Hillary Rodham Clinton
Church on
the Hill
The Roddams of Northumberland
County Durham Roddams
From Washington County Durham to Washington D.C.
Jonathan Rodam (I)
Joseph Roddam (II)
Jonathan Roddam (II)
A little mystery
Acknowledgments and sources
Individuals
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Coxon Brothers
History of
Last
names
Family Members
Roddam
Coxon
|
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AMERICA’S FIRST LADY
AND
THE RODDAMS OF NORTH WEST DURHAM
by Geoff Nicholson
NOTE: The surname of
the family in this account has been spelled in different records as Roddam
or Rodham. Although both spellings are found at all periods, Roddam would
seem to have been the dominant version in the nineteenth century and
Rodham in the twentieth. As most of this article refers to a period before
the twentieth century the ”Roddam” form has been used throughout, apart
from direct quotations.
Picture the scene
outside Holy Trinity Parish Church, Washington, on Sunday 8th January
1775. Among those arriving for a service would be a young man and his wife
who had made their way down Village Lane from the bleak hilly area beyond,
known as Black Fell, where Washington parish merged with that of
Chester-le-Street. He was Joseph Roddam, and the reason for his visit to
church that January morning would be cradled in the arms of his wife,
Dorothy.
It was only about a
year since Joseph and Dorothy had married at St. Cuthbert’s Church in
Chester-le-Street and baby Jonathan was their first child. No doubt he
must have appeared healthy if his parents dared to take him out across
Black Fell in the middle of January. That was something to be thankful for
in those days of high infant mortality, as was Dorothy’s recovery from the
birth. Unfortunately any confidence his parents had in baby Jonathan’s
continued good health was to be shattered when he died soon after his
second birthday. That tragedy was not to he foreseen at the time of his
baptism, however, and no doubt Joseph and Dorothy took the health of young
Jonathan as a good omen for the future of their family, which was indeed
to grow over the next few years until they were proud parents to five
children.
Possibly Joseph and
Dorothy were not alone. There may well have been other Roddam relations
there to celebrate little Jonathan’s baptism with them. There were Roddams
in the neighbouring parish of Penshaw who, from their similar use of first
names were probably related and who might have used the occasion for a
family re-union and celebration. Some of Dorothy’s family from
Chester-le-Street ore almost sure to have turned up. They were Bells, a
name found profusely all over the northeast and by no means unknown in the
Washington area today. Perhaps the little party had walked down the lane,
or perhaps, in anticipation of a hard pull back up the mile-long hill,
they had hired or borrowed a cart in honour of the occasion. Either way,
they are not likely to have neglected the old northeastern tradition of
the Christening Bag, which continued in local mining villages until within
the last forty years. This was to make up a ”bag” or package of small
items which would please a child – a piece of cake, a bun, some fruit, a
coin if one could be afforded and perhaps some small toy. The ”Bag” would
then be presented to the first child of the opposite sex to the baby whom
the Christening party met with on their way to the Church.
As the group of
people made their way across Washington Village Green, past the village
pond where a witch had once been ducked a»d up the steps lo Holy Trinity
Church, they could not fail to notice Washington Old Hill, an essentially
seventeenth century Manor House adjacent to the Church. This house, now in
the care of the National Trust, is on the site of, and contains fragments
of the medieval mansion of the Washington family who had been Lords of the
Manor many centuries before and who had taken their names from their
village, Joseph and Dorothy would have had a good view of the Old H»11
from outside the -Church on the hill”, as local people still call the old
church’s nineteenth-century successor. It was well past its best by Joseph
and Dorothy's time; there was no longer a single Lord of the Manor,
and the Old Hall was now tenanted by several families of’ much more humble
description. It had, indeed, began its long decline into a multi-occupied
slum from which it was only rescued in the middle of this century, through
the efforts of local enthusiasts and American wishers-wishers.
Did Joseph Roddam
know anything about the troubles, which were beginning in our American
Colonies’? Possibly so – it was just over a year since the Boston Tea
Party; and good stories like that one travel far and fast. Did he possibly
know that it was a Washington descendant, George by name, who was leading
the rebel colonists? However unlikely it is that an ordinary workingman
would have knowledge of such events we must answer ”Yes”, for it is at
least a possibility. It is less likely that he could have predicted that
those events in America were the birth pangs of what was to become a great
nation and incredible that he could have even thought it possible that his
own four-great grand- daughter would one day be the First Lady of that
nation. Yet that is so, as we shall be shown. First, however, just who
were the Roddams?
It used to be the
proud claim of the Northumberland family of Roddam of Roddam that they had
continuously occupied the same land from pre-conquest days to 1808.
Whatever one thinks of that and of their supposed charter of King
Athelstan which, so they claimed, granted them the lands of Roddam ”Sae
long as muir grows moss and cnout grow s hare”, the fact is that they were
a very ancient family indeed in the Till valley, and Wooler districts of
north Northumberland. In the reign of Henry VIII the antiquary Leland
speculated that they had once owned a much more extensive estate ”ontyl
one of them having to wife one of the Unifraville daughters, killed a man
of name and thereby lost the principale of eight hundred. markes by yere;
so that at this time Roddam or otherwise Rudham, of Northumbrelande is but
a man of mene landes”. There could well be some truth in the story, as the
Borderlands in which they lived were unruly long after the rest of the
country had been civilized. Certainly the claim that they had married into
the Norman Baronial Umfraville family, who were related to the Earls of
Angus, is not at all unlikely as later generations married daughters of
many of the County families of Northumberland – Grey, Selby, Brandling,
Collingwood, Forstcr, Lawson, Lisle and Swinburne among them.
Roddam is, of course,
not far as the crow flies from Kirk Yetholm on the Scottish side of the
Border, the end of the Pennine Way and once a noted Gipsy centre. It has
been said that a Clinton was once crowned King of the Gypsies there!
The last Roddam to
possess the old family estate was Captain (later Admiral) Robert Roddam
(c.1719-1808). He served the Royal Navy with distinction in the
mid-eighteenth century, rising from Midshipman to Captain in the course of
the French Wars. When the Peace was declared Captain Roddam retired to
live at Roddam, on what was then the property of his elder brother,
Edward. Edward died in 1776 however, and Robert succeeded him as owner of
the family’s lands. When War broke out with those rebellious American
Colonies, Captain Roddam was recalled and served in the Mediterranean
until in 1778 he received a posting in British waters, as Rear Admiral of
the White. He continued in active service and, working his way up the
ranks of Admirals, eventually in 1795 became Senior Admiral of the Red,
the highest-ranking Admiral in the Royal Navy. He lived to the age of 89
and died in Newcastle
in 1808, having lived to see the triumphs of Nelson and his own distant
kinsman, Collingwood, at Trafalgar and elsewhere.
Although he was three
times married, Admiral Roddam left no children and others not named Roddam
inherited the ancient estates of his family. His first wife had been a
lady nee Lucy Mary Clinton – a cousin of the Earl of Lincoln, so not
likely to have been connected with the Kirk Yetholme gipsy! – Who died in
New York, where her father was Governor, after less than two years of
marriage?
Was the Washington
coal miner a descendant of the Northumberland Roddams? We shall probably
never know for sure, as the records which would have provided the details
have not been found and are unlikely now to exist, but in all probability
many now hearing that name will be descended from some younger son of that
family, for whom no landed provision could be made and who had therefore
to seek his fortune in trade or elsewhere. The records of the various
Newcastle Guilds show apprentices arriving in the town from all over
Northumberland in just those circumstances from the mid-seventeenth
century onwards and there would be many in other local towns whose arrival
went unrecorded. From landed gentry to coal miner would be a big step down
the social ladder and is likely to have taken several generations.
However, it will he apparent, to anyone who has ever browsed through the
late W. Percy Hedley’s ’Northumberland Families” for instance, that
families have both risen and fallen in fortune to a greater extent than is
often realised. The surname ”Roddam” or ”Rodham” is
undoubtedly a local place-name and since there is only the one place which
fits that name it seems reasonable to assume that all Roddams are
descended from an ancestor from that place. This still leaves the
possibility, however, that the miner’s ancestor was a retainer of the
landed family who, when surnames were first being allotted in about the
thirteenth century, had already left that immediate area and was therefore
known where he was then living as ”the man from Roddam”, that being
what distinguished him from all around him.
The surname
”Roddam” or ”Rodham” was well established in County
Durham from at least Tudor times.
It is found in the sixteenth century in several parishes in the north of
the county and especially in Durham City itself. The largest concentration
in Elizabeth's reign seems to have been in the parish of Durham St.
Margaret.
The earliest mention
of the name in a County Durham Parish register is the marriage in 1541 of
a Thomas Roddam to a lady named Eleanor al Durham St. Nicholas, the
parish For the Market Place district of Durham City. However, this is only
three years after the first instruction to clergy that marriage registers
had to be kept, and St. Nicholas is one of the few parishes whose
registers have survived from that early period, so there were in all
probability many other County Durham Roddams, both before and after this
Thomas, whose family details have not been preserved for us. In the next
few years several Roddam marriages followed in Durham
City, mostly in St. Nicholas or St.
Margaret’s parish. At the very least there must have been a family of
several brothers and sisters, though possibly their relationship to each
other was more distant.
From a study of the
I.G.I. it would appear that the name was so widespread in the northern
part of the county by Elizabethan times that the first immigrant Roddams
must have arrived several generations, or several centuries, before that.
Granted that the name probably began to be used as a surname in the modern
sense sometime in the thirteenth century, there is a 300-year ”window”
during which these Roddams could have moved south.
It would be
worthwhile to speculate about what it was that drew population in to
County
Durham at that time in such numbers.
The County
Durham coal industry was important
long before the sinking of the large coalmines of the nineteenth century,
about which we hear so much. In Edward 1II’s time, coal from Winlaton in
Ryton parish was being exported in colliers to London to be used in
lime-burning operations connected with building work at Windsor Castle. By
Tudor times the organization of the industry had become much more
sophisticated and mines existed wherever the seams were easily worked.
This was around the western boundary of the coalfield or where geological
conditions caused them to outcrop. The availability of river transport was
also important, so those parts of Tyneside and Wearside where shallow
seams were close to a navigable river were where mining began. The Bishop
of Durham's Manors of Ryton, Whickham and Gateshead
soon felt the benefit and population would be drawn into them, sometimes
from places quite far off. Other coal-related industries were also
thriving. To export coal required colliers, which in their turn required
men to build them and crews lo man them. The availability of cheap fuel
was also a great inducement to the iron-working and lead-smelting
industries, and helped create a demand for those metals which made their
mining viable.
Many of the
population who arrived in the northern and eastern parts of County
Durham in Tudor times, however,
were not pulled in by expanding industry so much as pushed out of their
original homes by the Border troubles. Elizabeth’s reign in particular was
marked by trouble with the ”Reivers” as the raiding Borderers were known.
These lawless men owed no loyalty to either
England
or Scotland; they simply exploited the existence of the Border to their
own advantage. To live a decent, prosperous, life on the Borders must have
become more and more difficult during those times and it is not surprising
that many Border surnames first began to appear elsewhere during the worst
of’ the troubles.
The surname Roddam is
found in Weardale from a comparatively early date. The first Roddam
baptism at Stanhope church, the parish of which includes most of Weardale,
was in l678. By then Stanhope parish was beginning to be taken over by the
lead-mining industry to the exclusion, it sometimes seems, of all else.
When lead mining was al its peak the population of Weardale was many times
what it is today and some overspill into the neighbouring and expanding
coal-mining areas of north-west County
Durham
did undoubtedly occur. 1t has been suggested that our Washington coal
miner Joseph Roddam’s ancestors may have followed that route, but any
proof’ is still lacking.
JOSEPH RODDAM (I)
The earliest record
of the Joseph Roddam who we met earlier which has yet been found and which
can definitely he identified, as referring to the name man is his marriage
at Chester-le-Street:
Joseph Roddam and
Dorothy Bell, both of this Parish, were married in the Church by Banns
this 2lst clay of May in the Year one Thousand seven hundred and
seventy-four, by. J. Powle, (Curate).
this marriage as
solemnized between us:
.Joseph X his mark Roddam
Dorothy X her mark Bell
In the Presence of
us:
John Bell
John Mallams
From their ages at
death, Joseph would appear to have been aged about 32 when he married, and
Dorothy about 26. They next appear at the christening at Washington, which
has already been mentioned. On that occasion the Clerk wrote in the
register:
1775 Jan 8 Jonathan the son of Joseph
Roddam of ye Controul
Where and what was
the ”Controul”? It was probably a tiny place, perhaps a single cottage,
among the many small coal mines at that time on the top of the hill which
on one side was Birtley Fell (Chester-le-Street parish) and on the other
was Black Fell (Washington parish) and some of which was also in the
Lamesley Chapelry of Chester-le-Street parish. Probably the name refers to
an early set of points, or a signalling system or perhaps to a level
crossing – something that in some way ”controlled” the traffic using the
waggon-ways, which served the pits.
A little more than a
year later Joseph was back at Chester-le-Street parish church, where his
next son was baptised:
1776 Mch 24 John son of Joseph Rodham,
Wright and Dorothy his wife, Birtley Fell
Here we have firm
evidence that Joseph was a ”wright”; either a waggon wright or a waggonway
wright, two jobs which were often combined. A waggonway wright would work
both on the surface waggon-ways and on those underground, in the main
roadways of the mine. Joseph was hardly unique in undertaking this work:
in 1792 a dozen collieries on the River Wear employed between them 100
waggon and waggonway wrights and by 1809 Washington colliery alone
employed six wrights and five labourers to serve them (Lewis, M.J.T.
”Early Wood Railways”, 1975, quoted. by Hair, P.E.H. in ”The Reason of my
Wrighting”, 1988, an edited version of the autobiography of Anthony
Errington, waggonway wright at nearby Felling colliery from 1778 to about
1825). It was a highly skilled job that Joseph had – Anthony Errington,
mentioned above, was bound apprentice to his father at the age of fourteen
in 1792, to learn the job in a proper way.
Tragedy struck next
winter, when both Joseph’s young children died, and were buried together
at Chester-le-Street:
1777 Jan 20 Jonathan and John, sons of
Joseph Rodham, Birtley Fell
Joseph and Dorothy
remained on Birtley Fell for at least the next four years, during which
time they had another three children baptised at
Chester-le-Street:
1778 Mch 1 Ann daughter of Joseph Rodham,
Wright, and Dorothy his wife, Birtley Fell
1779 Sep 26 Jonathan son of Joseph Roddam,
Wright, and Dorothy his wife, Birtley Fell
1781 Oct 21 Dorothy daughter of Joseph
Rodham, Wright, and Dorothy his wife, Birtley Fell
Some time between
1781 and 1784, Joseph and Dorothy may have moved from ”Birtley Fell” to
”Birtley North Side”. That was also a part of Birtley Fell so the move, if
it did actually take place (the Clerk may just have decided to be more
specific about which part of the fell he was writing about) was not a
great one. There they had three more children and again all were baptised
at Chester-le-Street:
1784 May 13 Joseph and Mary, twins of
Joseph Roddam, Joiner, and Dorothy his wife, Birtley North Side
1787 Sep 2 John son of Joseph Roddam, w.
wright, and Dorothy, Birtley North Side
This John was to die
just after his second birthday, at Northern (North-thorn), than a farm and
a few houses on the Stanley side of Shield Row (though Stanley was then
just the name of a district, and not the large mining town which grew up
there towards the end of the nineteenth century). Be was buried at
Tanfield on 10th September 1789. Sad though it is that John should have
died so young, it docs at least help us to date Joseph and Dorothy’s move
from Birtley Fell to Shield Row as being in the period 1787-1789.
Notice that in 1784
Joseph was called a joiner, whereas in 1787 he had gone back to being
called a ”w. wright”. The ”w” in ”w. wright” could mean ”waggon” or ”waggonway”,
or course. It is not necessary to assume he actually changed his
occupation; it was just that he was seen as acting in a different capacity
by the clerk on the two different occasions. It would appear that all five
of these later children survived infancy, as there is no record of any
being buried at Chester-le-Street.
Joseph died at
Northern at the age of 80 in 1822 and Dorothy lived on until 1835, when
she died at Shield Row aged 87, both ”good” ages for the period. Both were
buried in the churchyard at Tanfield.
In the next
generation it is Jonathan (horn 1779) who is of most interest to us. Be
followed his father into the coalmines, not as far as we can tell as a
wright but as an ordinary mirier. There seems to have been a mine at
Shield Row at this time and no doubt that was where he worked.
Jonathan married
Margaret Orange at St. Margaret’s Church, Tanfield, on l2th February 1804.
He would have been about 24 and Margaret about 20. Margaret had been born
in Sunderland, though most County
Durham Oranges do seem to have been concentrated in the Tanfield area, so
she was probably from a family local to that area. After his marriage
Jonathan continued to live at Northern and it was not long before he and
Margaret had a child of their own, Thomas, who was born
18th December 1804. Unfortunately, as so
often happened in those days, Margaret seems not to have recovered from
the birth, and only two months later she died. It was 7th February 1805,
less than a week before what would have been her first wedding
anniversary, and she was still only 21. When the funeral was held al
Tanfield church two days later, little Thomas was taken along to he
baptised at the same time.
Being left with a
young baby to look after and having a living to earn at the same time, it
became a matter of necessity that Jonathan should marry again, and
quickly. No doubt his parents would help out at home, and so would his
surviving brother Joseph and his sister Mary. Sister Dorothy had married
George Bland at St. Mary-the-Less in the South Bailey in
Durham
City in 1801 and was busy raising her own family in Durham St. Margaret’s
parish at the time. Indeed, it seems that Mary was probably the key to a
lot of Jonathan’s future, for on 2Sth November 1805, the very day she
married James Hepplewhite at Tanfield, Jonathan was in Durham
City marrying Ann Parkinson at St.
Mary-le-Bow church in the North Bailey, next to the Cathedral. It seems
strange that this arrangement must have meant that neither Mary nor
Jonathan could have attended each other's wedding, but it would he unwise
of us to judge family arrangements of the time through our
twentieth-century eyes. As soon as Mary was removed from the domestic
scene, Jonathan’s new wife would he installed to take over the
arrangements where she had left oft.
Before leaving Mary
Roddam we could perhaps add another of those curious footnotes, which make
family history so fascinating. As we have seen, she married James
Hepplewhite at Tanfield. James’ grandfather, William Hepplewhite, (born
1715) had been second cousin to a certain George Hepplewhite, who was born
in Ryton parish in 1727 but is not recorded there on any occasion
afterwards. The interesting thing about this is that a nation-wide I.G.I.–
based process of elimination leaves this as the only George Hepplewhite to
be a likely candidate as the great furniture designer, whose origins have
never been satisfactorily settled.”’ it is unlikely, however, that Mary
knew about this family connection and even less likely that her brother
Jonathan and his second wife Ann did.
Ann had been born in
the parish of St. Andrew, Bishop Auckland. Possibly she had come from
Bishop Auckland to Durham to be ”in service” and it is also possible that
her employer was one of the church officials or dignitaries who had their
large houses in that part of Durham City, known as the "peninsula". The
Bishop of Durham's Palace Bishop Auckland (hence that town’s name)
provides a convenient link between the two places. Speculating further,
perhaps it was while in Durham visiting his other sister, Dorothy, that
Jonathan had met Ann.
Jonathan and his new
wife settled down to produce several children, half brothers and sisters
to Thomas, Jonathan’s son by his first wife. The first was Dorothy, born
at Northern on 8th October, and baptised at Tanfield 2nd November 1806.
Next came William, born 6th October 1810, by which time Jonathan and Ann
had moved to South Moor (just to the south of Stanley and at that time
counted as part at’ Beamish Township). William was baptised on 4th
November 1810 and was followed by Joseph born at South Moor 3rd July,
baptised 6th September 18l2). After that Jonathan and Ann moved again,
this time to Quarry House near Ox hill, on the western side of Stanley. At
Quarry House they had a daughter Mary, who was baptised on 23rd October
1814, but then followed another of the child-deaths, which dogged every
generation at that time. 3oseph died and was hurried 10th February l815.
Then, after the births of another Joseph (baptised 2nd November l817) and
an Ann, young Mary died. Mary’s burial was on 1st June l 819 and again the
opportunity was taken to alleviate the sadness of’ the funeral by having a
baptism – that of Ana – at the same time. Another son, John (baptised 27th
May l82l), was born at Quarry House before the family moved again, this
time to Kip Hill, to the north of Stanley und on the other side of the
valley of the Houghall Burn to Quarry House, At Kip Hill their final
child, Ralph (baptised 21st November 1824), was home. Ralph was therefore
Jonathan’s ninth child and Ann’s eighth, though because of the two deaths
he brought the number of children in the family up to only seven.
No record has yet
been found of Jonathan’s death or burial but Ann died in 1836 (buried at
Tanfield 5th October), by which time her address was given as Shield Row,
which may indicate that she had gone to live at Northern, with those o her
husband’s relatives who were still there.
Joseph, the child who
was baptised at Tanfield on 2nd November 1817, was to become the father of
the next generation with which we should concern ourselves, although his
brothers Thomas, Jonathan, William and Ralph all left descendants in the
area. He was a coal miner like his father, and spent his life moving
around the pit-villages of the Stanley area. He married Elizabeth
Scurfield about 1840 and by the time of the 1841 census was living with
her and her mother at Craghead, just to the south of Stanley and in
Holmside Township of Lanchester parish. Elizabeth’s father had been named
Thomas, and her mother was nee Margaret Charlton, daughter of one Fenwick
Charlton, a name which indicates a descent from the widespread North
Tynedale family of Charlton and also from the Fenwicks, who are found all
over Northumberland. Their family, with their dates of baptism at Tanfield,
were Margaret (28th September 1842), Jonathan (7th June 184’3), Mary Ann
(7th March 1846), Thomas (7th July 1848, died aged 1) and Elizabeth (10th
July 1850), Dorothy (c.1854) and Isabella (born 2nd November 18S9). All
but the last two seem to have been born at Craghead and in (he cases of
Margaret and Jonathan the address can be further localised to Wagtail
Cottage.
In 1840, probably
just before he was married, Joseph Roddam was involved in a notable hewing
match, which was actually the subject of a short article in ”Monthly
Chronicle of North Country Lore and Legend” of May 1887 and a further
note in the July issue. Perhaps he was short of money for the wedding or
perhaps he just thought he should seize any opportunity to make a little
extra by making a wager he thought he could win. The match was at Shield
Row Colliery and Joseph and his opponent Robert Whitfield took up
positions, with their picks in their hands, back-to-back in a narrow
”bord” or workplace running east-west and on a given signal each commenced
hewing coal, one working to the north and the other to the south. It was
arranged that the match should last for a week (six working days). On the
third day 3oseph Roddam, who had not been doing so well, came upon what
the miners called ”open threads”, that is very friable coal which almost
fell apart as soon as it was touched with the pick. This soon gave him
such a lead that Whitfield resigned and Joseph was declared the winner. As
Roddam is supposed to have been three ”corfs”, or baskets of coals, down
before his lucky strike, Whitfield's family were rather touchy on the
subject of his great win and members of it were quick to point out the
true story when the ”Monthly Chronicle” got it slightly wrong at
their first attempt even though it was 47 years later!
Hewing coal was a
hard life and Joseph, like most miners, had probably started work at the
age of about 10 as a trap- boy, sitting in the dark keeping a door closed
and opening it when the putters were coming, graduating eventually to a
putter charged with transporting the coal from the face to the shaft
bottom, probably with the aid of ponies. Only when the men’s strengths
were at their maximum would they become hewers and as hewers were paid by
results only the fittest did well at it. To have entered into such a
competition – and to have won it as well – Joseph Roddam must have been a
strong man indeed.
When the 1851 census
came around Joseph had moved on from Craghead to Kyo, a small pit village
not far from Quarry House where he had been born. After that he seems to
have moved a few miles northwest, to the South Pontop Colliery in Colliery
parish, where be died in 1874.
The only surviving
son (horn 1843) of the mighty hewer must have been afforded a great deal
of respect in the pit villages where be lived and it is not surprising
that he became something more than an ordinary pitman. Jonathan became a
Colliery overman, one of the first steps on the management ladder. As the
system evolved, the underground ”Foreman” in a mine became called a
”Deputy”, a term which seems to have originally meant ”Deputy Overman”. A
”full” Overman, then, would he something on the 1cvel of a Shift Manager,
only one step below an Under-Viewer or Assistant Colliery Manager. The
Viewer, or Colliery Manager, might have several pits under his control, so
the Under-Viewer would be the man in charge of a particular pit. These
terms did vary somewhat between collieries.
Jonathan married
Elizabeth Simpson Bell, daughter of Thomas Bell and Elizabeth nee Dawson,
at Colliery on New Year’s Eve 1867. He moved around much the same group of
mines, as had his father and grandfather before him, and in the 188l
census we find him at 20 Hill Top Cottages, Ox hill, not far from his
father’s birthplace. His family, with years and places of birth, were
Thomas Bell (18Ei8, Greencroft), Elizabeth (1869, Kyo), Margaret (1871,
Kyo), Isabella Simpson (1873, Kyo), Joseph (1874, Ox hill), William Robert
(1876, Ox hill), Jonathan (1878, Ox hill), Hugh (1879, Ox hill) and
Elizabeth (1881, Annfield Plain, born after census day). Of these only the
eldest son, Thomas Bell Roddam, had an occupation on census day, and he
(aged 12) was a Colliery Labourer. Margaret, Isabella Simpson, Joseph and
William Robert were all 1ttending school.
Had Jonathan remained
in the Stanley district he might have progressed a little further, but
some form of colliery middle management was the best he could reasonably
have hoped for. He had raised himself just far enough above the ordinary
miner to realise there were opportunities for a better life elsewhere, hut
he would have to leave the Durham co4lfield to get them. Indeed, the
future of the New World across the Atlantic seemed much more inviting than
anything in north-west Durham, and so we find him emigrating with all his
family 1883, eventually settling in Pennsylvania a U.S.A;’
The Roddam family
history from the emigration onwards becomes more the concern of Americans
than of us but, to be brief, the story leads on from Jonathan through
Hugh, his youngest son, who died in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1965, ’ n
Hugh Ellsworth Roddam (1911-1993), a Lawyer in Little Rock, Arkansas,
whose daughter Hillary, married (”Bill”) Clinton, successively Governor of
Arkansas and President of the U.S.A.
The trail from
Washington, County
Durham to Washington
D.C. is complete.
Quite close to the
district we have been considering lies Beamish Museum and among the
artefacts they have gathered is a milk-jug with ”John and Alice Rodham,
Beamish, married November 17th 1828” on the side. This agrees with the
marriage at Tanfield church on that day of John Roddam and Alice Morion.
The problem is: what, if any, is the connection between these ”milk-jug”
Roddams and the family we have been considering’! The ”milk-jug” family
has been traced two generations further back, as well as forwards, with no
connection having been found, so the mystery remains.
As we have seen,
there have been Roddams in County Durham for at least four and a half
centuries, and in Northumberland for as long again before that, so it is
not surprising that by the early nineteenth century they had spread out
all over the region. Given the importance locally of the coal industry, it
is also not surprising to find more than one family of Roddams in the same
then-thriving mining district. There are many Roddams mentioned in the
parish registers of Tanfield and surrounding parishes who cannot yet he
connected with the family we have been concerned with. One day, when the
origins of Joseph (I) Roddam with whom we began have been discovered, then
more connections may be made.
A Jonathan Roddam who
married Elizabeth Lant at Penshaw in l768 could well he a relative of
”our” Joseph (I). They lived at ”Wapping”, near what is now Burnmoor, hut
Elizabeth died after only one year of marriage and the later history of
that Jonathan is still to be determined.
Apart from the
usual parish registers and census returns quoted in the text, use has been
made of the l992 edition of the I.G.I.’s for County Durham and
Northumberland, Wellford's ”Men of Mark Twixt Tyne and Tweed”,
Richardson’s ”Local Historians’ Table Book” (Volume 3, where there is an
illustration of the Arms of Roddam), the ”Monthly Chronicle of
North-Country Lore and Legend” (1887), and P.E.H. Hair’s edited version of
”’The Reason of my Wrighting” by Anthony Errington (197S). I musi also
acknowledge the help of Eric Hili of South Humberside, who provided the
Hepplewhite connection, of Ron Nuhley of Lanchester, of Mr. H. Boggan of
Darlington, and of M.P. Bonser of Derwentside District Council, as well as
the considerable interest of Andy Guy of Beamish Museum and the facilities
of Durham County Record Office.
(1) See ”In Search
of George Hepplewhite”, E. Hill, N.D.I’.II.S. Koumala Winter 1992
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