Robert T. Bosomworth and Hannah Porter

Robert and Hannah Bosomworth
courtesy of Sarah Schorfheide Erwin

The above photo of Robert and Hannah Bosomworth, my three times great grandparents, is the “oldest” photo on my tree. That is, I have no other photos from any other of my three times great grandparents, and nothing beyond. Again, my thanks go out to Sarah Schorfheide Erwin for her contribution of this photo.

Robert T. Bosomworth, was born November 8, 1808 in Thirkleby, Yorkshire, England, and was baptised on the November 15, 1808 in the Ebenezer Independent Church in Sutton by Thirsk, which was Primitive Methodist. His parents were George Bosomworth and Alice Wright, and was the second eldest of a family of about eleven children, including Mary, Ann, Elizabeth, Hannah, George, Esther, Jane, John, Harriet, and another Elizabeth, born two days after the death of the first one. He married Hannah (also known as Anna) Porter on May 10, 1829 in Thormandy, Yorkshire. She was born on June 30, 1805 in Carlton, Yorkshire, and baptised on July 6, 1805 in Sand Hutton Near Thirsk, Yorkshire. She was the eldest child of Robert Porter and Mary Skipsey, the others being Robert, Ann, William, John and Mary.

Robert and Hannah appear to have had eight children, George, John, Robert, Charles (my great great grandfather), Mary B., Alice B., William P., and James. Robert senior worked in England as an “agricultural labourer” and then as a “coal merchant”. On December 19, 1853, they arrived in New York, on the ship George Washington out of Liverpool, with all of their children, except for John, who had died in 1845. With them, was Robert’s brother, John, and John’s wife Harriett and children. Also on board is Robert and John’s fourteen-year-old niece, Amelia Bosomworth, who is the daughter of their sister, Hannah, apparently born a year before Hannah’s marriage to George Fothergill in 1840. I don’t believe as others do that the George Bosomworth on board with them, listed as being “55”, was Robert and John’s father, George, who would have been about 76 at the time. It is much more likely to have been Robert’s son George, whose wife Hannah and children are on board. However, this George would have been about twenty-three. There is evidence of George the younger having been in America, but none that I have seen that the elder George was ever there. However, this fifty-five-year-old George Bosomworth could have been someone else, but I have yet to find another candidate. (Please let me know if your records show something different). There also seems to be some confusion among researchers about the identity of the Harriett Bosomworth, age twenty-four, on the passenger list, i.e. some people think she is John and Robert’s sister, Harriett. The Harriet on the passenger list is John’s wife, Harriet Oastler, who later married James Puckett after John’s death in 1864. The Puckett children on the 1870 U.S. census all have the first names and ages of the John and Harriett Bosomworth children.

The 1855 Illinois State Census shows Robert and his family living in Morgan County, and by the 1860 U.S. Census, they are living in Edwardsville, Madison County, where Robert is a farmer. He appears to have lived here for the rest of his life. Hannah died on July 6, 1888 in Edwardsville, and Robert died six years later on January 3, 1894. They are buried in Oak Lawn Cemetery, Glen Carbon, Madison, Illinois.