) and Joseph (b 1812) were both very successful farmers, owning properties named Windy Gates and Prospect in Leek Frith.   William's estate was located just two kilometres to the north of Blackshaw's Moor and at a sizable 200 acres; it was one of the largest in the district.   William had eleven children, including twin girls who died when they were just a few weeks old.   William's only surviving son Joseph took over Windy Gates when William died in 1886.
  
  As previously mentioned, John senior's second son was also named John (b 1802) and it is from his family that we descend.   John ROBINSON junior married Elizabeth WORTHINGTON on the 29th of December 1830 at Leek.   Elizabeth was the second child of Thomas and Ruth WORTHINGTON nee DEAVILL, who were farmers at Whitehouse in the parish of Onecote.   The village of Onecote (or Oncote) is similar in size to Meerbrook and located around seven kilometres to the east of Leek.     Whitehouse farm is situated on the western boundary of the parish and located less than half an English mile to the south east of the ROBINSON's property.
  
  John and Elizabeth ROBINSON's first child was born the year after their marriage while the couple were living on the outskirts of Leek and the ROBINSONs named her Sarah.  In 1832 John and Elizabeth moved in with John's father at Blackshaw's Moor Farm and it was at there that their remaining eight children were born.  All nine offspring survived infancy and at the time of the 1851 census, all with the exception of the couple's second daughter Ruth, were living on the family property.  By then the family property was a sizable 163 acres.
  
  Unfortunately for the ROBINSONs their good fortunes were short lived when John ROBINSON junior died suddenly after a five-week bout of bronchitis, on the 28th of April 1853.   Young John was just fifty-one and following his passing the family went their separate ways.  Eldest daughter Sarah married a local farmer named William BROUGH of Hazelwood House in March 1859.   The family's youngest son Ralph went to work for his Uncle Thomas ROBINSON.   
  
  By the 1861 census the farm had been sold and Mrs Elizabeth ROBINSON and her daughter Mary had retired to a sixteen-acre property at nearby Nether Hay, on the southern outskirts of the hamlet of Upperhulme.   The ROBINSON's oldest son John had moved his farming interests to Macclesfield, Cheshire, where he operated a 50-acre property with the assistance of his sister Ruth and younger brother William.  The ROBINSON's second son Joseph took up farming at nearby Henbury with his sister Hannah and the ROBINSON's youngest sibling Ralph.  
  
  In 1862 Ruth married John PIMLOTT, whose family also originated from Leek Frith.  In 1864 young Mary married Charles BROWN at Macclesfield, Cheshire.  Charles was a travelling draper who originated from Dumphrieshire, Scotland.   The BROWNs resided at number 8 Kings Street in the Staffordshire city of Newcastle Under Lyme, where their two children where born.   In 1868 Mary died suddenly and her mother moved in to take care of the BROWN children.  Her son Ralph joined the family, working as a draper for Charles BROWN.  
  
  In 1869 Ruth and John PIMLOTT together with young William ROBINSON migrated to Victoria, Australia.   Joseph moved to Liverpool where he married Fanny BUTLER from Gloucester and became a bookkeeper.  A few years later Mrs Elizabeth ROBINSON moved back to Leek Frith to be with her daughter Sarah.  Sarah was widowed with three children in January 1869, when she was two months pregnant. 
  
  In the 1880s, Elizabeth returned to Newcastle where she lived with her son Ralph.  Ralph continued working as a travelling tailor, residing at number 5 Castle Street and marrying widow Maria BLOXHAM nee DERRINGTON.   Ralph and Maria had just one son William and the family remained at Castle Street until Ralph's passing in1909.   The final whereabouts of the ROBINSON's children, John, Joseph, Elizabeth and Hannah remain unknown, perhaps they also migrated overseas?
  
  Mrs Elizabeth ROBINSON died at Castle Street on the 15th of February 1889 aged eighty-five years.   She was buried with her husband John in St Matthew's Cemetery.   Both John junior and his father's tombstones have survived the elements of time and still stand today.  Although farm acreages were unable to support most of John senior's descendants, a handful remained in the district, at least until recent times.      
  
  For the last twenty years Blackshaw's Moor Farm has been a training camp for the British scouting association and military personnel.
    
  

Details of John's family with Mrs Sarah White