Week 60: My ancestor was a hatter or milliner

[Jill on the A272]

Week 60: My ancestor was a hatter or milliner


Ladies felt cloche hat, 1930

This is an opportunity to showcase a hatter or milliner 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?

Trades and Occupations - Family Tree Forum

[Next week: Tobacco worker]

[Jill on the A272]

Mu 4x great grandfather's brother was a hatter called Blakey Bannister, son of John & Isabel Bannister, he was baptised at Colne, Lancashire in 1762 and married Betty Lord at Newchurch in Rossendale while living at near by Bacup in 1782, they then moved on to Oldham where they had ten children and he is recorded there as a hatter on his children's baptisms, living at Coldhurst Lane and eventually in 1802 at Red Tom Nook in Oldham. He died in 1823. His eldest son, John, also became a hatter.

[Lin Fisher]

Slater Bayles born 1805 in Riseholme Lincolnshire was my 4 x G Grandmothers Brother.

On 1841 and 1851 census he was a hatter on the High Street in Lincoln.

He married Elizabeth Glen in 1838 in Lincoln and died 28 Jan 1855 in Lincoln and buried in Reepham. Have been to the church and seen the headstone along with a lot of his family.

[Vicky the Viking]

My grandmother born 1909 was a milliner - on my mum's birth cert (1929), her marriage cert (1935), & the 1939 register.

My mum told me she used to work in Binns, a large department store in Middlesbrough, with a woman named Dora.

Well, I don't know about the department store bit, but in the late 1920s Dora had her own shop on Linthorpe Road in Middlesbrough. It was through this connection that my grandmother met her first boyfriend, who was Dora's brother.

I assume she learned her trade with Dora, but was Dora self-taught, or did she learn by working in a larger shop before starting up her own business? Dora, who was 11 years her senior, was the daughter of Russian immigrants, and her mother had been employed as a tailor before her marriage.

I remember my gran as being very good at dressmaking. She had an old Singer treadle sewing machine which I was fascinated by when I was a child. She made a tutu for me when I started ballet lessons about age 6 or 7. She sent it in a hat box! She also made her grandkids several stuffed animals. I still have a dog made out of an old camel-hair coat with a tweed tummy and leather ears. He must be getting on for 60 years old now.