I have just added a reciprocal link to BC Connections from our Cradley Links web site and found out that Jan and I are (slightly) related by marriage (not ours) and we live a couple of streets away from each other. So my great grandparents Charles Pearce and Louisa nee Partridge are already on Connections, which is a good start. I am the result of a Londoner settling in the Black Country in 1946, and a Pearce married a Brown.
My BC great grandparents are the above and also John Raybould and Mary Ann Attwood, all in Cradley of course. I have traced my Attwoods back to the 1400s and the others not quite so far, but for me it is the stories about them that matter most. Mary Ann Attwood's mother was Sally Jones, a drover who brought cattle through the lanes and streets from Hagley to the butchers of Cradley, and one of her contemporaries described her as
Her husband, my great great grandfather Ben Attwood was not so keen, and he left her for a life in Ulverston in Lancashire.a genius in her own right. Cradley was the richer for such people as Sally Jones, the drover, trusted and respected by all.
Most of my lot were chain makers and coal miners; one or two made shedloads of money, like Noah Hingley and some of the Attwoods, but none of it came down my way, which is OK because I have the stories.
Nigel Brown
