Nat Gould

Elizabeth Wright 1799-1876

Elizabeth Wright was born in Bradbourne in Derbyshire on 29 August 1799, the daughter of John Wright 1752-1840 a farmer and his wife nee Elizabeth Adams 1761-1844. Elizabeth Wright was baptised at Bradbourne on 18 November 1799.

On 1 May 1823 she was married at Bradbourne to William Hobbs 1791-1863 of Manchester. William Hobbs was born in 1791 at Hanham, near Bristol. He had been a cotton merchant in Canada from 1809 to 1817 (1).

When the 1841 Census was taken Elizabeth Hobbs was living at Bradbourne with her husband, widowed mother, and unmarried sister Mary Wright.

By 1851 William and Elizabeth Hobbs were living at Broomcroft in Didsbury, Manchester. Staying with them when the Census was taken in that year were her husband's unmarried niece Mary Lock (born in about 1829 in Bristol), his unmarried nephew Robert Hobbs (born in about 1829 at Stapleton in Gloucestershire), and a Canadian visitor William Whiteford (born in about 1820), a cotton manufacturer of Montreal. A nephew (presumably Robert Hobbs) of "William Hobbs of Didsbury, Lancashire, an extensive cotton manufacturer of Spring Bank Mills, Stockport; Vale House Mills, Entwistle; and Gibraltar Mills, Ashton-under-Line, England ... came to Canada at the age of twenty, in 1851, joining the firm of W. Whiteford & Co., successors to the late Peter McGill & Co" (1).

On 3 April 1863 there died "at Broomcroft House, Didsbury, Manchester, after a long and painful illness, William Hobbs, Esq., aged 73, deeply lamented" (2).

In 1871 widowed Elizabeth Hobbs was still living at Broomcroft in Didsbury. With her was her late husband's niece Mary Lock and nephew George Lock (born in Bristol in 1831), a cloth agent.

Elizabeth Hobbs died in Manchester in 1876 aged 76 years.

Mary Lock and her brother George Lock continued to live at Broomcroft until at least 1891, and George Lock was still living there in 1911. By then he had married his cousin Mary Cooke. They had no children. Broomcroft was later the residence of Lord Simon of Wythenshawe who bequeathed it to the University of Manchester. It is now the official residence of the President and Vice Chancellor of the University (3).

(1) History and Biographical Gazetteer of Montreal to the Year 1892 J.D. Borthwick (1892) page 485. (Line should be Lyne and Entwistle should probably read Tintwistle.) Vale House Mill in Longdendale was built in 1775 by Samuel Oldknow, the first cotton spinning and weaving mill in Longdendendale, but by 1864 was owned by William Hobbs & Co. The extensive premises and village were bought by Manchester Corporation in that year and demolished for the construction of a reservoir : The Cotton Industry in Longdendale and Glossopdale T. Quayle (2206) page 126.
(2) Bristol Mercury 11 April 1863.
(3) John Rylands University of Manchester Library Archives VCA/7/600.