CRT/MOORE

Dennis Moore Transcriptions

Description

Dennis Moore's transciptions of extracts from pre-1974 Lancashire (includes Liverpool and Manchester) church registers and census returns relating to canal workers.

Date

Early 21st century

Reference code

CRT/MOORE

Creator

Moore, Dennis

Administrative / Biographical history

DENNIS MOORE b1925 Dennis was born in Wakefield, on the banks of the River Calder. The families on and around the river were boatmen and a distant relative, Billy Wadsworth was also a boatman and the young Dennis was fascinated by their stories and way of life. As he grew older he used to pass the offices of the Calder and Hebble Canal Company in the early 1930’s and looking in at the windows he found the scene to be something resembling Victorian offices, as out of a Dickens’ book. In the 1940’s he volunteered for service in 1943 at age 18. His younger brother went on the boats in school holdays with Billy Wadsworth and when Dennis returned from the war he moved away to Stanley where he would see 15-20 Tom Puddings being towed by British Waterways tugs carrying coal from Wakefield to Goole. He noticed that trade was slowing and boats were beginning to be abandoned and left to rot (around the 1960’s) He started work as a Centre Lathe Turner and then went into the Civil Service. As he neared retirement in the 1980’s, he was asked to look at a clock in a local church and research it’s history. In doing this he became interested in transcribing the tradesmen from the Parish Registers who were clock and watchmakers, he’d soon amassed a list of thousands, all written in his impeccable handwriting and all methodically indexed alphabetically. He went on to list cabinet makers and gunsmiths from the Lancashire area around Hyton, Preston and Prescott and these transcriptions are lodged with Prescott museum and Liverpool Record Office. Along the way, he was noticing entries for boatmen and waterways personnel and this rekindled his fascination for the waterways. He then contacted the archivist at the Boat Museum and deposited his transcriptions with the museum for family history research and he still continues to winkle out more entries to add to the ever growing lists.