William Mackever Adamthwaite - page 2

By 1861 William and most of his family had moved down the Lune valley to the Burton in Lonsdale area following a trend repeated all over the country as people move off the land and into work in the mills and in transport William himself was a farm labourer living at Chapel Street in Burton.

Five children living with him were cotton spinners and one worked on the railway. They probably moved before the mid 1850s as John was working in Caton (further down the Lune Valley) as a farm labourer in 1856 when he married at the age of 20. Also it looks as though times became particularly hard for them all in Millthrop in November 1852 when he received three lots of money from the poor fund within a month so perhaps this precipitated the move. Of the ones that had left home only Jane remained in the Sedbergh area (and she moved to Preston later).She was a farmer’s wife at High Gill to the North-west of the town.
The others were not far away. William was an

agricultural labourer at Burrow with Burrow and lived in a small cottage there. (It was named Ivy cottage—I have not been able to deduce which one this is but it is very near the Highwayman pub/restaurant on the opposite side of the road).
Thomas was a coachman for Melling Hall and lived in the Garden Cottage and Sarah was a housemaid at Austwick Hall.

John lived furthest away at Settle railway station where he worked on the railway. (again it is not possible to pinpoint exactly where he lived but it was somewhere at what is now Giggleswick station—this used to be Settle station).

In 1871 and 1881 William remained in Burton in the North side of Low Street , a widower, as Sarah died in 1869.

He continued to work as an agricultural and then a general labourer until he died in 1888 of senile decay and paralysis. Several of his remaining close family were still nearby and in fact his son in law James Fetcher was with him when he died.