IMPORTANT NOTE



The purpose of this site is to trace and record all the descendants of Thomas Andrew and Jane 
Corner who married in 1620, in Hinderwell, North Yorkshire. I encourage all invitees to the 
site to add/amend their own immediate family and also to leave a message in the Guestbook. 
However, I would ask you NOT to extend the tree to include the ancestors of spouses. I trust 
that you understand my 
desire to retain this site for recording the descendants of Thomas & Jane, exclusively.

If you notice errors in other parts of the tree, or if you have additional information on any  ancestor, then please let me know the correction/addition required & I will investigate &  amend. If you have old photographs or documents that you would like to make available, then  please scan as a pdf or jpeg file & email to me & I will upload them. Please do email me any of  your family stories & I will publish them here and do return to the site from time to time, as  I am adding stuff on a regular basis.

I emphasise that this is a private site, for the benefit of our family, viewable by invitation  only. If you are descended from this Andrew(s)line, then do please request access.

OUR SEAFARING HISTORY

I have traced the Andrew, later Andrews, line back to the marriage of Thomas Andrew & Margareta  Hesleton in in 1601 in the parish church in Hinderwell, on the north east coast of Yorkshire.  Regrettably, this marriage was childless and Margareta died in 1619. Thomas then married Jane  Corner in 1620 & from his second marriage, this Andrew dynasty was born.  
 Back in these far off days, the family were Quakers probably joining the Church of England at  the beginning of the 18th century. Then, in 1834, another Thomas Andrews, my Gt.x2  Grandfather,and his family converted to the Roman Catholic faith. They made their first Holy  Communion on Ascension day, 1834 at Gateshead, in County Durham. A brave action, happening only  5 years after the religious emancipation bill of 1829 passed through Parliament. This gave  Catholics the right to practice their faith in public once again, having been discriminated  against, for almost 150 years.

It was Thomas's father, Newark, who added the's';being born Newark Andrew in 1749 but baptising  all his children as Andrews. It is not known why he did this, other than, perhaps, to   differentiate the family from John Andrew, a well known smuggler from Saltburn, another fishing  village a few miles further up the coast. This John Andrew has no connection with our 'Andrew'  family, he having moved into the district from Scotland around 1770.

Newark became a very wealthy man. His grandfather William had been a fisherman, a common  occupation in the coastal village of Staithes, North Yorkshire, which has it's own natural  harbour. However, by the 1740's, Newark's father Richard (1714-1784), started to take advantage  of the growing demand for coal in London, by shipping it from the port of Shields, near  Newcastle. Newark expanded this venture over the next 30 years, such that his ships were  sailing all over the world, including to St.Petersburg in Russia and Norway, (the Baltic  trade); the Cape of Good Hope & North America.

During this period, the world was far from settled, Britain was intermittently at war with 
France, Spain and Holland and then the United States, as the latter demanded independence. 
There is substantial evidence that at least one of his ships, The Charlotte, was used as a 
supply ship in the action at Quebec and that it was later in the Mediterranean defending 
Corsica from the French revolutionaries. During this time, (1790's) the battle of Calvi ensued.
(this was the battle which cost Lord Nelson his eye)
Siege of Calvi-Wikipedia

Shipping at this time must have been a very risky business. Indeed, a newspaper report of 1800,  states that the Charlotte, en route from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Britain, was captured by a  French privateer and taken to Spain. It must have been recovered however, as by 1807 it is  sailing once again under Newark's ownership and in 1810 he insures the boat and the cargo for  the sum of £1,000 with the Sun Insurance company of London. (Of course it may have been insured  earlier but there is no evidence to confirm that this was so.)

In 1797,when Newark was 50 years of age, he bought a farm at Simonside, Jarrow (regrettably now  the centre of a modern housing estate) and gradually settled down to farm, although initially,  it was rented out as an investment and indeed he did not sell his last ship until about 1822.

There is a very detailed plan of what the tenants must grow in each field at the farm, dated  1799.

The reason for switching to farming, was probably partly, to do with his advancing years; he  was simply getting too old to be at sea and Thomas, his youngest son,(and the only one to  produce a family & live to old age) was prone to epilepsy and therefore unsuitable for a life  at sea. In addition to Newark & Charlotte's six children who died in infancy, they also lost  several close family members to the sea. Newark's brother Richard drowned in the West Indies in  June 1794, his brother in law, William Trattles (husband of sister Alice) was lost at sea in  1788, his nephew Richard Trattles was killed during the battle of Calvi in Corsica in 1794, and  sons John & Peter were lost in 1790 (age 17) & 1806 (age 34) respectively. In fact, although  Newark & his wife Charlotte (Burnickle) had 12 children, only 4 made it to adulthood and only  Thomas had any grandchildren.

Thomas would appear to have been a very meticulous man. He was educated privately, it is said  in London, although regrettably the name of his school is not known. However his school book  (see Stories) written in his own hand, signed Thomas Andrews and dated September 16th 1801,  shows that he studied, in addition to the usual principles of mathematics; bookeeping &  accounts, tare & tret, simple interest, commission, brokerage, insurance, purchase of stocks,  compound interest, rebate & discount, equation of payments, single fellowship or fellowship  without time, double fellowship or 
 fellowship with time, barter, loss & gain, foreign exchange & trade with different countries,  vulgar fractions, & decimals.

Clearly he was being prepared by his father for a life in business & commerce. Of course most  of the above nowadays would be undertaken by calculator or computer in seconds but in 1801  (when he was aged 11) one had to know the principles and method of calculations. He sets out in  immaculate copperplate handwriting, firstly a definition of each subject, followed by the  'rules', followed by carefully worked examples often over several pages.