HUGHES - A FAMILY OF PAPERMAKERS

This website is being prepared about a branch of the Hughes family, many of whom were involved in papermaking.

The first record about them, so far located, is in the parish registers of Ringley, Lancashire, England in the 1750's. Thomas and Mary Hughes took their children to be baptised in the Ringley Parish Church. Thomas was described as a paperman of Little Lever in 1752 and a papermaker of Prestolee in 1756. Shortly afterwards they are believed to have moved to the Smedley Bridge or Collyhurst area as their next three children (1759, 1761 and 1764) were baptised in Manchester.

It was their son, Daniel Hughes, who continued the family line. He was baptised on 21 June 1761 in Manchester and is believed to have moved back to Little Lever, near Bolton to work as a papermaker. Daniel married Martha Walker and each of their four sons were associated with paper mills in the Manchester area.

Their first son, Thomas Hughes ran the Creams Paper Mill at Little Lever, Lancashire from about 1818 till 1834. He and his wife Elizabeth (nee Woodward) had a number of children, none of whom had any issue.

Their second son, Joseph Hughes, worked as a papermaker at Little Lever until 1824 when he became a partner with Joseph Goodwin in a cotton spinning firm at Rose Hill, Bolton. This partnership lasted until about 1838 when he became a partner in the running of the White Hall Paper Mill at Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire. He and his wife Mary (nee Grime) had a number of children, some of whom continued to run this mill for ten years after the death of Joseph in 1859. One of his sons, Daniel Hughes, emigrated to Canada where he and his sons were involved in the running of paper and pulp mills in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

The third son, Daniel Hughes, was a partner in the Lomax Bank Paper Mill in the 1830's at Little Lever. One of his sons, Robert Hughes, ran this same mill in the 1850's. Robert's son, William Daniel Hughes emigrated to Australia where he managed the Barwon Paper Mill at Geelong, Victoria.

The fourth son, James Hughes, was a partner with John Broadbent at the Shuttleworth Paper Mill, near Bury, Lancashire from about 1836 to 1849. One of his sons, John Hughes, was in business as a paper merchant in Manchester until his death in 1905.

Bolton Central Reference Library; Amcor Archives (Trevor Moore); University of Melbourne Archives (Trevor Hart); Baillieu Library; Shaw Research Library, National Gallery of Victoria (Michael Watson); State Library of Victoria; Public Record Office of Victoria; Geelong Historical Records Centre; Genealogical Society of Victoria; Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies; Royal Historical Society of Victoria; Borchardt Library, La Trobe University; Canadian Archives; Nova Scotia Archives; Anthony Edwards; Geoffrey Graham Tong Hughes; Norma Joyce Hughes; Shirley Hutchinson; Carmen Moir.

Alexander Romanov-Hughes

G.P.O. Box 5191, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3001

Updated 16 July 2010

© Copyright 2010 by Alexander Romanov-Hughes. All Rights Reserved.