Thynne (also Thynn)

New page 1 September 2014.

This line comes from the Sunderland area of county Durham, but moved to the Leeds area of Yorkshire.

The generations of the THYNNE line are:

6. Thomas (b abt 1804, alive 1851) and Catherine (b abt 1809, alive 1851) of Bishopwearmouth, near Sunderland in county Durham. More

5. Matthew (b abt 1829, alive 1871) and Sarah (b abt 1831, alive 1871) of Bishopwearmouth, and then Hunslet, near Leeds in Yorkshire. More

4. Thomas Davidson (b abt 1858, d 1916) and Mary Jane (b abt 1866) of Leeds. More

3. Sarah Elizabeth (born probably about 1887, died about 1963) who married James Edward Freeman. More

Further details

6. Thomas (b abt 1804, alive 1851) and Catherine (b abt 1809, alive 1851) of Bishopwearmouth

Thomas THYNN was born about 1804 in Rainton, county Durham. He worked as an anchor smith and married a woman with a name like Catherine (census returns look like Cathrine and Chatrine) maybe five years his junior from Monkwearmouth in the same county.

It appears they had at least four or five children:
Ellen in the early 1820s, who, if their daughter, must have married a Mr HODGSON
Ann, by 1826 but I guess from her listing younger than Ellen. She may later have been the daughter who married a Mr MULLER and gave them a grandson called John G MULLER about 1848
Robert, about 1828
Matthew, about 1829
Thomas, about 1838

Thomas, Cathrine and all five children are in the 1841 census at Millfield Cottages, Bishopwearmouth. Ellen is listed with the surname HODGSON, after Thomas and Cathrine but before the other children, so I am inferring that she’s a married daughter though she's still in her teens. Listed after the children is a young man, Alexander THOMPSON, who I presume from his list position is not part of the immediate family, and probably a lodger. He works as an iron puddler, a job that young Matthew would later go into.

Thomas, Cathrine, Matthew, Thomas jnr and little grandson John were living on Waterworks Road in Bishopwearmouth in 1851. Matthew is now of working age and is a puddler of iron (a job that involved running molten iron out of a furnace).

Further research: I've had no luck so far searching the IGI for any church record of marriage or christenings to the couple, but could try the children by name and date. Nonconformists or RC?? There’s a rather doubtful birth registration possibility for Thomas in Q2 1839, so I suspect he’s missed the civil index – not surprising that early. No convincing Thynne-Muller marriage unless they had another daughter Dorothy. Christening for John G Muller? Later censuses and deaths for Thomas snr and Cathrine.

5. Matthew (b abt 1829, alive 1871) and Sarah (b abt 1831, alive 1871) of Bishopwearmouth and Hunslet

Matthew THYNN was born about 1829 in Bishopwearmouth. He went into the iron industry as a pudler. He married Sarah DAVISON, a little younger than him from the same area, in 1852.

Matthew and Sarah had the following known children:
Elizabeth about 1849 (before Matthew and Sarah married – I suspect she may have been born to Sarah as a single mother; Matthew was living at his parental home in 1851 and Sarah and Elizabeth weren’t there; but it is hard to check as there are several births registered Elizabeth DAVISON or similar, plus a few THYNNS)
Mary Ann about 1853
Margaret (or Mary J) about 1856
Thomas Davidson about 1858
Sarah about 1865
Harriett about 1867
Alice 1870

The family (Matthew and Sarah with Elizabeth, Mary Ann, Margaret and Thomas) lived on Watson’s Lane in Bishopwearmouth in 1861.

By 1871 they had moved to the Leeds area of Yorkshire (West Riding), and acquired the 'e' on their surname. They lived on South Accommodation Road in Hunslet – this time with all the known children (though Margaret seems to be down as Mary J).

Further research: should look for them in later censuses and see if there were any other children – Alice was only 6 months old in the 1871 list, and Sarah her mother was under 40 so there’s every chance of more. Perhaps look for Elizabeth's christening in the IGI - allows search by one parent's name.
Also need to find Matthew and Sarah's deaths.

For Thomas’s later life see below. Mary Ann married a James T PEARSON and lived with him in Boston, Yorkshire (I take it this is the place on the modern map as Boston Spa, near Wetherby to the north-east of Leeds). They had quite a few children and one, Gertrude, turns up with her uncle Thomas in 1901 – again, see below. Could also research the other children some day.

4. Thomas Davidson (b abt 1858, d 1916) and Mary Jane (b abt 1866) of Leeds

Thomas Davidson THYNN was born about 1858 in the Sunderland area. He moved as a boy with his family to Hunslet and followed his father into the iron founding industry, working as a forgeman.

In 1883 in the Leeds district he married Mary Jane ROTHERY, a local woman then only a teenager, about eight years younger than him. They had only one child that I know of, Sarah Elizabeth in about 1887.

In 1901 they were living in Nellie View, a back-to-back in the Richmond Hill area of east Leeds. Back-to-back houses were notorious in certain industrial towns, being terraced houses built in double rows so each house has windows only at the front, and no garden other than perhaps a small yard on the street front. I don’t have specific details for Nellie View but by reputation these houses were dim, airless (therefore presumably smoky, damp and smelly), unsanitary and overall of poor quality, being built back-to-back as a cheap form of high-density development. Building standards eventually prohibited their construction, and most were demolished in ‘slum clearances’ of the 20th century.

Thomas and Mary were with their young teenage daughter Sarah, a young adult niece, Gertrude PEARSON, who worked as a laundress, and another young adult visitor (presumably a paying lodger) Teresa FRETWELL, a shop attendant. The census implies that the house had at least five rooms (from another description I would guess a kitchen, parlour/sitting-room, two first-floor bedrooms, a loft and/or a cellar) so would not have been crowded, for the time. Mary gave music lessons there so they may have had a piano in the parlour or something.

Thomas died in 1916 in the Leeds district, aged about 58.

Further research: find them in the 1891 and ultimately 1911 censuses. Any other children? Why did Mary marry so young? (if she's the one I've found in a small boarding school in 1871 it might help explain both the early marriage and the music teaching.) Mary’s death, birth and her own family.

3. Sarah Elizabeth (b abt 1887, d abt 1963) of Leeds

Sarah Elizabeth THYNNE married James Edward FREEMAN in 1908 in in St Saviour’s parish church, Leeds. See the Freeman page for their married life. She died about January 1963 after about five years of widowhood and her funeral was in Leeds.

Contact me

If you are interested in this line I'll be very pleased indeed to hear from you. Email me at deletethis.ianwilliamson161@gmail.com but delete everything up to and including the first dot, leaving just my name and number @ service provider. Please do not delete the automatically-generated subject line, so that I know your email is not spam. You can add more to the subject if you like but if you delete what appears I may not read your mail.

Back to Lines index page
Back to my Genealogy home page