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This article reprinted with permission from: http://www.bradfordhistorical.fsnet.co.uk/antiquary/third/vol05/gledhill.html#author
Sheila Cox
(This paper first appeared in 1991 in volume 5, pp. 68-71, of the
third series of The Bradford Antiquary, the journal of the Bradford
Historical and Antiquarian Society.)
In 1939 Alfred Ernest Gledhill of Gaylord, Kansas wrote a book about
his parents emigration to America and their subsequent pioneer settlement.
In 1990 his great-niece Mrs Janet Brooks of Portis, Kansas, a distant
cousin of mine visited London and gave me copies of the book, photographs
and other documents, including family correspondence. These form
the basis of this account.
Joseph Gledhill, fourth of the five children of Joseph Gledhill
and his wife Hannah Thornton was born on 15 June 1813 and baptised
the following month at Southowram Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, near
Halifax. His father, a stone mason and master of stone quarries
died in 1816. Young Joseph Gledhill became a wool factor and commission
salesman, working from a warehouse in Norwich, where he lived for
many years. It was there, in 1839 that he married Maria Friar and
their four sons and one daughter were born. The eldest, a son born
in July 1842 and named Joseph, was to become Alfred Ernest's father.
Joseph and Maria returned to Bradford from Norwich in about 1856
where their young family continued their education.
The sons followed their father into the wool trade, learning all
aspects including office work and book keeping. Joseph was taken
into the family business, Joseph Gledhill & Son when he came
of age. However, the American Civil War had a severe effect on English
trade and, in particular, the textile industry. Joseph Gledhill
& Son was just one of many firms which became bankrupt at this
time, and the younger Joseph decided to go to America, seeing no
prospect of improvement in England.
Joseph landed in America on Christmas Day 1863, and worked as a
book keeper in New York for several months before becoming a wool
sorter at Terry's Mill, near Plymouth, Connecticut. Here he met
Elizabeth Leigh, a young lady from Hyde whose family of Lancashire
textile workers overtaken by similar trade misfortunes in the cotton
mills there, had also sought work in America. Joseph and Elizabeth
married in Plymouth in 1865; their first two children were born
in Connecticut, Alfred Ernest in February 1867 at Meriden and Amy
Maria in December 1868 at Beacon Falls.
Joseph only saw his parents once more. In 1867 his nineteen-year-old
brother died in Bradford and as his mother's health was failing
he, Elizabeth and three-month-old Alfred sailed back for a four-month
visit, working in Bradford to help pay the expenses of the trip.
His mother Maria died the following spring and his father Joseph
some four months later while on business in Glasgow.
About 1869-70 the New Haven Company was formed in Connecticut to
promote the formation of a colony in the west. Joseph became interested,
realising that outdoor work would be better for his health. In March
1871 about sixty five men set out from New York, including Joseph
and his youngest brother, Arthur Thomas, who had joined him shortly
after the death of their parents. Most of the enthusiastic band
were factory workers or former soldiers with little or no knowledge
of farming or stock handling and a number of them later decided
that this new life was not for them and either returned to Connecticut
or settled near Minneapolis. The few who persisted eventually settled
at Twelve Mile Creek in Smith County, Kansas.
Alfred gives an interesting account of his father's early days there,
and of the struggle to gain experience, build dugouts and, later,
log houses in which to live, and to 'break out' a few acres of land
for crops. Prairie fires, some started by Indians, blizzards, storms
and floods, droughts, plagues of grasshoppers all made their lives
difficult and left little time for leisure pursuits or relaxation,
but they persevered until they had made a reasonable settlement
and those who were married could look forward to their families
joining them.
In September 1872, Elizabeth and the children, Alfred and Amy, made
the long journey to join Joseph in Twelve Mile Creek, first by rail
to Waterville, Kansas, then a seven day journey by ox wagon. Arthur
was working his own homestead but lived mostly with Joseph. Gradually
the pioneers began to build up their isolated community; by 1873
the first Sunday School was organised and soon the people of the
homesteads were able to come together for rare social meetings such
as New Year and Fourth of July celebrations. The community spirit
grew with the establishment of a Sewing Circle in 1874, and later
that year came a great improvement in communications when the Twelve
Mile Post Office was inaugurated, Joseph becoming its first and
indeed only postmaster during its twenty year existence, a position
he combined with farming. Formerly, the nearest post office was
sixteen miles away at Cawker, and mail was only picked up when someone
had occasion to go there.
Europe must have seemed more than a world apart when Frederick Ernest
Gledhill, who had remained in Bradford, wrote to his brother Arthur
in 1874. He was working in Paris, to improve the French he had already
learned in Bradford, in order to obtain a better position. He wrote
amusingly about his cross Channel journey, and his first lodgings,
recommended by a young Bradfordian who had just left Paris. He had
then moved to a better quarter to stay in a hotel costing him 25
francs a month (the lodgings had cost more), but he wanted to change
jobs as his employer offered him only 'a miserable 50 francs a month'.
He worked at the warehouse from eight in the morning until six in
the evening, with an hour allowed at noon for breakfast.
The way of living here is quite different to in England - I have
nothing to eat at home - of course everybody does not live in exactly
the same way but the ordinary way of living is to have nothing to
eat until 11 or 12 o'clock breakfast time - Breakfast being a meal
exactly like dinner both consisting in soup, meat vegetables and
dessert and wine - Dinner is taken at 6 or 7 - The living is not
at all dear - I like it very well The dishes are prepared much more
nicely than in England: and there is much greater variety from which
to choose.
Joseph and Arthur, growing most of their own food in Kansas, had
much less variety, but although the food was plain there was always
enough to eat.
Frederick had spent much of his free time sightseeing, but was beginning
to tire of it:
One does not care to be always running about to museums, picture
galleries churches, triumphal arches etc. - The cafe-chantants,
bals etc. are almost innumerable - I have been to a good many of
all sorts - They are most magnificent places usually, generally
there is a saloon garden - the saloon resplendent with mirrors and
flowers and lights and gildings and in the evening the gardens are
lighted with innumerable little lamps - almost every song at all
popular has a twinge of immorality - and at the bals the exhibition
is of the most revolting character - You know what the can-can is
I suppose - Well here no restraint whatever is put upon the dancers
- it is very amusing to watch the young men dancing. Their only
object seems to be to make themselves look as ridiculous as possible.
He had not seen his young brother for several years and ended his
letter with a request - 'If you have had a new picture taken I shall
be glad to see your face as it present appears'.
Frederick stayed in Paris for a year. His first position on returning
to Bradford was unsatisfactory but he soon found a better one, as
a clerk in a stuff warehouse, although, as he wrote again to Arthur
in 1876 'owing to the unsatisfactory state of trade it is not what
might have been pecuniarily but I am in hopes that it will improve
in that respect'. He had married Caroline (Carrie) Hanson of Halifax
the previous year, and enclosed her photograph, also announcing
the birth that very day of their first child Ernest, who was to
die eighteen months later. He asked Arthur if he was likely to marry
soon - 'If so send us the lady's picture, we should be glad to make
her acquaintance in that, failing any other available way'. Arthur
did not marry until 1880, and Frederick died in 1881, a few months
after his baby daughter Edith, but his widow Carrie visited the
Gledhills at Twelve Mile in 1885-6 with their remaining child, Arthur.
Carrie became a teacher near Alton, Kansas, before moving with Arthur
to Emporia, in the same state. She is known have lived in Colorado
Springs, Colorado, between 1904 and 1929, and Arthur was there up
to 1926.
Joseph and Elizabeth died at Twelve Mile in 1920 and 1914. Their
hard work over many years had helped to create a community which
grew and prospered. Their family of two sons and three daughters
included two who combined school teaching with farming; descendants
still farm the same area. Brother Arthur Thomas and Clementine had
three sons and a daughter, and after a similar life of homesteading
they retired in 1913 to Santa Monica, California dying there in
1933 and 1930.
Letters and photographs were important links between emigrants and
their families before the advent of telephones and air travel. When
such records pass down to later generations they provide insight
and interest and, as in this instance, can re-unite long-lost relatives.
© 1991, Sheila Cox and The Bradford Antiquary
SHEILA COX, who now lives in Wimbledon, was born in Harrogate and
educated at Harrogate College. Her interest in family research was
prompted partly by a study of Bradford and the earlier life of her
father, Norman Alexander Foster, Mayor of Harrogate in 1951-52,
for whom she was Mayoress. Mrs Cox has travelled widely, and this
has encouraged her to study how British people, particularly those
from Yorkshire, contribute to activities throughout the world.
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