Daglish Corner, UpHolland

On 23 December a small ceremony took place to dedicate a memorial, quiet garden at the church of St. Thomas the Martyr, UpHolland, near Wigan in Lancashire.

The space is also known as “the Daglish corner”, and there has been a long association between the local Daglish family and the church. The dedication ceremony was attended by Richard Daglish, who writes:

“I was warmly greeted by a lay reader who is well versed in the story of Robert Daglish's early locomotive, the Yorkshire Horse, and is involved in the East Lancashire Railway (a volunteer preservation group that runs services with old stock in the Bury/Manchester area).
The church was completing its 700th anniversary celebrations since its foundation as a Benedictine monastery, and was decorated not just for Christmas but for the anniversary as well. One event had been a Christmas Tree Festival a week earlier, with 45 decorated and lit trees, entered by a range of organisations, church-based and otherwise, down the side aisles.

After the main service at which the Bishop of Warrington, David Jennings, was the guest preacher, the congregation was asked to stay in the church while the bishop, rector, lay readers, churchwardens and assorted helpers, and I left to walk to the outside area which had been cleared, paved and generally made a more welcoming space, with a good wooden bench.

A few prayers were said in rather an icy wind and we adjourned back to the church for coffee and mince pies.”
Richard learned that the building did not become the parish church until around 1880, about the same time that Robert Daglish, junior (1808-1883) contributed to the costs of building the chancel and, a little later, for a new East window. He also arranged for the remains of his parents Robert Daglish, senior (1777-1865) and his wife Margaret to be reinterred at UpHolland.

My thanks to Richard for the story and photos. Richard is the great, great, great grandson of Robert Daglish, senior.

Blum, Ray & Daglish - Houston, Texas

Here is an envelope from 1923 from the company Blum, Ray & Daglish, a hardware company from Houston in Texas.

Research has shown that this was George Daglish, born in Brantford, Canada, in 1871, one of twins - the other was his sister Georgina - the children of Joseph Daglish (born England, about 1825, died Brantford, Canada, September 1884) and his wife Sarah Ann Marshall.

The 1920 US Census shows that George Daglish entered the US in 1877 and was naturalised in 1879. He married Allie Fitzgerald (nee Bryan) in November 1896, and they lived in Houston, Texas.

The 1930 US Census shows that George Daglish was President of the company. George died in September 1938 and his wife Allie died in February 1958. I do not believe the couple had any children.

My thanks to Constance Peck for help with details of this family. If anyone has any further information, please let me know.

Wills in England and Wales after 1858

I have added details extracted from the National Probate Calendar index for the name of Daglish for the period 1858 to 1998 into the Daglish Archive.

Since 1858, all wills in England and Wales have been administered through the civil courts; prior to this, the proving of wills came under the jurisdiction of the Church. This article is concerned with wills proved after 1858.

The Court will issue a Grant of representation which enables the person(s) named to deal with the assets and belongings (the Estate) of the deceased. There are three types:

Probate: granted to the executors named in the Will;
Letter of Administration [with Will]: granted to someone other than an executor when the deceased left a valid Will;
Letters of Administration: granted when the deceased did not leave a Will. In such cases, as there is no Will the only details provided are details of who was granted administration.

The Grant is usually a single page giving the details of the deceased and the executors or administrator – this is an example for John Daglish of Bell’s Close, Newburn who died in 1862:

The will itself can often give interesting insights into the family – the following is a short extract from the will of John George Daglish of Gateshead, who died in 1913; in it he sets out his personal possessions to be shared between his sister Mary Ann and his brother Robert:

It is possible to buy a copy of any will for a fee of £5.00. To do this you need the name of the deceased person, the name of the court and the date on which probate was granted.

To find these details a search of the National Probate Calendar is usually necessary. This is an index of Wills and Admons proved in each year. Prior to 1973, these are in book form; after this they are on microfiche and more recently held on computer. A project is underway to digitise these records to improve access to the indexes, and eventually to make it possible to order online.

For now, the only complete set of indexes from 1858 to date is held in the public searchroom at First Avenue House in Holborn, London. I spent some time there last year extracting the details for Daglish, and these are now included in the Daglish Archive for the period 1858 to 1998.
Local District Probate Registries usually have indexes covering the last 50 years.

The amount of detail shown in the index has changed over the years, but every entry shows the full name and address of the deceased, the date of death, the type of grant, the date of grant and the Registry at which it was issued, the gross value of the Estate.

Wills can be purchased either by:
- A personal visit to Court of Probate at High Holborn (which offers a one-hour service, or a 7-day postal service);
- From your local District Probate Registry;
- By post from the Probate Registry at York (which includes a four-year search).
More details can be found on on the H.M. Courts web site.

News update

Two recent news stories caught my eye.

The first concerns Toby Daglish from New Zealand, a professor at the Victoria University in Wellington.

Toby was previously at the University of Iowa in the United States, and whilst there he was one of three finance academics who foresaw the looming U.S. subprime mortgage crisis at least three years before the problems started to become public early in 2007.

Late in 2004 he bought a house in Iowa City and arranged a mortgage through a small regional bank. “I was thinking I was going to have to pay mortgage insurance there - but the lady from the bank said, “Oh, we’re having a promotion this month, and you don’t have to buy mortgage insurance”. I remember thinking that’s not a very sound way to run your business.”

This experience led to the study which highlighted concerns with sectors of the US mortgage business.

Full story here.

The second story comes from Visilia, a city in central California, where Dr. Thomas Daglish has been named as Tulare County Physician of the Year. Dr. Daglish has lobbied tirelessly to improve health provision.

The report notes that Dr. Daglish came to Visalia from Canada in 1979. He started an obstetrics practice that eventually evolved into the Visalia Family Practice Medical Group. He now practices general medicine.

"There's always new challenges," he said. "And there's always somebody coming up with some strange legislation that is going to impact the delivery of health care."

While he said his work in organized medicine has made a positive impact over the years, Daglish admitted that "in politics, you never get 100 percent what you want." He said he will not stop lobbying to improve the public's health.

"As long as I'm capable of doing it, I think it's worth it to keep fighting," Daglish said.

Full report here.

Seasons Greetings

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas.

This is a wood engraving by my father, Eric Fitch Daglish, entitled The Mistle Thrush - which was used as a Christmas card many years ago.

I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog during the year. If you have any stories or pictures that could be posted on the blog, and a few spare minutes over the Christmas break, please e-mail me - the address can be found on the Profile page.

Daglish patents

This week I was sent a Patent registered by Harry Bolton Daglish in 1908. Harry Bolton Daglish (1857-1934) came from the Lancashire engineering family connected with the St. Helens (or Daglish) Foundry - for more detail see the article from April 2007 below.

Patents can give an interesting insight into the people that registered them, who may be scientists, engineers or in some cases untrained people with brilliant minds and ideas. Many patents can now be searched for online.

The major database is Espacenet, the European Patent Office gatway. Containing data on up to 60 million patent documents from around the globe, this free service is described as one of the world's biggest technology databases, and draws information from many nations' separately maintained databases.

Pre-1918 British patents cannot yet be researched online, but many can be researched by a personal visit to the patent section of the British Library.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has an online database with a full-text search of patents issued since 1976.

Google has begun to create an independent OCR-based index of the US patent images for the period 1790 to 1975.

William Daglish, Methodist minister

During the time that I have been studying the Daglish name, I have received several enquiries about William Daglish, a well known Methodist minister. I was delighted this week to receive a photo of William as a young man.

William Daglish was born on 26 October 1901 in Kyo, Co. Durham, the son of John Daglish and Mary Addison. The following tribute is from the the Minutes of the Methodist Conference following his death in February 1960:

As the youngest son in a large Methodist family whose men were all engaged in the mining industry, it seemed natural that he should join them in working at the pit. He accordingly joined the staff in the colliery office and applied himself assiduously to his work.

At eighteen he was given a Note to Preach, and at twenty was accepted for the Ministry, to which he had incessantly heard a call from his early youth. Two years at Hartley College and probationary years at Harringay and Finchley, Pocklington and Eyemouth, were followed by terms at East London Mission, Buckley, Stockton, Hull, St. Helen's, Brandon, Deerness, and Stanley, his home circuit, where he will long be remembered with gratitude and affection.

As a preacher he was expository and devotional; he always had a sound message, and gently led his flock into the pastures of fuller truth. As a pastor he gave himself with that strong tenderness, modesty and fidelity which befit a man of God. He had a flair for administration and had disciplined himself in thoroughness, neatness and efficiency. In 1959 the enlarged Newcastle District called him to be Secretary for Chapel Affairs.

He had an affectionate and warm-hearted nature, and enjoyed sharing his truth, sympathy, and humour with every man. His friendships, increasing and ripening as he travelled, were as solid as his frame. He used the gifts with which he had been bestowed to glorify God along ordinary paths. He slipped peacefully away from this life on 25 February 1960, in the fifty-ninth year of his life and the thirty-sixth of his Ministry.
My thanks to William's daughter Audrey and to Louise for sending the photo. If you have any memories or information about William, please let me know.