I recently had an email from Max Harris. He is descended from Mary Warburton who married William Evans at Norton-le-Moors, Staffordshire in 1815. He had been unable to find a baptism for Mary, and although she appears in a number of Public Trees on Ancestry, the details are variable and confusing. Her date of birth was variously given as 1791 or 1796 Her place of birth was Hanley, Staffordshire, and her parents were identified as James Warburton and Mary Bagnall who married at St. John, Burslem in 1795.
Her father, James was described as a potter, and both the Warburton and Bagnall families had been active in the pottery industry of Stoke-on-Trent through the 18th century. Both families were also Catholic so this explains the lack of a baptism record. Mary’s date of birth was usually based on her age in censuses, and on her age of 87 when she died in 1878. But as we have seen, her parents didn’t marry until 1795, explaining why her date of birth was sometimes given as 1796. The truth of the matter remains a mystery.
Another mystery was James’s origins. Some of the Public Trees identified him as the James born in Lymm, Cheshire in 1771 to James Warburton and Sarah nee Allen. One of these trees is owned by John Warburton, a member of my DNA Project, and a genetic cousin. My Weaverham clan is based on his tree. Although I had included James’s birth in 1771, I didn’t have details of his wife and daughters.
A family of Warburton potters were active in the Burslem area through the 18th century. They were descended from Joseph Warburton and Abigail Lowndes who married at Newcastle under Lyme in 1719. Joseph was a potter in Hot Lane. His grandson Jacob (1740-1826) was particularly famous, and a friend of Josiah Wedgwood. He was a Catholic, and also married a Mary Bagnall.
Against this background the identification of James of Lymm as the James who married Mary Bagnall in 1795 seems a stretch. His age at death is close but not exact. There is no known James amongst Joseph’s descendants, but as most baptisms were Catholic and there are no records, not all family members maybe known.
However Max Harris reports that AncestryDNA has identified he has 3 cousins who are descended from each of the three children of James’s niece Sarah Faulkner and her husband Richard Daintith. The Daintith family lived in Warrington. Sarah was the daughter of James’s elder sister Mary, who married Zacharias Faulkner. This makes the common ancestors of Max and his 3 cousins, James Warburton and Sarah Allen.
Ancestry describes the matches as follows:
- 11cM 2 segments – third cousin 2x removed.
- 9cM 1 segment – 6th cousin.
- 8cM 1 segment – Half 6th cousin
As the three cousins are more closely related to each other the matches are probably elements of the same match.The second and third matches are distant and possibly random. However an 11 cM match across 2 segments on AncestryDNA is statistically real and highly likely to be a legitimate match. However, because the segments are quite small, it represents a very distant relationship, typically ranging from a 5th cousin to an 8th cousin, or beyond (Google AI).
Also the links back to James’s sister Mary are documented, so it is reasonable evidence that James the potter was in fact from Lymm.
This raises a further question. Did James move to Stoke to become a potter purely by chance, or could it indicate knowledge of a past link with the family of potters. Peter, the earliest known ancestor of the Weaverham clan is very closely contemporaneous with Joseph the the earliest known ancestor of the potters. Although Joseph is said to be born in Newcastle under Lyme or Cobridge in 1694, no sources are specified, or can be found to support this.
It is not impossible that Peter and Joseph were related and this was still remembered in the late 18th century. However evidence of this link could be difficult to prove unless there are surviving Warburton male descendants of the Potters. Only Y-chromosome DNA could prove a common ancestor who lived 350 or more years ago.
I have updated the Weaverham clan with details of James and Mary’s family, and reckon it is time to document the Warburton potters, especially as I recently discovered that one of the Josiah Warburtons in my Warburtons Named Josiah paper was linked to the potters, and turned up in France in the 1840s.
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