Samuel Cowling
Samuel (Sammy) Cowling was baptised at Silsden St James PC on 21 June 1772. The family lived at Well House farm, which is located north of Brownbank Lane, near the junction with the road to Swartha. The area was known as Brunthwaite, after the nearby hamlet.
Samuel's parents were John Cowling and Mary Hargraves, farmers, who married at St Andrew's PC, Kildwick on 27 February 1759. They had 5 other children - Joshua (bapt 1760), Ann (bapt 1762, bur 1763), Ann (bapt 1765), Isabell (bapt 1770) and James (bapt 1776).
John Cowling was the son of Joshua Cowling and Mary Coates, who married at Bradford PC on 20 July 1731.
Joshua, one of 7 children, was baptised at Silsden St James PC on 8 June 1712 to John Cowling and Isabella Hird, who married at Kildwick on 6 November 1694.
John may have been the son of Edmund Cowling and his wife Agnes Laycock.
The webmaster of the Oldham Thomases website [1] reports that in 1795 the estate papers of the Earl of Thanet, who owned much of Silsden, show a farm of 73 acres (quite a large one for the time) tenanted by Joshua and William Cowling. Joshua was, presumably, the son baptised in 1760 to John and Mary Cowling, but William has not been identified.
By 1835 (an election year), James Cowling (bapt 1776) was recorded at Moorcock House, a farm on the bleak Draughton Moor, accessed from Cringles Lane. In the same year John Cowling, probably their son, was listed as a resident of Brunthwaite.
By 1836, according to the Oldham Thomases report, the farm in Brunthwaite, assumed to be Well House, had been divided among various members of the Cowling family, mainly, it is thought, the children of James Cowling (bapt 1776) and his wife Margaret Fort, who married on 1 March 1796. Some Cowlings had moved to other farms in Silsden: John Cowling, for example, is noted at Woodsides: Woodside and Lower Woodside are farms bordering the canal to the west of Silsden.
By 1793 Sammy Cowling was in Bradford, working as a grocer.
On 26 December that year he married Hannah Kitson at Calverley PC. His bride was the daughter of Jeremiah Kitson, who owned land in Windhill and Windhill Crag. Cudworth [2] wrote that the Kitson family were among the earliest residents at Windhill and were probably yeomen independent of the Lord of the Manor. Jeremiah was 80 when he died in 1815. It is possible that some or all of Jeremiah’s property passed to his daughter and thence, by the law of coverture, to her husband.
In 1815 Samuel Cowling was a witness to the marriage of James Bateson and Isabella Wade. Isabella was Samuel’s niece, their common ancestors being John Cowling and Mary Hargraves.
In the Baines Gazetteer of 1822 Cowling was an oil merchant.
In the 1829 Pigot's Directory he was listed under Gentry, living at Shipley Hall. In the same edition he was also listed as a Worsted Manufacturer of Windhill.
Cudworth described him as an oil, top and yarn merchant, who farmed land (between Carr Lane and Owlet Road) in Windhill. In 1842 he sold part of this land, 4 acres called Briery Field, to William Peel of Crag Cottage. He lived in a house near Windhill Bridge, the bridge on the turnpike over the Bradford Canal.
Cudworth wrote that Cowling was the best known of the men of Windhill and district: he was superintendent of the school at Windhill Crag; he was the first Poor Law Guardian and Overseer for Idle; he was “the lawyer, surveyor, scribe and confidant of half the countryside and was in favour with both rich and poor”. He attended the magistrates court at the Spotted House (near Bradford Grammar School) and offered his advice to all, including the justices. His word was, wrote Cudworth, law.
Hannah Kitson / Cowling died on 2 June 1846 aged 78.
Sammy Cowling died in Windhill on 15 May 1852 aged 80.
They were buried at Shipley St Paul’s in a grave owned by Joseph Bateson, his grand-nephew.
References
1 www.oldhamthomases.uk/chapter-4-immigrants-and-emigrants (the original sources, at Leeds University, have yet to be viewed).
2 Round About Bradford (Shipley and Idle chapters) by William Cudworth, 1876.