What I can say with certainty is that my sixth great-grandfather, James Wiggans, was born around 1730 and married a woman named Jane, likely Jane Hindle. He lived in Eccleston and was described as a yeoman — a freeholder who owned and worked his own land. Since most land in England was held by lease, this suggests James was relatively well off for his time.
His son John was born in Eccleston on May 15, 1756, and baptized at St. Michael and All Angels in Croston on January 12, 1759. John was a husbandman, essentially a working farmer. Baptismal records of his children identify his wife as Nancy, indicating the couple likely married around 1780.
The family story, however, comes into sharper focus with their son James.
Sarscough
James was born on May 9, 1786, and baptized on May 31 at St. John’s in Preston. He was the second James born to John and Nancy; the first, born a few years earlier in Alton, must have died in infancy.
In later records, James repeatedly gave his birthplace as Grimsargh — but this was incorrect. Parish records show he was born in Ulnes Walton, while his younger brother Thomas was born in Grimsargh. The is understandable: we can search the registers easily, James was relying on things he was told as a child decades before.
James married Alice Sumner on February 27, 1810, at St. Mary the Virgin in Eccleston. Alice was born in Euxton to Thomas and Ann Sumner and baptized at St. Andrew’s in Leyland on October 19, 1787.
By at least August of 1836 — and likely much earlier — James and his brother Thomas held a lease on a property known as Little Sarscough. Though the name no longer appears on modern maps, contemporary records place it in Eccleston near Croston, between New Lane and Row Moor, firmly within Ulnes Walton.
They did not own the land outright but held a life lease: the right to use the property for as long as rent was paid. James also held life leases in his own name on two additional plots, Fuz-acre and the Bank. These arrangements are documented because the property was auctioned in 1836, along with a life insurance policy on the fifty-year-old James — a guarantee to the purchaser of compensation in lieu of rent should James die prematurely.
James variously described himself as a gardener (1841), a nurseryman (1851), and sometimes a farmer. Whatever the title, he was clearly ambitious. In 1836, he was one of three tenants working eighteen acres; by 1851 he was farming thirty-six acres on his own, a holding he largely retained for the rest of his long life.
From the early 1840s through at least the late 1850s, James competed regularly in the floral and horticultural shows of Leyland, Eccleston, Penwortham, Haigh, Preston, and Ormskirk. For nearly twenty consecutive years, his name appeared each autumn in the Preston Chronicle, most often for prize-winning dahlias. He occasionally entered vegetables as well, once winning for the heaviest onion and once for the best two stalks of red celery. I have located twenty-three such notices without an exhaustive search.
James and Alice spent their final years at Sarscough. Alice died at age eighty-five and was buried at St. Andrew’s on October 24, 1871. James outlived her by a year, dying at eighty-six, and was buried beside her on May 17, 1872.
The Last Farmer
John was born in Eccleston on September 24, 1810, to James and Alice Wiggans and baptized four days later at St. Mary the Virgin. He was the eldest of perhaps eleven or twelve children. John would be the last of the family to earn his living from the land, yet he described himself not as a yeoman or a husbandman, but as a farm labourer — suggesting that he never held a lease in his own right.
As the eldest son, John was likely working on his father’s farm at Sarscough and expecting to succeed to the holding. Although James’s lease was for life only, landlords could and often did renew leases across generations. That future never materialized. John died two years before his father, at the age of fifty-nine, and never lived to work land of his own.
Like James, John competed in local agricultural shows. He didn’t win the top prize as often as his father but there was probably more competition in the vegetable categories he entered. He won 3rd prize for a Mangelwurzel – I had to Google that one, it’s a beet – and 2nd prize for a stand of white celery.
My favorite award went to neither James nor John, but to Dinah Baker – John’s wife. She won a prize for the mother of the “poorer classes” raising the largest number of legitimate children without resorting to parish welfare. Good on you, Dinah!
John married Dinah on October 4, 1831, at St. Mary the Virgin. Together they had at least ten children, eight of whom entered the mills. By mid-century, canals, railways, and industrial innovation had transformed the Lancashire economy, and textile work increasingly replaced agriculture. Of their children, only two avoided the mills: one became a dressmaker, and another a gardener, following in his grandfather’s footsteps.
John died on the 4th of August, 1870, and was buried 2 days later at St. Andrews. His wife Dinah survived him by 9 years.
The Clamper
John Wiggans was born the son of John Wiggans (1810) and Dinah Baker and was baptized at St. Andrew’s in Leyland on May 20, 1848.
By the age of twelve, he was working in the Leyland bleachworks. The works had begun as a crofting operation in the 1790s, expanded under the name Fletcher’s, and later became John Stanning & Sons Bleachworks.
It is possible John began work there even earlier — perhaps as young as six. While his exact duties are unknown, children were commonly employed to crawl beneath operating machinery to clear lint that posed a serious fire hazard. Accidents were frequent and often severe. Little changed after education became compulsory to age twelve in 1870; mills simply shifted child labor to after-school hours.
John likely met his future wife, Sarah McIntyre, at the bleachworks. Both were employed as cotton bleachers at the time of their marriage. Sarah was a Scot from Lanarkshire and had previously worked as a lace tambourer. They married at St. Andrew’s on March 14, 1868. John was nineteen; Sarah was twenty-four, though she claimed to be twenty-two.
The couple moved in with John’s parents and remained there after his father’s death in 1870, continuing to live with his widowed mother at 91 Towngate in Leyland, just steps from the works.
The birthplaces of John’s children indicate that the family left Leyland for Chorley around 1875 or 1876. By 1881, at age thirty-two, John and Sarah were living independently at 19 Eaves Lane with three children.
Chorley had no shortage of mills, making it difficult to identify his employer, but records show that John was working as a finisher in a calico factory — a role involving post-dye treatments that ranged from chemical processes to mechanical pressing.
By age forty-two, he was employed as a clamper in a bleachworks. After fabric was bleached and repeatedly washed, it was stretched on a frame to prevent shrinkage. Clampers fed the cloth onto a stenter frame and secured it in place. Clamp rooms were notoriously hot and poorly ventilated; the air was heavy with bleach fumes, and finger injuries were common.
John lost his wife in 1909. In 1911, he was living with his twenty-nine-year-old son James, a mangler at the bleachworks, and his twenty-seven-year-old daughter Dinah Baker Wiggans, a lace tambourer. James emigrated to America in 1912. John remained in Chorley until his death at age seventy-two at 87 Bolton Street. He was returned to Leyland for burial at St. Andrew’s on March 10, 1921.
The Last Englishman
James Wiggans was born on August 1, 1881, at 19 Eaves Lane in Chorley to John Wiggans and Sarah McIntyre. He was their fourth surviving child. Their first, Isabella, had died in infancy, which may explain why James was not baptized until November 6 at St. James Church. There were ten children altogether, though only five — perhaps fewer — lived to adulthood.
At age eight, James was still attending school; by then, education was compulsory for children under twelve. Whether he also worked after school, as many children did, is unknown.
Sometime before the age of nineteen, James followed his father into the bleachworks, working as a mangler — an operator of a heavy roll-press machine. He remained in that trade for more than a decade, until he left England.
There is a family myth that James had a ticket to sail on the Titanic but missed the boat because he was watching a horse race. That story is not entirely untrue – just very, very embellished.
The Titanic left from South Hampton and sank on April 15, 1912.
James was booked to sail from Liverpool on the Baltic on the 23rd of May, 1912, about a month later, and he did, in fact, miss that ship. His name appears on the manifest with a line crossed through it and the notation “NOB”, not on board. He actually left Liverpool on the Cedric on May 30, 1912 arriving in New York on June 8. He passed through immigration at Ellis Island.
I can’t know for sure if his love of the ponies delayed his departure but he did take his daughters to the races every Sunday so we can be certain he had a real fondness for the track.
James’s immigration record describes him as twenty-nine years old, literate, and born in Chorley. He stood five feet eight and a half inches tall, with light brown hair and blue eyes. he had a vaccination scar on his left arm and a burn scar on his right leg — a common injury in the bleachworks.
His father, listed as next of kin, was living at 136 Eaves Lane in Chorley. James was bound for the home of his friend James McIntyre at 23 Claremont in Jersey City, and later roomed with another friend, Frank Redden, at 76 Peshine Avenue in Newark.
After settling into a job, he sent for his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth Rooney. She was a Chorley girl who – along with her 2 sisters – followed James to America. A year after arriving, he married her at Blessed Sacrament in Newark, NJ on the 6th of April, 1913.
During the First World War, James’s draft registration identified him as a declarant alien — someone who had formally declared an intention to become a U.S. citizen. Naturalization was a two-step process, and James completed it on July 26, 1921, at the Court of Essex County.
His experience with industrial machinery served him well in America. By 1914 he was working as a die presser, and by 1918 he had risen to assistant foreman at S. Langsdorf & Company, a postcard publisher on Spring Street in Manhattan.
By 1920, James was employed as a pressman in a celluloid factory. Newark had become the world’s center of celluloid manufacturing, producing everything from billiard balls to collars and combs. The material was versatile — and dangerously explosive. Over a thirty-six-year period, the Newark factory alone recorded thirty-nine fires or explosions, resulting in nine deaths and dozens of injuries.
As the plastics industry gradually shifted to safer materials, James transitioned again. On the eve of World War II, he was working as a dye mixer for E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company on Schuyler Avenue near North Arlington. He retired from DuPont in 1950.
James lived a happy life with his wife and two daughters at 290 Peshine Avenue, surrounded by a community of Lancashire immigrants. Sadly, in the summer of 1932, he lost both Elizabeth and her sister Mary within weeks of each other. He carried on raising his daughters with the help of wife’s sister Agnes, and they described him as a very devoted father. He lived to see the birth of one great-grandchild and died at age eighty-three on January 16, 1965, at St. Mary’s Hospital in Orange, NJ. He was buried beside Elizabeth at Holy Cross Cemetery on January 20.
