I never knew any of my Grand parents! Both my Mum and Dad where the youngest children of big families back in the day. Which I suppose was quite common but being the youngest meant there parents would have been older when they had them. Not knowing my Grand parents and the fact that my parents emigrated to Australia when they were young made me keen to find out what ever I could when I did my first back packing trip to England. I heard a few stories from many different cousins but when this young Australian started showing an interest, lots of my distant relatives started helping me out. Marriage and birth certificates led me to finding one set of my Grand parents in Derby. Back in the1990s I would catch the local train from my base near Manchester and visit the Derby library. I could not afford to pay someone to do the research for me but it was free to search the local library old census records. It was with an old micro fish system, there was surname name index then I would have to look through multiple micro slide until I found a good match of birth dates and names. I remember when I first started looking into it I was the only young person there but many of the other locals in the family history search section would help me out. They were great little day trips as I got to get to know a little bit about the area. On this occasion I found a perfect family match in the 1851 census of my Grand parents at 20 bag lane right in the middle of Derby. Another big family, I ended up finding them on the 61,71 and 81 census as well to with my Grand father listed as a coach builder. With the address being in the middle of own I started thinking they could have been wealthy, but the more I looked into it, it probably was not the case. This Grandfather was born 1848 and in 1841 his parents were in a different nearby town. I guess at those time people were moving into big towns to find work during the Industrial age. By 1991 they had all moved to Manchester but it definitely looks like for a good chunk of time Bag Lane and Derby was home.
I would only do a couple of hours research before having a walk around town get some thing to eat before heading home. I have no photos of my own from that day trip but found a few online that helped me get a bit of a feel for what it may have been like. Derbyshire records say Bag lane was wholly inhabited by poor people was possible the outbreak of the plague back in 1635. It was not sounded like a very nice place but I suppose nothing was easy back then.
In the early 1880s the bag lane name was changed to East Street by the look of the photos there maybe have been some redevelopment as well as this was about the time my family moved to Manchester. I reckon if I had more time and money I could piece together more of there story but I think the census record give me a good over view.
Old street photos Source https://www.inderby.org.uk/libraries/
A screen shot of Bag Lane now from google maps, the church still looks similar.
The Family in the early 1900s as the twin were born 1894, photo taken after they moved to Manchester.
The twins and there brothers before 1944
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