Week 30: My ancestor was a glass blower or glazier

[Jill on the A272]

Week 30: Glass worker or glazier

Is there a glass blower or manufacturer or a glazier in your tree?

This is an opportunity to showcase a glassworker from your family tree, you might want to offer a short biography and speak about their work eg
Name
Birth location/date
Family background
Where you've found them on the census
Their workplace/employer
Any tips on researching this occupation?

[Next week: Tinsmith]

[Jill on the A272]

I have ancestors called Glazier (multiple varieties of spelling) from Fernhurst in Sussex , where there were glassmaking furnaces in Tudor times so my people were probably there doing it in medieval times when surnames were adopted, although I haven't traced my people back beyond the 18th century.

[teasie]

Where to start!

My long line of glass / bottle makers mainly worked around Newcastle / Sunderland / Seaham, but began with my 5xGreat Grandfather, John Jeffreys, who was born in Oldswinford, Worcestershire in 1743 and apprenticed in 1757, aged 14, to Edward Russell, Glassmaker of Oldswinford.

There are too many glass / bottle makers in my family to list, but the one thing they all had in common was being poor. Very poor. They also tended to have very large families, although many children died in infancy.

John's son, my 4xG Grandfather - also a glassmaker - died of 'decay' in Newcastle workhouse in 1843. He was 65
His son, my 3xG Grandfather - also a glassmaker - died of Cholera in 1853. He was 42.

His daughter, my 2xG Grandmother, Mary Ann Jeffreys, was one of 14 children and married into another family of glassmakers just five months after her father's death, having just turned 18.

By the age of 34 Mary Ann had given birth to 10 children (7 died as babies), and was just 36 when she died. Within months her husband had remarried, and went on to have a further 9 children with his 2nd wife.

From the census and BMD records I know that Mary Ann's husband (and probably also her father & grandfather) worked on the quayside at Newcastle, probably for Cookson, Cuthbert and Co, before moving to Seaham Harbour, were he worked at the Seaham Bottle Works.

He later moved to Sunderland, and I keep promising myself a trip to the National Glass Centre there to try out the glassblowing experience and take a look at the exhibits.

[cbcarolyn]

I know I have a glazier somewhere in my tree - fairly sure it was the Harlow lot in the 1870s, but I can't locate him. I hadn't really thought what he actually did, I was probably thinking modern day putting glass in windows, but maybe not.

Interestingly 80 years later Harlow was the site of a huge glassworks, that was built as part of the new town, everyone knew someone that worked there. It was called Key Glass by the town, and had a huge social club and presence. It looks as though they were united glass for most of the time, but we never called it that.

http://www.glassmaking-in-london.co.uk/node/25 apparently the biggest in Europe then, who knew.

another small fact from my neck of the woods in Nazeing Essex there has been a glassworks since 1928, I have some small lead cut glasses I bought from the factory shop many 40 years ago. https://www.nazeing-glass.com/ not the sort of place you would expect a glassworks, that is still going today