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The Matthews-Chicken Family in More Detail

(Other Related Surnames and Interests):

1. The Early Days

The earliest CHICKEN family which led down to me on my mother's side, as far as one can be certain that far back, started with a George Chicken marrying a Kathrin STRINGER in Ryton Parish Church, Co Durham, on the South bank of the River Tyne, in May 1639. There were other contemporary Chicken families nesting in the region, notably in Newcastle, Simonburn, Hexham and in Newburn, so the origin of the name must go much farther back.

My paternal line, originally with the surname MOTHERS, goes back as far as one Richard Mothers marrying a Mary BUNCH in Newport Pagnell in 1701. The name change from Mothers to MATHERS and then MATTHEWS occurred around the late 1870's in Rochdale, Lancs, as the family moved north from Buckinghamshire, staying in the Cardington area of Bedfordshire from 1735 to 1867. They then moved, via a short stay in Glossop, Derbys, to the cotton-weaving mills of East Lancashire, and connected with the family OWERS who had moved up from Suffolk to the same part of Rochdale. The resulting family, my paternal Great-Grandparents, then moved over the Pennines to Nelson and Barrowford, Lancashire, changing to the Matthews surname, about 1880, where the connection with the Chicken descendants from the western watershed was established.

Our original Chicken family stayed in the Ryton area till about 1775, when the great-grandson of George and Katherin, William Chicken and his wife Ann NIXON moved with their burgeoning family across the River Tyne to Newburn, a place very near to the birthplace at Wylam of George Stephenson in 1781, and where William Hedley and Timothy Hackworth became Manager and Blacksmith at Wylam Colliery. Their move into Northumberland was at the very time that Watt & Boulton were taking out a patent for their revolutionary improvements to the "atmospheric" steam-engine.

William and Ann's eldest child, Thomas Chicken I, my Great-Great-Great-Grandfather, married his first wife Margaret HARLE at Jarrow in 1801, and described himself at the baptisms of his six children by her as "Enginewright", firstly at Heworth Colliery, near Jarrow in Co Durham, and later at Murton and North Shields collieries on the Northumberland bank of Tynemouth. Margaret died at North Shields in June 1810 and a year later Thomas re-married to Jane Elizabeth SPOUSE and fathered eight more children, all at North Shields.

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Headstone for Margaret Chicken (nee Harle)
at
Christ Church, Tynemouth

Thomas Chicken I's eldest daughter Mary (by Margaret Harle) married one Robert NEWTON, a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Having joined the Royal navy in 1803, he fought as an Able Seaman on "HMS Neptune" under Captain Fremantle at Admiral Nelson's great naval battle at Trafalgar in October 1805, rising to become a Lieutenant in 1815. Thomas's second daughter Margaret married one Samuel FRAZER, Master Mariner. His first son, Thomas II, became Superintendent Engineer on the Vale of Neath Railway, South Wales, in 1851, but committed suicide there in 1852 in tragic circumstances. His second son, William, never married but turned up in Blackwall, London, in 1845 as owner of a firm of Boilermakers. He ended his days in 1866 in Poplar, London, as a Cement Manufacturer and, according to his Will, a Manure Manufacturer, and died of apoplexy on Christmas Eve in a pub called the "Captain Man-of-War" in Poplar High Street.

The interesting bit as far as I am concerned were the children of Thomas I by his second wife, Jane Elizabeth. The three surviving sons by that marriage, Nixon Michael, Robert I and Spouse Joseph, turned up, with their father, at Monkwearmouth Colliery in 1841. The father and the two eldest called themselves "Engineer" at that Colliery, which at the time was the deepest pit in the country and required three huge steam engines to drain it, whilst Spouse Joseph (or Spurs Joseph as he was to become) described himself as a Brass Founder.

When and by what methods Thomas I and his three sons by Jane Elizabeth became "Engineers", I have not yet determined. They were living at the very centre, both in time and region, of the early development and refinement of stationary Steam Engines, which were generally connected with iron works or collieries. Whether they had any schooling in this trade or profession I do not know - I have not had the time to find out if any such records still exist in the Northumberland Record Offices. Thomas I was calling himself an "Enginewright" at his marriage to his first wife Margaret in 1801. He had become "Engineer", presumably to the Monkwearmouth Colliery, by 1841, when he was in his seventies. He died, as an "Engineer", at Broad Street, Monkwearmouth, in 1852 aged 83.

2. And Now, the Great Western-Chicken Connection

Robert Chicken I, my Great-Great-Grandfather, second son of Thomas I and Jane Elizabeth SPOUSE, seems to have been the first Chicken to go a-wandering far from his native Roost. He had his first son, Thomas III, by his wife Mary ROBINSON at Monkwearmouth Colliery in October 1842, and the next child, Robert II, my Great-Great-Grandfather, was born in Wiltshire, on Swindon Station, in October 1844.

This was the first clue I uncovered about the connection of my Chicken's to the GWR - at first I wondered why on earth this family should be having children so far away from their native perch. It was only by tracking the births of the eleven children of Robert I, all being born at different places from Swindon via Bristol, Paddington, Highworth, Common Purton and back to Swindon, that I finally got confirmation, on the Birth Certificate for son Michael in 1852 at Paddington, that Robert I was a "Locomotive Engine Fitter with the Great Western Line".

Robert I and Mary, with their growing family, lived, whilst they were at Swindon, in what became known as "The Railway Village" in New Swindon, and the houses in which they lived in Taunton Street and Exeter Street still exist today. Quite an eerie experience to visit the actual home in which my ancestors lived and worked and brought up their children so many years ago! And to visit the church, St Mark's in New Swindon, built by the Great Western Railway Company in 1845, where Robert and Mary held a bulk christening of 4 of their children in July 1856


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The Railway Village, Swindon, in 1851

Robert I and Mary, with most of their family, moved north to Wolverhampton in about 1863. He went to work in the GWR Stafford Road Loco Works there, whilst his eldest son, Thomas III, moved south-west and established a dynasty in Newton Abbot, Devon. By 1870 the second son Robert II, my Great-Grandfather had also flown the nest. He married one Emily PHILLIPS in Liverpool in 1871 and took up Marine Engineering. It is probable though that he was still connected with the GWR since they ran quite a fleet of ships out of Birkenhead, both local and Transatlantic, and Robert II was so frequently away at sea that he never registered the birth of any of his children as he established his own family in Liverpool, nor appeared on any Censuses after 1871 where he had nipped back to Wolverhampton to have his first (very premature!!) child. Emily Phillips was born at Pentre, Ruabon, North Wales, and how she came to meet and marry Robert II is a mystery. Her parents came from Ludlow in Shropshire, and were carpenters and horse-breakers. The cottage in which Emily was born, adjacent to the farm-house, still exists.

Robert II's elder brother Thomas III, born at Monkwearmouth Colliery, moved to Newton Abbot, Devon, still working with the GWR which had by then taken over the South Devon Railway, and married Mary Ann DANCE (nee GIDLEY) there in 1871 and settled to establishing a large family. A far cry from his birth-place!

William, the younger brother of Robert II, stayed with the family in the move to Wolverhampton and served as an Apprentice Fitter at the Stafford Street Works. He married one Emma ADDERLEY in 1869 and they had 10 children, the first nine in Wolverhampton. They moved to Newport, Monmouthshire about 1887 and had a final child in that town. This of course was also a part of the GWR Empire, being linked to the original GWR by the Severn Tunnel, built and opened by the GWR in 1885. Many of the descendants of William and Emma still live in this part of South Wales, becoming a bit mixed-up with another large un-related Chicken Brood who moved there in 1891 directly from Co Durham.

Three surviving sisters of Robert II, Mary, Jane and Margaret, all married in Wolverhampton and established families there, and their youngest sister, Elizabeth Ruth, never married and eventually settled in London, where she lived with her mother Mary Robinson after the death of Robert I in 1877. Elizabeth Ruth was the longest-lived of all Robert I's children, dying in 1943 in Cuckfield, East Sussex.

There were two remaining younger brothers of Robert II; Michael (born at Paddington) who moved to Liverpool with Robert, married there in 1876 to Rosa LONG, a cafe waitress, but leaving her a widow by 1880. Where and how he died was at first quite a mystery, since his death is not registered on St Cath's. He was calling himself a Marine Engineer, so I had to trawl through the "Deaths at Sea" at the PRO. It turned out that he had died of Yellow Fever whilst an Engineer on the steamship "Jerome", but whether he died at sea or in a foreign port is not given. Nor his place of burial. His widow, Rosa, became a cafe manageress in Toxteth, Liverpool, having an illegitimate son in 1885 who died in infancy (Bertie Mitchell Chicken). She eventually remarried in Burnley, Lancashire, to a butcher, John WAKEFIELD (from Middleton, Cheshire) in 1891, and according to the 1901 Census raised another family there. And the other brother Joseph never married and died in North Road, Wolverhampton, in 1883.


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Robert & Emily Chicken

Robert II established a Chicken Dynasty in Liverpool from 1872 onwards, later moving across the River Mersey to Wallasey. He retired from the sea and set up an engineering business on Liverpool Dockside, at which my Grandfather Robert PEEL was apprenticed before he met Robert II's daughter Jane Chicken and married her in St Matthias Church, Liverpool, in 1909. Their eldest daughter Doris Jeanne Peel is my mother.

And so ended my family's direct links with the Great Western. Robert II died in Walton, Liverpool, in 1906, and is buried in Anfield Cemetery with his beloved wife Emily, thus bringing to a close over 60 years of family involvement with that most celebrated of Railway and Shipping Companies.


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Emily Chicken (nee Phillips) with some of her brood
at rear of Mansfield Street, Wallasey - May 1925

My Grandparents, Robert and Jane Peel, moved over the hill, via a short period in Canada, to the cotton weaving mill valleys of North-East Lancashire, where my mother met and married my father Harri MATTHEWS, grandson of Frederick MOTHERS of Bedford and later Rochdale.

3. And the Rest ......

Robert I's brothers, Nixon Michael and Spouse Joseph, also moved south to join the Great Western Railway sometime in the 1840's decade, but they appear to have gone directly to the Bristol end of the operation. They both married in the Bristol area in 1849, Nixon Michael then moving on to work for the South Devon Railway whilst Spurs Joseph stayed at Bristol. Both gave their occupations variously as Engineer, Enginewright or Engine Erector.

Nixon Michael Chicken married Frances KNIGHT or SHERWOOD in St Mary Redcliff, Bristol, in 1849 and then moved to Newton Abbot, Devon, and established quite a Brood there. They then moved back to Bristol, where their descendants still live, but the eldest son Charles Knight CHICKEN served an apprenticeship at the Locomotive Works of the South Devon Railway at Newton Abbot under his father who was foreman there. He later moved to Sunderland, married there, and went to sea as a Ship's Engineer, home port Sunderland. Later still he went to work at Woolwich Arsenal, London, and eventually set up his own engineering works at Woolwich. He died in 1942 in Lincoln whilst living with his daughter's family (called SHOREY), and his descendants still live in London and Surrey.

Spouse Joseph married Caroline KNAPP from Bristol in Bedminster, Somerset, also in 1849 (here he contracted his baptismal "Spouse" forename to "Spurs" on his Marriage Certificate, and for subsequent Birth Certificates), and produced six children there between 1852 and 1863. They were particularly unfortunate with their family, only one of the children, Mary, surviving infancy and reaching marrying age.

Thomas II, the eldest step-brother of Robert I, also married in 1849 in Bristol, to a Jane Louisa BALLANTINE. This was his second marriage, he being a widower by then. I have been unable to trace anything at all about him between his birth (apparently unbaptised) in 1804 in Heworth, Co Durham, and his second marriage in Bristol. However he must have been gaining some considerable experience and expertise with railways, since he was appointed Superintendent Engineer of the Vale of Neath Railway, South Wales, in 1851, just after its opening to traffic.

This railway was also a (tenuous, at that time) part of the GWR Empire, but Thomas II's occupancy of his senior post was short-lived. He committed suicide in September 1852 at his home in Neath, using a pen-knife to cut his throat in front of his wife. He died after seven days of unavailing medical attention. At the Inquest, it was reported that he had been "well-respected by the Company and his men", so it is possible he had been climbing the ladder in the GWR in an as-yet unknown section of that sprawling Empire. He could also have gained experience on other great railways which had been built during the 1830's, such as the Liverpool and Manchester or the London and Birmingham. He left a Will, only mentioning his wife, which leads one to conclude they had no surviving children. I have not found his burial place, nor anything about the subsequent movements of his widow Jane Louisa (nee Ballantine).

Thus the story of the missing years of Thomas II and his brother William between their births in Heworth and the late 1840's is not yet complete.

Much research still awaits...

The above has been a potted history of my own Chicken descent line and some of its side lines. On the next page is a listing of the known family movements, derived from GRO Certificates, Censuses, and other sources. Since they were all such a peripatetic bunch of Roosters I had to gather just about every GRO Certificate I could for them, which eventually led me to doing a full extract from St Cath's. In sorting my lot out from the Liverpool and Newport Roosts, I gathered much more information about other Chicken families, generally unconnected as far as I have reached, which led me to the setting up of the One-Name Study for that surname and hence membership of the G.o.O.N.S.

A click on the next line will take the interested to a Chronological Listing of the deduced movements of my extended Chicken Family.

  • Other family-connected surnames of particular interest are:

HAIR, SPOUSE, HARLE, WARDLE, NEWTON and FRAZER from North & South Tyneside;

HUBBACK, MacBRETH or MacRETH from Tyneside, Middlesborough & London;

MOTHERS/MATHERS from Cardington, Bedfordshire, & latterly Spotland, Rochdale, East Lancs;

BALLANTINE of Bristol & Neath, South Wales;

ADDERLEY from Staffordshire & Shropshire;

FILL/FILEWOD of Devon & Cornwall;

BATCHELDER from Kent and Plymouth, Devon;

PEEL from Birstall & Halifax, West Yorkshire, & Kirkdale, Liverpool;

GREENWOOD, ROBINSON, DYSON, TROTTER, POLLARD & THOMPSON from Roughlee & Barley, Pendle, & Barrowford, Nelson & Burnley, East Lancs;

DOUBLE & SINGLETON from Liverpool & West Lancs;

OWERS from Cambridge & Suffolk, and latterly Spotland, Rochdale, & Nelson, Lancs.

  • Other areas of particular interest to me are:

  • The early history and development of the GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY and

the Transatlantic GWR Steamships (1860 to 1910)

  • I would also like to hear from anyone with an interest in the early development of the STEAM ENGINE in the

Tyneside and Wearside Collieries & Manufactories (1750 to 1850) and

George & Robert Stephenson's Locomotive Manufactory in Newcastle on Tyne in the 1820's.

(Back to the Early Days of the Matthews-Chicken Story):


Back to the card_42.gif Intro Page

Geoff Matthews - 17th November 2003