O'NEILL - DODDS - DEVLIN
FAMILY HISTORY
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Background
The research into the Dodds/Devlin family history began in 2009. I had always been curiosity as to the roots of my family. Where were they from? What were their occupations? My grandma (Grandma Dodds) used to tell me many tales her family and her childhood. She often visited her family on the coast; Tynemouth, North Shields, Southampton and even over to Australia a couple of times. She talked about her relatives a lot, she sent frequent letters and postcards and they were often in her thoughts. Unfortunately, as an adult, I found I couldn't remember a thing about them - names and places were vague, to say the least. With Grandma Dodds gone, (1989) and after the death of her son, Frankie Dodds (2007), that only left my dad, David Dodds; the last of the Dodds's of Blaydon. I began my search to find out more about our family history and heritage. My dad and I began initially looking through letters and photographs of my grandma's, finding out addresses and, of course, using the huge pool of resources on the internet.
I have traced our origins back six generations thus far, to eighteenth century Ireland, beginning with the O'Neills and the Devlins. Both families migrated to Great Britain in the early-mid 19th Century. The earliest birth year we can trace begins with Catherine O'Neill, born in Ireland in 1793, my great-great-great-great grandmother. I had hoped to go back many more generations, however, many Irish public records were destroyed in fire at the Public Records Office in Dublin during the Civil War in 1922. This means that researching ancestors in Ireland can be difficult and time-consuming. I have found the research to be a fascinating, compelling, and at times, moving, as we catch glimpse into their world. Our lineage is working class through and through - we have always been weavers, miners, labourers - no wealthy merchants, no knights of the realm or royalty so far then.
I have not been able to trace exactly where in Ireland either the O'Neills or the Devlins came, though we know roughly when they came - c1810 and c1840 respectively.
The effects of the potato famine drove thousands of men and women from their homes in Ireland during the 1840s. Many emigrated abroad, to Australia or America, though large numbers came to Great Britain. Those who came to the North East of England landed mainly at Whitehaven or other parts along the North West coast. This is certainly true of the O'Neills who first settled firstly in this area, in Carlisle, Cumbria, although they came several decades before the famine, sometime before 1811, to take advantage of the growth in the textile industry there. In the mid-18th century, Carlisle was no more than a medium-sized market town with a population of about 4,000. The O'Neills were employed as cotton weavers, or hand loom weavers. Until the introduction of the power-loom to textile manufacturing in the late 1820s, every piece of cloth had been produced on the handloom. In the early part of the nineteenth century, after agricultural workers and domestic servants, the handloom weaving was the third largest occupation in the United Kingdom. The weaving trade had enormously been boosted in the cotton manufacturing districts of Lancashire, central Scotland, the North East and the Carlisle area by the increasing production of yarn from the spinning mills in the late18th century. The 1790s marked the emergence of Carlisle as an important textile manufacturing centre. While spinning was now a mechanised operation, making thread cheaper and more plentiful, no-one had yet come up with a satisfactory power loom - so there was a production bottleneck which the weavers were happy to exploit. A Bolton handloom weaver could earn a princely £1 10s a week in the mid 1790s. Children were also employed in the industry, winding pins, or bobbins, for the weavers, or twisting whips. Good pay and an increasing demand for cloth brought workers, particularly Irish immigrants, flooding in to the relatively easily-learned handloom weaving trade. So even before power looms made any real impact, wages had begun to fall as a result of an imbalance of supply over demand. There were just too many people chasing what was seen as easy money.
However, by 1807, because of Britain's war with France, the trade was in deep recession and manufacturers were taking advantage of the situation by putting out work to handloom weavers at breadline prices. They then stockpiled the completed pieces so they could cash in at higher rates when better times returned.
The Devlins came to the UK in the 1840s and first settled in the North East of England. In the 1840s, the North East, in particular in County Durham, became a focal point for the Irish immigrant. The growth in coal, iron, chemical, shipbuilding and engineering industries , and the railways meant there was work for the unskilled, illiterate and often penniless Irish peasant. Blaydon in particular was experiencing an industrial boom and many jobs were to be had in coal-mining, the steel industry and brick-making. The stimulus for industry at Blaydon and Blaydon burn, as elsewhere in the region, was the growth in coal mining and the coal trade, particularly from the early 18th century, when the Hazard and Speculation pits were established at Low Shibdon, linked to the Tyne by wagonways.
The 18th century Blaydon Main Colliery was reopened in the mid-19th century and worked until 1921. Other pits and associated features included Blaydon Burn Colliery, Freehold pit and the Blaydonburn wagonway. Industries supported by the coal trade included chemical works, bottle works, sanitary pipe works, lampblack works, an ironworks, a smithy and brickworks - Cowen’s Upper and Lower Brickworks were established in 1730 and were associated with a variety of features including a clay drift mine and coal/clay drops. The Lower works remains in operation. Blaydon Burn Coke Ovens, also of 19th century origin, were replaced in the 1930s by Priestman Ottovale Coke and Tar Works which was the first in the world to produce petrol from coal known as Blaydon Benzole. Similarly, historically Winlaton was the centre of a large ironworks. Ambrose Crowley, a Quaker nail-manufacturer, moved in 1691 to Winlaton. He set up furnaces and forges there and on the River Derwent at Winlaton Mill. The river was ideally suitable for tempering steel, as the sword-makers of Shotley Bridge also found. Crowley not only produced high-quality nails, but also iron goods such as pots, hinges, wheel-hubs, hatchets and edged tools. He could also make heavy forgings, such as chains, pumps, cannon carriages and anchors up to four tons in weight. The Crowley works were regarded as the largest manufactory of the kind in Europe.
t has been a fantastic, rewarding journey of discovery. As well as discovering our ancestry, I have made contact again with many long lost living family members far and wide, from Southampton to Weston Super Mare in the UK to Perth, Australia and America. Far from my dad being the last of the Dodds family; we discovered there are many of us, all around the world.
Hopefully, we will eventually have something we have all have a hand in creating and have contributed to, and will have something we can pass on to our grand-children , great-grand-children etc, and let them know of the great family they originated from, which is the reason this research was started!
