5 Jun 2021

Yesterday I received another marriage certificate for John Hall’s parents Matthew Hall and Mary Miller:

Marriage at Earsdon, Northumberland on 9 November 1844 of Matthew Hall, of age, bachelor, a pitman of Seaton Sluice and Mary Miller, of age, spinster of Seaton Sluice. He father was George Hall, a pitman. Her father was Cuthbert Miller, a glass maker. Neither could sign their names. The witnesses were John Miller and Clement Kell [or Bell], both of whom could sign their names.

We spent the day looking up the baptisms of Mary Miller’s siblings using the Durham Diocese Bishops Transcripts images on the Family Search website. We found the following, all in Earsdon:

• Cuthbert, 12 Aug 1823
• Mary, 17 Dec 1825 (Mary on the certificate above)
• Ruth, 7 Apr 1827
• Margaret and James, 29 May 1830
• Elizabeth, 22 Apr 1833
• Henry, 19 Dec 1835
• William, 22 Sep 1839

Cuthbert was recorded as a seaman on his first son’s baptism and a glass maker thereafter. Their residence was Seaton Sluice for all baptisms.

We also tried to find out more about her mother and father. Other people on Ancestry have recorded her mother as Mary Mustard with a marriage date of 1816, which is seven years before the first baptism we know of. That seems a long time. We checked all baptisms in Earsdon between 1815 and 1844 and found no others. The marriage was at All Saints, Newcastle and we checked baptisms for the following few years but found nothing again.

The marriage:

Marriage by banns at the Chapel, All Saints, Newcastle on 22 March 1816 of Cuthbert Miller of this parish and Mary Mustard of this parish. Cuthbert could sign his name but Mary could not. The witnesses were Robert Collingwood and Mary Collingwood, neither could sign their names.¹

We found Mary’s baptism in Earsdon.

Baptism at Earsdon, Northumberland on 15 July 1797 of Mary, daughter of James Mustard, glassman of Seaton Sluice and Ann, his wife, formerly Smith. Born 4 June.²

It’s interesting that James was a glassman of Seaton Sluice. Perhaps Cuthbert settled down after a career at sea and became a glassman with his father in law?

That said, we are still not 100% convinced that Cuthbert’s wife was Mary Mustard. The seven year gap with no children seems very unusual.

We found a possible marriage between the witnesses: Robert Collingwood, widower, married Mary Forster in 1814 in Newcastle.³

We looked for all Millers in the 1841 census in the Earsdon area and found a John and Jane Miller with three children: Mary, Elizabeth and Jane. He was a glassman. We also found a Robert Miller age 35 born in Scotland, possibly a brother of Cuthbert?

We found John Miller in the 1851 census, still in Hartley, and it confirmed that he was born in Seaton Sluice in about 1818.⁴

We found their marriage in 1836:

Marriage at Earsdon, Northumberland on 2 April 1836 of John Miller of this parish and Jane Ocheltrie of this parish. John could sign his name but Jane could not. The witnesses were John Ogle, Susanna Kell and James Laincross[??].⁵

I then remembered that Matthew Hall and Mary Miller’s marriage had been witnessed by John Miller and Clement Kell. Clement and Susannah Kell appear as witnesses on many marriages. I checked them in the 1841 census and Clement was the parish clerk.

John, however, could be Mary’s brother and the missing link that fills in the seven year gap between Cuthbert and Mary’s marriage and the birth of the firs child we are certain about in 1823.

I found some information about the bottleworks at Seaton Sluice:

The Hartley Bottle Works were built by Thomas Delaval in 1763 and extended in 1777 making it the largest glass manufactory in the United Kingdom. At its largest extent it covered 12 acres and included workers houses, market place and a brewery. A central warehouse was connected to the glass houses by an underground narrow gauge railway, reputed to be the first in the country to run on iron rails and was designed by George Stephenson. Further tunnels connected the glass houses to the river banks for slag tipping. Another tunnel ran from the warehouse to the harbour to transport bottles to ships. The glassworks closed on 29th July 1871 following the decline of other industries in Seaton Sluice. The last cargo of bottles left on 20th May 1872 and the works were demolished in 1897. Some of the tunnels still survive below ground and were used as an air raid shelter during World War II (1939-1945). ⁶

Another article talks a little about the the bottleworks origins:

Thomas Delaval, the brother of Sir Francis Blake Delaval, returned from an expedition to Germany in 1763 with skilled glassmakers from Neinburg to teach the Bottleworks’ employees their skills. Glassmaking was an established industry in some parts of England, but it was more advanced in our neighbouring european countries.⁷

It also mentions All Saints and the presence of Scottish Keelmen who shipped coal from Newcastle to larger ships for export:

All Saints was at the east end of Newcastle beside the river and incorporated the Sandhill and the Sandgate areas. The latter was one of the poorest in 18th century Newcastle. This was the residence of the Keelman who formed a distinct and colourful community. “They were known as a close-knit group of aggressive, hard-drinking men. John Wesley, after visiting Newcastle, described them as much given to drunkenness and swearing”. The keels were vessels of narrow draught that were loaded with coal and then taken downstream to the larger collier boats where the cargo was offloaded to be transported by sea: a skilled operation. The colliers were unable to travel upstream as far as the Newcastle collieries: the river at this time was too shallow. According to the Keelman article on Wikipedia: “By 1700 there were 1,600 keelmen working on the Tyne in 400 keels. Not all were local: there was a significant number of Scottish keelmen who returned home in the winter when trade was slack.” According to other sources many of these migrants were from the border area: descendants of the Border Reivers.⁸