There's not a great deal to say about myself, I have never considered myself to be important in any way, I believe that I am just a normal (some may doubt that ) person who is trying to keep a promise made many years ago to try and compile a personal Family History.
I was told that I was born in Arabella street - on the 7th August 1932, in very humble circumstances- and received limited formal education-
No-one needs a University degree or to be a Rocket Scientist to realise that I will be 78 years old in a few days time, and if I don't start my search for Ancestors now, I don't think I ever will.
My first school attended was Throston Infants, Thorpe Street, Old Hartlepool close to Throston Bridge, some of the boys and girls I still remember are, Jim Mottram, Stan Walker, who I still see quite often around the town, then there was Derek Watling, who's whereabouts are still a mystery,
I an sad to say, that most of my boyhood school friends appear to have died, I heard a short time ago that another had passed away, I was stood on the top of Thorpe Street Promenade Steps overlooking the North Sands, when another old Hartlepool boy, reminded me of how we all spent our school holidays, on the Sands, or Spion Kop, playing football, no foreign holidays for us then, when he mentioned that he had heard that “Tanner” Hume had died and was buried in Saltburn -on-Sea, I remember Stan or “Tanner” Hume very well, he certainly was a character was “Tanner”
I remember my first girlfriend when I was 7, (she didn’t actually know she was my girlfriend, but I held her hand in the “crocodile and that was as good as being married as far as I was concerned). and yes, I do have regrets, smoke does gets in your eyes, but much later I met and lost through my own stupid attitude, the truly angelic “Joyce Margo B -if I upset anyone- and I know I did, I'm deeply Sorry.
But I digress
Since starting to search for my ancestors on the Internet, I have discovered some very interesting facts,
there is a Flounders Folly Web site, a site dedicated to telling you all about Flounders Folly on Callow Hill in South Shropshire and the story of Benjamin Flounders, the man who built it, evidently,
Benjamin Flounders was a prominent Quaker with business interests in key new industries and developments at the time of the Mid-Industrial Revolution, such as The Stockton and Darlington Railway (of which he was a founding Director) and new canals in his native North-East; he operated his own family businesses very successfully with large interests in timber for shipbuilding (at the time of the War with France), also owning two linen mills and large estates in places as diverse as Egham, Surrey and Glasgow.
He was it seems, for all of his life, a hard working, astute and forward thinking man of independent means. is it possible he could be an ancestor ? only time will tell, my initial investigations appear to suggest that my side of the Flounders family appear to have fled from Town to Town , rather hurriedly, which would indicate to me that they where just days, if not hours in front of the local sheriff ?
I will research the Benjamin Floundersthis link further in the future.(he had the Money )
Benjamin Flounders was born on 17 June 1768 to a Quaker family from Yarm in Yorkshire . His father had extensive bleach fields at Crathorne and shops in Darlington . His mother was a Bickerdike of Leyburn and for some reason that has not yet been discovered, he was adopted by two Bickerdike uncles, both Glasgow merchants. In 1800, aged 32, he married Mary, the daughter of John Walker of North Shields, a ship owner and the proprietor of Wallsend Colliery. She was also a Quaker and the marriage took place at the Quaker Meeting House in north Shields. They had a daughter, Mary, born the following year. His first wife died and Benjamin was married again, to Hannah Chapman of Whitby , but she also died in 1814 after giving birth to a child who did not survive.
Flounders inherited the Culmington estate from Gideon Bickerdike, who had intended leaving it to endow the Quaker Ackworth School near Pontefract, but changed his mind and left it to Benjamin Flounders with £200,000 in 1807. Flounders himself was baptised into the Church of England in 1817, his love of field sports and port apparently having upset the Quakers.
Flounders was an interesting man. In the early 1800s he was heavily involved in the development of Teeside. He was prominent in championing the scheme for improving the navigable channel of the Tees . He was also involved with the building of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, being a member of the management committee and he is featured, with a photograph of a portrait of him, in a book called The History of the First Railway, written by M. Heavisides in 1912. He is also commemorated on a plaque on Yarm Town Hall .
His daughter Mary had become his close companion after the death of his second wife and remained so until her marriage in 1841, at the age of 40, to Major Arthur Charles Lowe of Court of Hill, near Ludlow . She died after only three years of marriage in 1844 and her husband had her buried by the churchyard wall in Yarm, to frustrate her father's wish to be buried beside her. Benjamin got round this by buying the neighbouring field and extending the churchyard.
He sold his estates at Culmington in 1845 for £40,000 and moved back to Yarm where he died on the 19 th April 1846 . He carried out his uncle's wishes and endowed the Flounders Institute at Ackworth School . He left other funds which were used for founding the North Eastern County School at Barnard Castle and for Yarm Grammar School .
