Acknowledgements

Having inherited various family photographs and other “relics”, it was with some conscience and “not before time”, that in 2000, I got down to assembling a brief, hand-written narrative containing, as things turned out, a number of inaccuracies, interspersed with a jumbled collection of photographs.

Encouraged by my elder daughter, Heather, and with tremendous help from her, pushing and pulling me through the maze of intricate technological “wonders” on my PC, I decided to upgrade that original effort.

I am very indebted to my late father, Cecil, as should be all interested contemporary and future family connections, for his valuable contributions in editing and contributing additional anecdotal content. This, (in his 90th year!) he laboriously and painfully recorded, in pencil – he found it almost impossible to hold any writing implement! – on more than 40 variously acquired sheets of paper! Saluté!

Heather was terrific with her enthusiasm and expert knowledge in manipulating my sorry typing skills to fit in between photos and other papers which she scanned and amazingly, in a number of cases involving the older material, improved the quality.

Thanks also to a number of cousins upon whom I prevailed and who responded promptly to my requests for all sorts of information. My apologies to them if they read this document and feel that I have tended to concentrate too much on the vertical aspects and insufficiently on the lateral content!! My chief focus after all could only be to deal with the Dent line – as to try and cater for such a plethora of genealogical complexities would have needed more than my lifetime. The task becomes particularly intricate where a female child assumes her husband’s surname as she, to all intents and purposes, is “hijacked” into some other family tree.

In the absence of actual documentary evidence, dates have been recorded as faithfully as possible but in some instances I have had to rely on “best guesses”.

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Where did the name Dent actually come from? Did it have something to do with “teeth“ eg. the latin connotation with “Dentist”? Or is it more simply to do with where one might have come from? Quite often a good clue. Thanks to a useful newspaperTable of Contents article, I have gleaned the following:

About six hours drive north from London is the Lake District and the nearby Yorkshire Dales. And in the Dale of Dent we find the village - in fact the ‘historical’ village - of Dent. It is claimed that Dentdale is the most beautiful of the dales. The unique scenery in the area being created by the Dent fault which split the dale in two.

There is apparently evidence of Roman occupation back to the 7th century when the Celts were displaced by the invading Anglo-Saxons. The 11th century saw the arrival of Norse farmers and a century later the Normans established a presence. The local St Andrews church – medieval – has a Norman door on the north side. Dent is also in the heart of the area where the Quaker movement started in the 17th century.

Once known as Dent Town, the village has a number of quaint cottages dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries. There is a granite fountain dedicated to Dent’s most famous son Adam Sedgwick (1785 – 1835). Two hundred years ago there was a thriving knitting industry. The ‘terrible knitters of Dent’ who knitted at great speed and with a peculiar swaying motion, supplied garments for the army, mining and others.

There is apparently convincing theory that Emily Bronte based the characters of her novel Wuthering Heights on actual people who lived in the area, and that her description of Earnshaw House fits that of the ancient High Hall just across the river from Dent.

It's easy to believe that our ancestors came from Dentdale and possibly even from Dent the village itself and Kings Meaburn, where my journal really starts, with Norris William Dent, is just a ‘stones throw’ away.

About the picture:

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Dent like this:

“DENT, a small town, a township-chapelry, and a sub-district, in Sedbergh district, W. R. Yorkshire. The town stands on the rivulet Dent, near the boundary with Westmoreland, 7½ miles SE of Sedbergh r. station, and 8½ N of Ingleton; has a post office under Kendal, a church, four dissenting chapels, a workhouse, and a grammar-school; and is a polling-place.”

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Collection of early forefather material

The notes I have indicate that in the mid-eighteenth century there were six children: Mary 1748, Thomas 1750, John 1751, Sarah 1753, Matthew 1756 and Joseph 1757 – born of whom I do not know and have not researched.

The next generation involved three male children: Thomas 1777, Robert 1782 and Elinas 1783 - who the father is I cannot say with certainty but, given the ages, is more likely to be either Thomas 1750 or John 1751.

I have a copy of the birth certificate of Thomas 1777 who married Elizabeth. They both died aged 79 – he in 1856 and she ten years later in 1866. They in turn had one son named William who was born in 1807.

William married Sarah the daughter of John and Mary Sowerby of Kirkland, County Cumberland and they had two sons: John, born 1 November 1847 and William Wharton Sowerby Dent born 31 October 1851. (The village of Temple Sowerby is not very far at all from the village of Dent). Their address, from what I can gather, appears to have been Kings Meaburn, Morland, County Westmoreland.

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