Historic Huddersfield banknotes have a new home ... in the USA.
They were bought by a descendant of John Dobson who founded Huddersfield Old Bank and so are back with the family.
In July we ran a story about John Dobson and Sons bank notes being auctioned for thousands of pounds.
Now we can reveal that three of them were bought by Sandi Hewlett who lives in Pennsylvania.
She said: “I managed to bid high enough to obtain three of the four notes at auction.
“My interest in these notes is because John Dobson (1753-1818) who founded the bank and his son John Dobson (1780-1857) were my fifth and fourth great grandfathers, respectively.
“One of the notes is valued at one pound and is signed by J Dobson on August 1, 1823.
“Through my genealogy research I have found other descendants of John Dobson (1753-1818) and his wife Sarah Wood and of his son John Dobson (1780-1857) and his wife Anna Maria Walker. We’re all quite pleased to have a bit of memorabilia from our ancestors.”
Sandi was born in New York City, is married to Larry and has lived in Pennsylvania for 32 years.
She works as a full-time genealogist, mostly researching for clients with Pennsylvania ancestry.
She was certified by the Board for Certification of Genealogists (Washington, DC) in 2001. Sandi now serves on the Board of Directors for the International Society of British Genealogy and Family History.
Not surprisingly with such experience at genealogy Sandi has an in depth knowledge of her own family history.
Her ancestor John Dobson (1753-1818) founded the Dobson & Sons bank, which was inherited by his two sons, John Dobson (1780-1857), and his brother William Beevers Dobson (1788-1839). William Beevers Dobson did not marry.
Sandi said: “When Dobson & Sons Bank filed for bankruptcy in 1826 John Dobson and his wife Anna Maria (Walker) Dobson (daughter of Joshua Walker and Martha Sykes) moved with their unmarried children from their home in Almondbury to London where they resided in Southwark.
“John Dobson became a hop merchant and employed two of his sons.”
The only child of John Dobson and Anna Maria to remain in Yorkshire was Emma Maria Dobson (1804-1851) who married William Jacomb (1795-1868) at Almondbury in 1826. He was a Huddersfield lawyer who was born in London. Both are buried at St Peter’s Church, Huddersfield.
Sandi adds: “One of John Dobson and Anna Maria’s daughters, Eliza Louisa Dobson, married George Stacey, on February 6, 1828 at St Saviour in Southwark.
“In 1836 George Stacey and Eliza Louisa – along with three of their four children – sailed to Canada where they settled in what is called the Eastern Townships of Quebec which was quite a wilderness at that time. Their daughter, Louisa, who remained in England, eventually sailed for Canada to join her family in 1849. Up to that time, Louisa lived with her grandparents George Stacey and Sarah (Hubbard) Stacey at the Tower of London where her grandfather, George Stacey, worked in the Ordnance Department for 60 years from 1807 until he retired in 1858.
“George Stacey and Eliza Louisa are my third great grandparents. Their son Alfred Stacey (1836-1907) had a daughter Bertha Caroline Stacey who married Henry Herbert Winslow in 1881 in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and they are my great-grandparents.
Henry (1852-1925) and Bertha (1862-1922) had a daughter Mae Winslow who is my grandmother.
Mae Winslow (1894-1975) married Reginald Lobdell (1891-1951) at Eaton Corner, Quebec, in January 1913 and then they moved to New Hampshire in 1914.
Their daughter Evangeline Lobdell is my mother, born February 1920 in Bartlett, New Hampshire.”
Most of Sandi’s research was conducted in England, both in London and at the Huddersfield Library and the Yorkshire Archives in Wakefield.
