JOHN DENNELL & MARY GLOW

Continuing the new idea of concentrating on one individual at a time I have decided to feature John [my Great-Great-Grandfather] the person who migrated t0 Sheffield from Leeds in about the late 1840s.
THE STORY OF JOHN DENNELL
John Dennell and his sister Sarah were the only offspring of Thomas Dennell, then 34, and Mary Lucy, 37. Both children were born in the parish of Whitkirk, John at the beginning of November1800 and Sara at the beginning of October 1804.
In the April of 1821 John, 20, married Mary Glow, 21, from Tockwith, at St Mary's Whitkirk. The marriage, after the usual banns, was witnessed by Robert Perry and Robert Hargreaves, neither the bride nor the groom could write so they both signed with a mark, as did Robert Perry. At the time of the marriage John was a Cooper, a trade he continued until 1839, a few years before his move to Sheffield.
Most Coopers in villages and small towns worked in a 'Ad Hoc' freelance fashion but they did not only work for brewers, Coopers being the only tradesmen who knew how to bend wood, were also in demand for making the hoops for under crinolines, the cheaper variety that is, and to make the outside of cartwheels, before the blacksmith could do his work.
There would not be a demand for crinolines in the village. even though there were plenty of Manor Houses in the surrounding area and the development of trains would have made access to larger towns easier for those that could afford it, also trains would slowly bring an end to wooden wheels. The 1841 Census shows a publican living only 3 doors away in the village where John lived, although John was no longer a Cooper by then but was a Labourer possibly due to being illiterate and untrained in any other profession, the majority of village residents were employed in the coal industry. There was also the future to think of, two sons would be wanting employment and trades, the girls were not such a problem so by the beginning of the 1840s John & Mary must have been starting to feel that there was no future in the village apart from in coal mines.
The 11 children had started arriving early, Sarah Ann was born 1 year after the marriage and only 3 months before John's father, Thomas. died 1822, at the relatively young age of 57, when John was 21 only years of age. By the time his mother died 10 years later in the August of 1832 John's own family consisted of Sarah 10, Caroline 5, George 3, and Mary Maria aged 1. Twins William & Thomas had died when only a few days old in 1824, and a daughter born in 1825 only lived 9 months, births and deaths accompanied the family for many years, Mary Maria died the year after her namesake, John's Mother, aged just over 2 in 1833, Harriet was born 2 months after John's mother's death but died when she was a month short of 2 years old. Maria in 1837, William Thomas (obviously named for the twins) in 1839, and another Harriet in 1843 all grew to adulthood.
John was still working as a Labourer until Sarah Ann got married in 1844, when he was stated as a Hay Dealer at Sarah's wedding, looking at the employment in their village it consisted mainly of working the land either on it or below it. With few farmers, agricultural work would have been hard to come by but the welfare of horses was paramount, after all a farm could still be run with minimum workers but they needed the working horses, and also there was the welfare of stabled horses owned for transport and riding, trains still being a rarity. Hay would therefore have been a necessity, and the village had two or three hay dealers who would need labourers.
John and Mary must have felt relieved when the children began to marry and leave home, 22 year old Sarah Ann in May 1844 then 20 year old Caroline in Sept 1846.
Once the two eldest girls were married things changed rapidly, George went to work for the Railways with Sarah's husband Joseph Cawood and Caroline's husband Michael Hemingway. John and Mary decided to move to Sheffield with the younger children at some point between 1846 and 1851.
This move was a downward step for John because he went from Hay Dealer in 1846 at Caroline's wedding to Corn Dealer's Assistant in the 1851 Census. There again he did live next door to another assistant from Coulton, who was most probably known to John and Mary as the two places are in the same parish, and they lived two doors away from the Corn Miller in Sheffield whom it can be assumed they both worked for.
The family starts to fall apart in 1853 when Caroline's husband, Michael, died of TB then Caroline had an illegitimate daughter, fathered by Richard Peacock, at the beg of August 1855. She came to her mother in Sheffield to give birth but did not bring up daughter Geogiana Peacock Hemingway herself - she was brought by Caroline's elder sister. Sarah Ann. in Leeds.
John & Mary must have heaved a sigh of relief when George was married at the beginning of 1857 to Martha Leigh in Manchester, but this was followed by another illegitimate birth. This time it was Maria who gave birth to Walter Bingham Dennell, it would have been easy to tell people Caroline was a widow, after all she had got a wedding ring and was using her married name but with Maria it was a different matter so her mother Mary brought up the child. Walter. whilst Maria went to live in Birmingham where she married, in 1859, Henry Cater.
Meanwhile George & Martha were producing children, three before 1861. The next information is the census of 1861 which shows John as a labourer and Mary as being blind for the past 3 years, therefore never being able to see the child she was rearing on behalf of her daughter. They were still living at Cross George Street in the St Philips area of Sheffield, which was in a typical town area being overcrowded and overpopulated. Quite a contrast from the village life they had led and had grown up with.
Sheffield started expanding rapidly during the Industrial Revolution, increasing from 60,095 in 1801 to 451,195 by 1901. The influx of people also led to demand for better water supplies, and a number of new reservoirs were constructed on the outskirts of the town. The collapse of the dam wall of one of these reservoirs in 1864 resulted in the Great Sheffield Flood, which killed 270 people and devastated large parts of the town, among which was part of the St Philips area. The growing population led to the construction of many back-to-back dwellings that, along with severe pollution from the factories caused the deaths of a large percentage of the population through cholera and many other infectious diseases that spread rapidly in these overcrowded and unhygienic conditions.
Life, however, had not yet finished throwing obstacles in the path of John and Mary. A girl was born to George & Martha at the beginning of 1863, their fourth child and the sixth grandchild. A few months later John and Mary's youngest son, William Thomas, married Elizabeth but again a celebration followed quickly by death. Three months after the marriage William and Elizabeth had their first child, a daughter who sadly only lived for one week.
The youngest daughter of John and Mary, Harriet, married Herbert Sedgwick in the early summer 0f 1865, and by the time John died in 1866 there were two more grandchildren born to William Thomas and Elizabeth, both boys and so began the family that consisted only of male children.