17 May 2024
A free specialist website containing valuable information for people researching their families' past has been launched by a University of Manchester historian.
The website contains 3000 or so records of small businesses and people with common surnames living between 1760 and 1820, mainly in Manchester and Liverpool.
Though small, the database will boost the efforts of some amateur historians to delve into their roots before the 1841 census - a common barrier to investigators.
The brainchild of Professor Hannah Barker from The University of Manchester, it is based on court records, wills, business records and family correspondence.
Funded by the Economic and Social Research council, historians can search the database by name, business and document.
Professor Barker said: "Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century wills and court records are publicly available - but they can be hard to use even for professional historians .They are also often difficult to access.
"This database makes the information easily accessible for the first time in the north west."
She felt that data, compiled during her research of small business families in the North West, would be useful for family historians.
She said: "Family historians are the mainstays of most record offices and are the biggest group of historians in the country. Family history also has a massive presence on the internet.
"This project, should interest anyone who thinks they might have had an ancestor working ‘in trade’ in the north west during the industrial revolution.
"Small family businesses - such as grocers, ironmongers and wigmakers proliferated in the North West at a rapid rate between 1760 and 1820.
"Despite their significance to the local and national economies, historical research into such firms has been limited and we know surprisingly little about how they functioned or about the people who ran them and worked for them.”
Notes for editors
Visit the family and Business in North-west England, 1760-1820’ project website at: http://www.northwestfamilybusiness.arts.manchester.ac.uk
The project is directed by Professor Hannah Barker. Data was entered and analysed by Jane Hamlett, Mini Ishizu and Stephen Connolly. The database was designed and built by Phil Bradbury of the Humanities ICT team at The University of Manchester.
Images illustrating trading families of the period are available
For media enquiries contact:
Mike Addelman
Media Relations
Faculty of Humanities
The University of Manchester
0161 275 0790
07717 881567
michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk
SOURCE