Haggbridge.com – Page 4 – Never let truth get in the way of a good family story!

Gilbert Hardacre & West African Cocoa Trade

Gilbert Clapham Hardacre (1889-1959), our Great Grand Uncle on the Hudson side of the family, was our first ancestor to reach West Africa in his role a cocoa trader for York-based confectioners firm, Rowntrees. Gilbert’s travels were the inspiration for members of successive generations of our family to reach beyond the north of England and ponder the great yonder. In...

Geoff Bainbridge & The Cuban Missile Crisis

Flight Lieutenant Geoff Bainbridge (1924-2022) served with the RAF from 1942 for the duration of the war. He ultimately pursued a successful career with the RAF and by 1962 Geoff was stationed with the new V-Force. Having completed flights tests beyond the sound barrier on the new Avro Vulcan, he served as a test pilot, flight instructor, and demonstrated the...

Justus Morris & The Sickly Shoat

The New York Times recorded the death of 3rd Great Grandfather, Justus MORRIS (1821-1899), with a humorous obituary, acknowledging his history as a practical joker. In order to win a bet with a friend, Justus spent ten times the value of the bet fattening up a sickly shoat (recently weaned pig) to reach 300lbs before slaughter! This was not the...

Henry Limberger & The Hessians

Johann Heinrich (Henry) LIMBERGER (1755-1835), 5th Great Grandfather on the Morris line, arrived Staten Island, New York, 1776. Henry had been press ganged (forcibly conscripted) from his family home, actually hiding in the garden, and sent to America as a Hessian soldier. Hessians were German soldiers who served as auxiliaries to the British Army during the American Revolutionary War, making...

Ken Bainbridge & The Half Way Sign

“200 hundred miles from London, 200 hundred miles from Edinburgh” announced my grandfather as we drove past the sign in his new Ford Orion, on route to our next Swinsty Reservoir fly fishing adventure. It must have been 1987 or thereabout when Reg BAINBRIDGE showed me his brother’s handiwork on the Great North Eastern Railway line. However my memory is...

Ford Mustang Versus Shuttle Atlantis!

We had never experienced a rocket launch. It was the summer of 2011 and purely by coincidence we had flown from England to visit family in Florida in the same week STS-135 was scheduled to launch. This was the 135th and final mission for NASA’s Space Shuttle program. The NASA shuttle program had been the space program of my life....

John Ogden & The Right Whales

Lancastrian, John OGDEN (1609-1682), was an accomplished stonemason and 10th Great Grandfather on the Morris side of the family. He emigrated to the New World in 1641, arriving in Rippowam (now Stamford, Connecticut) to build a dam and grist mill for the community. In 1642 he was hired to build the first permanent stone church in Fort Amsterdam, Manhattan Island....

Adelaide Edgar & The Last Onion

Adelaide EDGAR, our great grandmother, was the tenth of twelve children, born 2 August 1888, to John Thomas ONIONS and Ann LUMSDON, in the family’s Price Street tenement. She was raised at No. 3 Rosary Terrace, off Holgate Road, where the family moved in the mid 1890s. The Two-up two-down terraced home overlooked the railway tracks and engine sheds where...

John Thomas Onions & The Engine Wrights

John Thomas ONIONS was born in Gateshead to an unwed mother, Martha, 21 September 1842. He was 2 years old when his mother married but was still listed as John Thomas Onions in his grandfather’s last will and testament in 1845. Until the Legitimacy Act of 1926, illegitimate children had no legal kin except their mother, a decisive impediment in...

Martha Onions & The Bastardy Laws

Martha Edgerton ONIONS was born in Oak Green, West Bromwich, Staffordshire, and baptised 22 February 1822 at All Saints Church, by her parents Jemima ABEL & Benjamin ONIONS. Martha relocated (walked) north to Gateshead with her family when she was only 4 years old. However there are no records until she is next documented in the 1841 census, age 19...