The Wilsons of West Hartlepool

THE WILSONS OF WHITBY AND WEST HARTLEPOOL

Originally hailing from Whitby, the Wilsons were amongst the foremost families of that port and the sea was in their blood.  One ancestor, for example, was Captain Jacob Wilson.  A master mariner, like his father before him, he sailed in the Baltic trade to ports such as Memel and Riga, departing from Hull and the Pool of London.  He can be found as a subscriber to Lionel Charlton’s “History of Whitby and of Whitby Abbey,” published in 1779, but was lost when his ship, the “Content,” was captured by the enemy in 1797.

Jacob’s son, Isaac, was also a mariner, sailing out to Stockholm and Dublin during his apprenticeship aboard a Whitby collier bark.  He married Mary Porrit of Whitby and a son, also named Isaac , was born to the couple in 1799.  Isaac husband of Mary also seems to have been claimed by the sea.  Nevertheless, his son followed his father’s calling, signing on as a ship’s boy at the tender age of nine years at the height of the Napoleonic Wars.

This Isaac married Elizabeth Miller, the daughter of a master mariner, at St. Mary’s Church, Whitby, in August 1820.  The couple had seven children, two girls and five boys, all but one of which survived into adulthood.  During the 1830s the family moved from Whitby to Stockton-on-Tees, with Isaac Wilson sailing as a mate aboard collier brigs shipping “black diamonds” from the Port Clarence staiths.  They returned to Whitby but Isaac and Elizabeth parted company.  Isaac is last heard of signing off the “Britannia” at Malta in July 1856, subsequently fading into the mists of history.

Circa 1852 Elizabeth Wilson took her family to the burgeoning New Stranton, as West Hartlepool was then known.  It was here that her brother, James Miller (born 1806), a retired master mariner, had gone into business as a ship’s chandler.  James also ventured into shipowing and had his premises in St. John Street.  His first wife, Sarah (nee Selby) died and he married again, to a widow, Helen McLean (nee McGregor), a Dundee coal-broker.  Helen ran a dame- school in New Stranton and the couple lived first in Scarborough Street before moving to No. 13 York Road, where James died in 1885.

James Miller was a well-connected local businessman.  His will was witnessed by George Steel, whose contribution to the development of West Hartlepool was considerable, and his second marriage, at Stranton Church, was witnessed by Captain Robert Weatherly.  In 1863 Weatherly was involved in a failed attempt to smuggle arms to aid Polish revolutionaries!  James Miller was responsible for a naming tradition amongst the Wilsons that continues to the present day.

Thanks to James Miller’s father-in-law, Selby, Elizabeth Wilson’s third son, James (born at Clarence Street, Stockton in 1838), secured an apprenticeship as a shipwright at the Middleton yard of John Punshon Denton.  James is described in the 1851 census as a boatbuilder, the Wilsons then living on the Cragg, Whitby.  Elizabeth’s second surviving son, Benjamin, formerly a jet-worker, became a boatman at Hartlepool docks and her eldest, Isaac (born Whitby, 1828), was at sea as captain of the Whitby brig “Mary.” Upon arrival at West Hartlepool, Elizabeth and her children lived first in John Street.

Isaac Wilson’s Board of Trade master’s certificate (No. 49,327) was granted at Hartlepool Customs’ House in February 1851.  Isaac was a formidable character, sailing as first mate aboard a foreign-going sailing ship at the age of sixteen and rising to captaincy at nineteen.  Between 1853 and 1856 he was master of the brig “Marys,” engaged on a regular run from the Hartlepools to Hamburg, supplying small coals on behalf of M. Pearse & Co., coal fitters and agents for the Whitworth and Coundon collieries, Wallsend.

In 1856 tragedy was to strike the Wilson family.  Isaac’s latest command, the brig “Julia,” was wrecked on the Long Sand.  Isaac, his wife and baby daughter were drowned, together with the mate, Will Bain, his wife and two of their children.  Elizabeth Wilson (nee Miler) passed away two years later, the victim of tuberculosis.

At this time the Wilsons lived at 19 Dover Street, the home of Elizabeth Wilson’s eldest daughter Mary and her husband, Alfred Vie.  It was Mary’s second marriage, her first being to James McLean of Whitby, a joiner, to whom she had two sons.  Both boys became shipwrights at West Hartlepool.

 A master mariner and the son of a Coastguard Boatman at Robin Hood’s Bay, Alfred Vie had a sister, Maria Grainger.  A childless widow, and accompanied by her widowed mother, she came to stay with her brother Alfred c. 1860.  James Wilson and Maria Grainger were married at Christ Church in November 1861.

 In 1867 Alfred and Mary Vie (nee Wilson) lived in George Street, where Alfred set up as a beer seller.   Mary died there following a massive seizure.  James Wilson was then head of the household at 19 Dover Street.  By 1881 James and family, including his elderly mother-in-law had moved on to 81 Upper Alma Street.  Mrs Maria Vie (nee Cochrane), mother-in-law of James Wilson, passed away at that address in 1886.  Also resident in Upper Alma Street was James’s younger brother, Thomas, himself a shipwright, and his wife Mary Jane (nee Hogarth).  Thomas and Mary Jane had been childhood sweethearts.  Later residents of Fawcett Street, Thomas Wilson passed away in 1912 and his wife died in 1925.

In 1891 James and Maria Wilson had moved to 21 Archer Street, the former residence of Captain George Hardcastle and his wife, Jane (nee Miller), a cousin of the Wilsons.  By 1894, however, James and Maria were living with their eldest daughter Maria Elizabeth and her husband, Thomas Harriman Pallin.  The Pallins lived at No. 9 Park Square.  Having served his time as shipyard engine fitter Thos. H Pallin was injured in an industrial accident.  He sought alternative employment, rising to become branch manager for the “North Eastern Daily Gazette.”  Both Thos H. Pallin and his wife were active members of the Primitive Methodist Church, also being involved with the associated Sunday School.

Thos. H. Pallin’s mother was Mrs Jane Pallin, known as “the mother of Primitive Methodism in West Hartlepool.”  Grange Road Methodist Church contains a commemorative plaque (1912) concerning Jane Pallin and her husband Tom, whilst Mrs Maria Elizabeth Pallin (nee Wilson) was responsible for dedicating the foundation stone for the aforementioned church.

Mrs Maria Wilson (formerly Grainger, nee Vie) died at 9 Park Square, of stomach cancer, in 1894.  The Pallins subsequently moved to 31 Grosvenor Street and James Wilson passed away there in the August of 1907.

 James was retired from his job by 1901, having risen to become Foreman Shipwright at the Harbour Yard of Robert Irvine.  At the time of his passing James owned three properties in West Hartlepool – “Karen Lodge” in Durham Street, 21 Archer Street and 21 Fawcett Street.  His will was witnessed by George William Turnbull of 32 Collingwood Road.  A friend of the Wilson family, Turnbull became an eminent West Hartlepudlian as a local councillor and Mayor of the town.

James and Maria Wilson had five children in all, three boys and two girls.  The eldest, Isaac, a shipyard engine fitter and the first engineer in the Wilson family, suffered a debilitating head injury and died of pneumonia in Durham County Asylum, Sedgefield.  The second son, James became a shipwright.  A married man with two small children, he died in his twenties from a massive heart attack just a month after the passing of his infant son.  Father and son were laid to rest in the same grave.  James and Maria’s second daughter, Mary Jane, married John William Dawson and lived at Stockton-on-Tees.  James and Maria’s youngest child, Thomas George Wilson, is the subject of a separate biography.

Source: “The Wilsons of Whitby and West Hartlepool,” Vol. 1-3, by Stuart James Wilson

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