Category: Thompson

Thompson’s of Kirkbymoorside

The Thompson family were farming Kirkbymoorside, aka Kirkby Moorside, for generations before our 3rd Great Grandparents, Bethel THOMPSON (1800-1872) married Elizabeth SIGSWORTH (1803-1867) in Kirkbymoorside, 1828. The adorable couple are portrayed in their later years in the above photographs from the 1860s. As freehold farmers the couple employed two men to work their 55 acres as agricultural labourers, in addition...

ThompsonComments: 3

Matthias Wisker & The Golden Spectacles

250 years ago, our 5th Great Grandfather, Matthias WISKER (1742-1829), purchased a glass grinding and scientific instrument manufacturer in Spurriergate, York. The retail business was called The Golden Spectacles! It passed to the eldest Wisker son for three more generations of the family, each son qualifying as an optician. Spurriergate is built on top of a Roman road aligned with...

WiskerComments: 2

William Porter & The Driffield Navigation

The Blue Bell Inn sits opposite River Head, at the northern end of the Driffield Navigation. The landlord in the mid 18th century was our 6th Great Grandfather William PORTER (1714-1790). William was one of several Gentlemen, Freeholders, Tradesmen, and others, of the County of Yorkshire who petitioned Parliament in 1767 to pass legislation to build a navigable waterway from...

ShepherdsonComment: 1

Ralph Ryder & The Black Bear

“You can take a man out of Yorkshire but you cannot take Yorkshire out of a man.” You can always rely on a Yorkshireman’s sound judgement, economical turn of phrase, and thrifty ways. Why pay for a professional when thou can do it thissen? Having spent nigh-on forty years in these United States, twenty of them farming in Wisconsin, this...

ShepherdsonComments: 0

Henry Loftus Wisker & Penal Transportation

Today, a convict ancestor is a matter of pride for Australians. It provides a connection to the earliest pioneer (and prison colony) days of a nascent Australia! Between 1788-1868, 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia. In 1841 our 1st cousin 5x removed, Henry Loftus Wisker (1805-?), became our first ancestor to be sentenced to transportation for seven years! Penal transportation...

WiskerComment: 1

William Thompson & The Mounted Home Guard

Our Great Grandfather, William THOMPSON (1891-1964), led the charge! “England’s only mounted section of the Home Guard, which nightly patrols 100 square miles of the North Riding,” read the caption in the Yorkshire Evening Press. Well, that might have been a slight exaggeration, as there were at least three other mounted units in Devon, Glamorgan, & Warwickshire. It was the...

ThompsonComments: 9

H Robert Thompson & Vickers Wellington

Sergeant H Robert Thompson, Royal Canadian Air Force, was serving with 14 OTU at RAF Market Harborough, training as a navigator on Vickers Wellington medium bombers, having left his new wife, May, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Prior to enlistment, Robert worked on his father’s farm and completed two years studying medicine at Victoria College. He intended to continue studies after...

ThompsonComments: 3

Robert Thompson & SS Empire Spring

Leading Signalman Robert Thompson, aged 24, served as one of six Royal Navy staff aboard the CAM Ship, SS Empire Spring. Robert had completed naval training in London, met his wife on weekend leave in Southend on Sea, married in her hometown of Sunderland, and started a family. They were going to settle down in his hometown of York. The...

ThompsonComments: 2

Thomas Hill & Raindale Mill

In 1966 Raindale Mill was relocated from Raindale, near Pickering, to York and reconstructed stone by stone at the Castle Museum. The mill was gifted to the museum’s founder in 1935 by the last owner of the now derelict building. As a child we visited the museum countless times and I’m sure I walked past the mill, entirely unappreciative of...

Baker/Hill/NicholsComments: 2

Jim Thompson’s South American Adventure

James “Jim” Thompson (1881-?), our Great Granduncle, took a leap of faith in September 1907. Married in York just four months earlier, Jim departed Liverpool bound for the southern tip of the South American continent, Patagonia. The isolated and remote location had developed a large and highly profitable sheep industry which recruited shepherds from British farms. Patagonia occupies nearly the...

ThompsonComments: 4