Genealogy Chat

I was reading a very interesting article yesterday about a district in Manchester called Angel Meadow which is situated in the city centre and once was a terrible place to live in that era. There was the Cholera outbreak in 1832 and 40,000 people were buried in a communal grave under flags at St.Michael's churchyard. The area in later years (2004) was updated with various grants and laid to lawn the church having been demolished in 1935, and is now a beautiful oasis of calm in a bustling city.

On one of the gravestones i noted whilst there(i visited last summer) that 8 children of John Foulds and his wife all died between 1791 to 1803 tragically some only surviving for a matter of 3 weeks to 7yrs. Although i am tracing my own family tree and this family is not connected, i wondered if there was any way they could be traced just as a matter of interest. I assume they would have died before the Cholera outbreak so times must really have been dire. Another interest is the fact that my grandfather was born there in 1890 which is why i visited in the first place and although the house he lived in is no longer there, it was interesting to see the area. At the time i did visit there was an achealogical dig going on and several cellars had been exposed to show what squalid conditions the mostly Irish who came over looking for work endured living in a house 20-30 people in a matter of 14' x 12' square cellars along with pigs with no sanitation. If anyone is interested in that area just put Angel Meadow in the browser and a wealth of interesting infomation can be obtained.

There is a John Foulds aged 78 born Ireland on the 1841 census in the District Workhouse and Fever Hospital in Liverpool but I can't find anyone on Genes with a John Foulds born that early in their tree. That's the nearest one I can find to Manchester.

Kath. x

Thanks Kath for your input the gravestone really touched me when i saw how many of their children had not survived. They must have thought the latter two children may have had a chance as one got to the age of 7 years 6 months, and then the last child was 4 years 7 months. I cannot imagine what thise poor people went through losing all of their 8 children for whatever reasons, how soul destroying to keep giving birth and probably knowing none were going to survive the terrible conditions they lived in. Of course, there were many other such tragedies in that area and i suppose my grandfather was lucky he was born a century later. He even survived the Great War even though he was shot twice!

you could try looking on this site

www.familysearch.org/#form=advanced-records



or on the Lancashire Online Parish Clerks

www.lan-opc.org.uk/Search/indexp.html



sylvia