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William Thompson

1814-1891




Thought to be William Thompson



Obituary in the Skyrack dated 10th January 1891

Death of the Parish Clerk

We are also sorry to announce the death of Mr. William Thompson, which took place on Tuesday last, at the age of 77 years, after an illness of only a few days, the deceased has been Parish Clerk for over 40 years, and for length of time he has never missed attending a funeral, with the exception of Mrs. Parker on Monday last. He was highly respected in the village in which he has spent all his life, and his pleasant face and kindly word will not be forgotten by the inhabitants. The funeral took place yesterday afternoon (Friday), there being a large company of sorrowing relatives and sympathising friends present.

While the society is not a family history society there are occasions that the two aspects of history coincide. This is such an example. We have been aware of a figure of importance to the parish in late Victorian times. As the above obituary notice says, William Thompson was an important person in the parish and for forty years would have been aware of all aspects of running the parish council for much of Queen Victoria's reign. It was a period of great change and we know little of the effect of those changes on the parish. Unfortunately, we do not have the vestry minute books in which William Thompson would have recorded those changes. The one task which William undertook was to be the enumerator for the census during his time in office.

We have been contacted by Jim Thompson,who is a descendant of William Thompson. He and the society would like to discover more about his ancestor. Jim sent us the photograph shown above but is uncertain as to whether it is William Thompson or not. He writes:

William Thompson is my great great grandfather. I did quite a bit on the family history about 20 years ago and then got taken up with other things but am now back on the track. I think the line goes back at least to a William Thompson of Barwick born 1696.
William had three sons and five daughters, Richard, a butcher, being my great grandfather. Here it starts to get a bit tragic as he died in 1887 and his wife Elizabeth after 1891 and before 1901 leaving four children to be brought up by their aunt, Mary Hartley in the Black Swan. My grandfather, William, obviously had to fend for himself and went to New York and Australia before settling down to run a shop in Harehills.
I now attach a scan of the photo and also something which I found in the Newspaper Library at Collingdale on Tuesday. I am going through all the Skyrackers from 1891 to 1901 to see if I can find any trace of the death of Elizabeth Thompson - wife of Richard Thompson. I can find no record of this which is quite a mystery (nothing in the Barwick registers). It might be reported if it was in unusual circumstances - leaving four orphans could I suppose be newsworthy but I am not that hopeful. None the less 10 years of microfilms is quite a task and will take a while! As we live near Winchester travel into London is fairly easy.
Anyway if anyone in Barwick is able to shed any light on the photo, that would be excellent. All the very best Jim Thompson


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