The Roskell family

I was intrigued to find I had a DNA second cousin, Debbie, and excited when she replied to my message and cited Roskell as one of her ancestor surnames. Grace Roskell was my mum’s mum, but my life didn’t overlap with any of my grandparents (this may explain my interest in tree-tracing)! When I sent Debbie details of my Roskell connection, she told me that she was the granddaughter of Frank Roskell, one of my grandmother’s younger brothers. She even recognised a photo I’d scanned from my cousin’s collection!

The predicted relationship between Debbie and myself turned out to be correct!

One of Debbie’s cousins – Phil Roskell – had put the Roskell tree on Ancestry, which was a big help, and great for sharing photos! I knew that our great grandmother Margery Roskell married her cousin, George Roskell on 23 September 1882 at Hambleton. Debbie’s dad Derek Roskell told me that they fell in love before realising they were cousins, and it seems that this wasn’t uncommon at the time.

Derek told me that his grandparents George and Margery had 16 children, though some died in infancy. The 1911 Census shows the family living at Silcocks Cottage, Skippool Road, Thornton-le-Fylde. R Silcock & Sons was a market gardening business run from nearby Thornton Hall.

The household of Debbie and Sally’s great grandparents in 1911. George was a farm labourer. Debbie’s grandfather, Frank, is listed age 8, and Sally’s grandmother, Grace, was the eldest child so had left home and had 5 children of her own by 1911

Here are photos of Margery and George from Phil Roskell’s tree on Ancestry:

… and my cousin’s more formal photos of Margery as a young woman:

The next daughter, Isabella, married Thomas Masheder a “Coal Hawker” and they lived at 23 Graham Street, Lancaster, in 1911, with three children.

The third daughter, Annie, married Thomas Shorrock, and in 1911 they lived at Lark Cottage, Westby, near Kirkham. The couple had four sons: Thomas 1911, William 1913, Robert 1916 and George 1922. There must also have been a daughter, as an ‘M Shorrock, Niece, Chapel Farm, Mowbreck Lane, Wesham’ was the informant on the  death certificate of the youngest of the Roskell siblings, Fanny, in 1949.

Moving on to Debbie’s grandfather, Frank Roskell born in 1903 was the only son to survive to adulthood. Debbie’s dad Derek told me that Frank worked for Silcocks before joining the Police when he was around 19 years old. He married Elizabeth Singleton in 1927 and the family moved from place to place as Frank was given new postings. They had two sons: George and Derek.

It’s great to see these photos of Frank in his Police uniform!

Frank and Elizabeth Roskell with their eldest son George

From the age of 13 until she married in 1927, Elizabeth Singleton worked as a pastry cook for Burtons’ Biscuits at their shop in Devonshire Road, Blackpool. Her employers gave her a gold sovereign initialled necklace for her twenty-first birthday.

Derek remembers visiting my grandparents’ house at 22 Tithebarn Street, Poulton, with many of the ten older girls fussing over him as a shy young boy. He told me stories I’d heard from my mum, of  the sisters dressing up for a night out in wartime, involving painting a line down the back of the calf instead of real stockings! Derek’s older brother George used to pole vault across the Wyre to meet up with his Poulton cousins at a place where a small island made it possible!

The photo below is of George and Derek’s Armer cousins at 16 Longfield Avenue, Poulton, in 1927, before Derek remembers visiting them at 22 Tithebarn Street during World War II.

Grace Roskell’s family in 1927. My mother is Ethel on the front row

To put it differently, Grace Roskell (my grandmother) was policeman Frank Roskell’s older sister, Derek’s aunt and Debbie my 23&me 2nd cousin’s great aunt (a family tree is much needed here)!

23&me correctly predicted Debbie’s relationship to me from the 2.83% of DNA that we share!

And a more detailed tree that reads horizontally (sorry for the change of layout, but it’s the quickest way to create them in Microsoft Word)!

Roskell tree, with thanks to Phil Roskell’s Ancestry page. The double vertical bar is the way of representing my great grandparents’ cousin marriage

The sudden deaths of Margery Roskell’s two brothers in Barrow-in-Furness

I noticed that two of Margery’s brothers died young in Barrow-in-Furness, where they were listed in 1891 as shipyard labourers, with their widowed father Robert, born in Hambleton.

Robert and his 2 sons at 5 Hope Street, Barrow, in 1891

Robert had been widowed 45 when his wife Ann died at 36 from phthisis, or TB, in 1874.

The family remained at 5 Hope Street in Barrow, where the shipping industry provided work. Robert’s employment in the Censuses of 1871, 1881 and 1891 was Labourer at steelworks, General labourer, then Plate layer, supporting his young adult children.

The youngest, George Roskell, was just 26 when he died, so I searched the British Newspaper Archive to try and find out more. It’s not unusual for deaths of young men to be reported in the press, as they may be the result of an accident or a crime. Under the headline “Sad Death at Barrow” (Soulby’s Ulverston Advertiser, Thursday 6th January 1898), I read that George had been playing in the Barrow Volunteer Band on December 27th, but that he went home in great pain that evening. The doctor was called in the morning and George was admitted to the North Lonsdale Hospital, where he died on December 31st. A post mortem was requested by friends, and the cause of death was found to be rupture of the bladder.

The report is too blurred to reproduce usefully, but ends with with a poignant observation by band member Enoch Marsh who was playing in the December 27th concert:

about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, [Marsh] mentioned that the deceased was not sending the tone out of the instrument the same as usual, and said to him, “It is hard work, George,” to which he replied “What are you getting at; I am alright.”

George’s older brother Robert Roskell died in summer 1918, so I immediately checked Forces War Records, thinking he was killed in the war. No Roskell deaths were recorded in that year, so again I searched the Newspaper Archive, which came up with another sad story:

Death of my great-grandmother’s younger brother reported in the Lancashire Evening Post, 3 August 1918

Not for the first time, I’m grateful for modern improvements in health and safety at work.

Sometime after George’s death from the ruptured bladder, his widowed father Robert went back to Fylde to live with his daughter Margery at 13 Skipool Road, Thornton. A large household, and nice to see the Roskells from Barrow and Hambleton reunited.

George and Margery Roskell’s household in the 1901 Census

Robert had lived through the death of his young wife from TB, and had been pre-deceased by at least two of his children. He died in 1902 aged 73.

Fanny Roskell: the photo passed down in two branches of the family

My cousin Barbara showed me a lovely photo of our great aunt Fanny Roskell and told me that she had curvature of the spine. Fanny took Barbara’s mother to the birthday party at which she met Leslie Walshaw who she went on to marry in 1938. It made me smile to see the same photo in Debbie’s family!

Fanny died at just 42 from heart failure, which may have been part of her condition. As I mentioned near the beginning of this post, the informant was M Shorrock, Niece.

Fanny worked as a domestic cleaner and lived at the Bungalow, Mowbreck Lane, Wesham (just north of Kirkham in southern Fylde). Her niece lived at Chapel Farm on the same lane, but, from what I can tell, no longer standing.

1912 map showing Chapel Farm and Mowbreck Lane top right

A big thank you to my DNA 2nd cousin Debbie’s family for sharing their Roskell stories, and to my 1st cousin Barbara who grew up locally and remembers the family. I was told by Debbie’s dad that the Roskell surname derives from Rosgill, known as “the valley of the horses” just northwest of Shap. A hamlet that’s on my list to visit!