Welcome

Exploring the family has been a voyage of discovery. You grow up with tails of family gone by and doing the family tree has shown that many of the family tales were just as much fiction as fact. The tale of the family moving from Wales to Stoke to start a business was essentially true but the direction was wrong. The family moved from Stoke to Wales to takeover a pottery business. The tale about the grandparent who had a business, purchased a second pottery business and then went out of business because the canals froze over wasn’t correct. The grandparent had two separate businesses. He opened one, declared bankruptcy. A few years later opened other and declared bankruptcy again. Not a frozen canal in sight. Who knows, perhaps one of these days something about a frozen canal will turn up for one of the businesses. We've never found the links to famous people we are supposed to be related to. Lack of evidence doesn't mean something isn't true. It only means I haven't found any evidence so I will keep looking.

Most of the people on the tree have multiple pieces of evidence to try and ensure that they are correct. The introduction of birth/death certificates in 1837 and census entries in 1841 help to improve the reliability of the tree. There are people on the tree going back to the 1740s but there is some doubt about their validity. I've only included the ones where I'm convinced they are highly likely to be members of the tree. I have seen examples of families with the same names at the same time who are not connected. There were two John Hands working at the railway station in Stoke. One had no connection to the family. It always make me chuckle when I hear people say they have traced their families back to the middleages with a confidence that it could never be wrong. Unfortunately most of us don't descend from families who kept detailed records of their lives and family. If you spot any errors or ommisions in the tree I would love to know about them.

Roy and Mary Hand

The tree is made up of ancestors and other family members related to Roy Hand and Ruth Mary Guest who were born and grew up in the Potteries, Staffordshire, England.

Roy was born in 1928, the youngest of 7. His father was a wagon builder who unfortunately died at home in Biddulph in 1937 at the age of 45. The death certificate says the cause of death was angina and coronary thrombosis (Heart attach) which was also the ultimate cause of death for Roy in 1991.

Roy completed an appreticeship (boiler making?) and went on to work on locomotive engines at Colishaw Walker in Biddulph.

Mary was born in 1932. She was christened as "Ruth Mary" but she was always called Mary. This seems to have been done by quite a few of the people in the family tree. Mary had a twin brother David and they were the youngest of four. Mary grew up in Tunstall and went on to study at the City School of Commerce in Hanley in 1946. She completed her school certificate with distinctions,credits and one pass in typing in 1948. She worked in secretarial roles, one of which was working in the advertising department in Lewis's in Hanley.

Before they got married they would cycle together on a tandem at weekends. They would cycle as far as the peak district. They must have enjoyed the Peak District because they honeymooned in Matlock after their wedding in March 1953.

They lived in Biddulph and had three children before moving to Scuthorpe in 1964 because of Roys work. Scunthorpe was a "Steel" town and provided better oportunities. Roy worked as a plater for many years at Olympic Construction.

Roy was diagnosed with angina in the mid eighties which restricted what work he could do. He found himself stuck in limbo. The authorities said although he wasn’t fit for his previous occupation, he could still work in other areas. Unfortunately no-one wanted to give him a job because of his age and health. As a result he spent several years without work. He eventually died as the result of a heart attack in 1991. Mary continued to live in Scunthorpe until she died in 2007.

LLanelly

Llanelly is a town in Carmarthenshire located on the Loughor estuary. It was renamed to Llanelli in 1966 after a local public campaign.

The South Wales Pottery was opened in 1839 by William Chambers. It is commonly refered to as Llanelly Pottery. It no longer exists but there is a blue plaque at the entrance to St Elli Shopping Centre marking its location.

The Guest family connection to the South Wales Pottery began with Richard Guest supervising the construction of the ovens prior to the pottery opening. Richard had walked to Llanelly. It was a hard trip for him. People were not very hospitable and could not understand his english. He had to point at things he wanted to buy in shops. 21^st September 1841 Richarded returned to start a new 12 month contract as a Glost Firer.

In the 1851 census Richard's son David was living in lodgings and working as a potter. With Charlse William Coombs withdrawing from the business in 1868, David joined with William Holland to run the business. Unfortunately in 1875 the business was forced to close. It was reopened again two years later in 1877 by David Guest, his brother George and nephew Richard Dewsberry. The business remained in the family. It was later run by David's son Richard until the pottery was closed in 1922.

Family Movement

Most of the family originated around the midlands of England (Shropshire,Staffordshire,Derbyshire). Some families were already working in the Stoke-on-Trent area and others migrated to Stoke to work in the potteries, steel works, mining. From there families have slowly spread out around the country and world.

Uriel and Cyrus Hand

Uriel and Cyrus were father and son living and working in Newcastle-under-Lyme, England. Uriel was a chair maker and Cyrus a shoe maker. They both travelled to America and landed in New York on 7th September 1849. Uriel seems to vanish at that point. In the 1851 census his wife is recorded as the head of the household and widowed.

In the 1850 American census Cyrus was in Watertown, Wisconsin. From there he moved to Jo Daviess, Illanois where he bacame a naturalized citizen in 1858. He worked as a shoe maker until opening his own shoe repair business on Diagonal Street. He died in 1916 at the age of 90.

John Guest

John was born in Burslem in 1809 and enlisted in the 3rd Regiment of Foot Guard in 1825. In 1830 he went absent without leave for 10 weeks for which he was imprissoned for four months. In 1833 he deserted his post for which he was deported to Australia. 9 years later he married Hannah Cobb in Tasmania. They moved to Carlton, Victoria where he died in 1875.

Susan Guest

Susie's emigration to Australia wasn't as dramatic has John Guest's. She emmigrated with her husband, Joseph Fowles. They moved to Yallourn, Victoria where they lived for the rest of their lives.