Hartley Halstead

Now once in a while you come across a name that you think is going to be easy after all how many Hartley HALSTEAD's can there be. Well all of those born after 1837 were easy. It was the ones that were born before 1837 that were the problem!

According to Ancestry there were two baptised in 1807 and one in 1810. The one in 1810 I had already as the son of Robert and the two in 1807 were the sons of William and Tom. That is until I looked at the images and realised that the Tom was in fact Wm and thereforre the same as the William. One other clue of course that lead to this deduction was that they were both on the same date in the same parish.

Why was I looking at Hartley in the first place. Well the investigations into Charles HALSTEAD mentioned in the last blog had thrown up an interesting story in 1949 in the Burnley Express that was titled "His father built a church - from logs"

Now if an article is going to grab your attention that is a title like that as it makes you want to read on.The article reads as follows

"SON of a Burnley minister who built his own log church In Canada, Mr. Arthur Butterfleld Halstead. 68-years-old Wlnnipeg-born Canadian, is back in his father's native land and anxious to trace relatives. He asks any Burnley Express readers who know the addresses of any relatives of his father. Rev. William Halstead, in Bumley or Nelson, to drop him a line at 23, Du Cane-close, Wood-lane. London, W. 12. Rev. William Halstead emigrated to Western Canada about 1873 after graduating from Richmond College, built bis own log church in Port Arthur, Ontario, and later went West to Winnipeg.He was subsequently stationed at Selkirk. Portage la Prairie and Mlnnedosa, in  Manitoba. Visualising the great opportunities of Canada's west, the minister was instrumental in  taking out to the Dominion many orphan boys from Dr. Stevenson's Homes—now the National Children's Homes and in every case the boys were successful in professional or business ventures. One them, John Knox, became a chief auditor with the Canadian Pacific Railway, and another, Fred Bagshaw, is a prominent King's Counsel in Regina.
FOOTNOTE: The voice of the log cabin minister's son will be heard over the air on September 27th on the B.B.C. programme, "The World Goes By"

Now with a forenames like Arthur Butterfield there are not likely to be many and a quick look on Ancestry Canada revealed one born in 1881 and dying in 1860. there were also a couple of well documented public trees. these showed that Arthur was the son of William HALSTEAD born in Lancashire in 1833 and his Canadian wife Mary.  Therefore William must have gone to Canada at an early age. Whilst none of the online trees had the parents of William it wasn't too difficult to work out who he was. One the assumption that the name of Butterfield had a link somewhere within the family it did not take long to track down the right family. after all at most he was only going to be on the 1841 census.

It turned out that he was was the son of Hartley HALSTEAD Except that I had the wrong Hartley as his father. I had him down as the one baptised in 1810 when in fact the passenger list of him arriving in New York in 1842 has him as aged 34 and therefore born in 1807

So another tree pulled apart and rebuilt - but it still leaves the question as to what happened to the Hartley HALSTEAD baptised in 1810!!

The update on this family will be in the next website update

 John Hanson