Herlingshaw Family Website

The Herlingshaw family

The Herlings, the Milwards and the Shaws

The exact connection between the Herling and the Milward families (later more likely to be spelled Millward or sometimes Millwood) is unknown but there clearly was one.

The earliest traced Herling definitely connected with the Shaw family was James Milward Herling, born in 1837. He was an army man and had at least nine children who were all born in garrison towns in England and overseas, wherever he was in the army were at the time. All of his children were given the middle name of Milward and in some cases "Milward Herling" seems to have been treated as their surname, occasionally it was hyphenated. One of his sons, George Milward Herling married Mary Jane Shaw.

John Milward was a civil war army colonel who lived at Snitterton Hall which he had built in 1631, only half a mile from Oker Hill (using sandstone from Oker). This is the hall recently:

In 1596 the original manor house on the site was bought by John Shore of Darley for 400 pounds, his family sold it in 1627 to Thomas and Isaac Smith who sold it again to John Milward. John Shore might well be related to the Shaws on this website but there is no evidence yet.

John Milward was an investor in lead mines, the main industry of the area in which many of the Shaws worked and from 1638 to 1661 was one of the Chief Barmasters for the industry in the Wirksworth Wapentake. This was a role also known as the King's Farmer, designed to oversee the industry and protect the taxes collected from it. The monarch traditionally claimed all mineral rights at that time.

John Milward fought for King Charles I against Oliver Cromwell in the English civil war and died in 1670. For a while he was a Member of Parliament and the High Sheriff of Derbyshire. One of his sons (Captain) Henry Milward was also a soldier and took over the estate but he died in 1681 during the reign of Charles II. A grandson called George inherited the estate but he died in 1711 and from then on the hall was no longer owned by the Milward family.

The ancient parish church of St Helens in Darley Dale contains a monument to John Milward, his wife and their eleven children whose home was two miles away. That was the same church that was used by Mary Jane Shaw's family, her father John Shaw and many Shaw ancestors who were baptised, married and buried there.

Perhaps this shared geographical origin is what connected Mary Jane Shaw to George Milward Herling. Clearly the Shaws were not in the same social position as enjoyed by John Milward in the 17th century - but two hundred years later the Milward assets and their legacy had been dissipated.

The Diary of John Milward, Esq., Member of Parliament for Derbyshire September 17th 1666 to May 8th 1668 was edited by Caroline Robbins and published by Cambridge University Press in 1938.