Herlingshaw Family Website

The Herlingshaw family

Where it all began ...

It began when a young lady called Mary Jane Shaw had a baby on 11th December 1884 and named him William, the same as her younger brother.

She was then 24 and had been working as a domestic servant in the Derbyshire spa town of Matlock Bath in 1881 but seems to have moved north to Cheshire after that.

William was born at No. 1, St Vincent Street, in Altrincham, Cheshire - about 30 miles north of Matlock Bath and not far from Manchester. Today that street, newly built in the early 1880s, has disappeared - consumed by the car park of a giant Tesco store.

The "informant" for the birth was Alice Ackerley, occupier of the house, and official registration was on the 16th January 1885 by Samuel Broadbent. This is the 1947 copy certificate issued for NHS purposes:

Mary Jane was unmarried at the time. She was born in 1860 in Oker (also written as Oaker), a small hillside hamlet in Derbyshire between Wensley and Matlock featured in a sonnet by William Wordsworth that refers to two sycamore trees planted by the Shore brothers. Given the inconsistency of spellings and the widespread illiteracy at the time, the Shaws and the Shores may well have been related - the spellings were often interchanged along with Shawe and Shoare. "Will Shore's Lane" still exists in Oker.

This is Mary Jane's (1949 NHS copy) birth certificate. Note that her mother Mary seems to have been illiterate, which was not uncommon in 1860.

Very little is known of William Shaw's childhood but it seems from notes in a family bible that he and his mother spent some time living in Dove Holes, a small village in the High Peaks near Chapel-en-le-Frith that is dominated by limestone quarries. By the age of seven he had left his mother and the North West of England and was being brought up by Joseph Shaw, her oldest brother who had migrated from rural Derbyshire to the newly thriving Teesside industrial area.

In 1890 Mary Jane was still unmarried but had another child called Alice, born in the tiny village of Elton, Derbyshire, pictured below more recently.

One year later, in 1891, Mary Jane was living in Clay Cross with her brother George, a coal miner and his family. However, baby Alice was in Ashover being looked after by Mary Jane's older sister Elizabeth Ann who by then had married for a second time to James Smedley, another coal miner. Somewhat surprisingly, given George's mining household, Mary Jane was rather grandiosely described in the 1891 census as "Servant (Bath Maid)".

Mary Jane married for the first time in 1896, to the much younger George Millward Herling at St John the Baptist church in Nether Knutsford, Cheshire. As was a pattern in her census returns she understated her age, here by 6 years. It is believed that George had another middle name - Henry.

George Millward Herling died in 1914 aged only 40 and Mary Jane eventually married for a second time in 1927, in Shirland, Derbyshire. Her late father John was now listed as a farmer, previously (and probably more accurately) he was described as a (lead) miner, however, her age was now recorded correctly. Robert, her new husband was recorded as a resident of Shirland but that was almost certainly a temporary arrangement maybe for marriage licence purposes. The witness Elizabeth Shaw was Mary Jane's older sister. It is not possible to know exactly which William Shaw the other witness was, but it was almost certainly not her son as by then he was definitely using the Herlingshaw name. It was probably her younger brother.

Below is the only known photograph of Mary Jane. The proportions of the picture suggest that there might have been someone else to the left of her in the photograph before it was torn. It is not dated but is probably from the time that she was running her hotel in Preston (1911 - 1927). Or perhaps her second marriage in 1927. Her outfit and wristwatch indicate some affluence, far from the days of being a domestic servant or bath maid.

Mary Jane lived until she was 90 and died at her home called "Oakerside" in Sharoe Green Lane, Fulwood, near Preston in 1950. The cause of death was given as arteriosclerosis.

The death certificate was signed by Dr William Albert Bruce Cooper (below) who had an amazing history in the Royal Navy as Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander in WW2 (including "Operation Tracer" in Gibraltar) and later in the Falklands war. He purchased a house and GP practice in Parklands Drive, Fulwood in 1947, retired in 1976 and died in 2010 aged 96.

Mary Jane's third child, James Leslie Herling, was born in Ardwick, Manchester in 1897. There were two other Herling children born in Ardwick in preceding years: Charles Edward in 1894 and John in 1891, they might be the children of Edward and Winifred Herling and are probably related to George Millward Herling. Mary Jane's fourth child was George Milward Herling, born 1899 in Bolton, died in WW1 during 1918. The fifth was Annie Frances Milward Herling who was born in 1902 in Bolton but died in 1911. The Millward / Milward / Millwood spellings were somewhat inconsistent, even from father to son.