Benjamin Hartley

Benjamin Hartley was born on 20 March 1832 in Shaw, in the hamlet of Far Oxenhope, the second son of John and Sarah Hartley.  He was baptised on 2 October 1832 by Patrick Bronte.

According to census entries, his father John Hartley* was born around 1788, though no christening record has been found.  His possible antecedents are discussed in the Notes   below.

John Hartley’s wife was Sarah Holmes.  The couple had 5 children and lived in a terraced house in Shaw. See photo here.  Sarah died in 1853, John in 1867. 

 

By the age of 18, Benjamin had taken up his father’s trade of Woolcomber or Spinner and was a choirboy at Haworth Parish Church, where Patrick Bronte was the incumbent. At the age of 20, in 1853, he married Amelia Sutcliffe.  Amelia was born in Shaw in 1831 to †Abraham Sutcliffe, another Woolcomber.  In 1861 the couple were at Cobling, a smallholding on the Sawood estate (Far Oxenhope) near the Dog & Gun Inn.  Benjamin was described as a Milk Hawker though, in trade directories published in 1864 and 1866, he was a Farmer. This fits roughly with a family story that the Hartleys had a poor dairy farm near Haworth that supplied the Brontes with milk. Read more: windhillorigins