THE EARLY MANNS

The Mann family were long established in Hartlepool, though it is questionable whether later Manns have any connection with earlier families. The earliest member of the present family for whom we have anything like a proper record is Thomas Mann. He was buried at St Hildas in 1840, “aged 50", so he was born in 1790, give or take a year.

On the baptism entries of his older children at Stranton he is described as “Thomas Mann, Farmer”, so presumably he farmed nearby. I found no trace of his birth in the local records, however, and the only Thomas Mann on the IGI who was born in Durham around 1790 was the son of Thomas Mann, a farmer in Chester-le-Street, and his wife Ann. This is possibly, though I would put it no stronger as yet, the same Thomas Mann. Perhaps he made his way to Hartlepool in search of his fortune. There’s no evidence that he made a fortune, but one thing he did find was a wife. On 25 Aug 1812 Thomas Mann married Jane Ainsley at All Saints Church, Stranton.

There is something of a mystery about Jane Ainsley: On 29 Aug 1814, the same day that her eldest child James, (great-grandfather of Bill & Albert Mann) was baptised, there appears the following cryptic record in the St Hilda’s register ...

“Jane Ainsley, formerly Wilson, privately baptised by the Rev Edward Davison. Publicly admitted by the Rev William Wilson 3 September 1815.”

Adult baptism, often private to save embarrassment, followed by  a later public admission into the Church, was nothing unusual, but why she changed her name is a mystery. Jane was born in 1779/80, and was therefore 32 when she married Thomas Mann. I thought for a time that she might have been a widow, since the phrase formerly etc is used in Scotland to denote the maiden surname of a married woman or widow. However, I could think of no plausible reason why that should cause her to be christened at the age of 34.

My preferred theory now is that Jane was the illegitimate daughter of a man named James Ainsley, but was brought up as Jane Wilson. What persuades me that Ainsley was the family name of her father is the fact that her son James Mann named one of his sons James Ainsley Mann.  Since James named his first son William Hunter Mann after his wife’s father, William Hunter, I guess that he named James Ainsley Mann after his mother’s father.

If I am right, then on the day her first born was to be baptised, Jane slipped in early to have herself done first, taking her natural father’s name, presumably with his blessing.

Jane Wilson/Ainsley was perhaps this child, born in Hurworth-on-Tees, which lies about 25 miles west of Stranton on the north bank of the Tees, between Yarm and Darlington. No father is named, which is reasonable proof that Elizabeth was unmarried.

William Mann, landlord of the White Hart  in Southgate Street, died aged 49 in 1833, and in the 1841 Census, his widow Ann Mann, the former Ann Hodgson, was recorded as the Innkeeper. This was the household:

Ann Mann  45  Innkeeper

Thomas Walker  25  Fishmonger

Mary Walker  25

Elizabeth Mann  20  [24: she was born in 1817]

William Walker  6

and three servants: George Dobson, Dorothy Fleming, Ann Shutt.

Mary Walker and Elizabeth Mann are Ann Mann’s daughters.  

In White’s Directory of 1847, Thomas Mann, Fishmonger and Curer, is still at Town Wall, Hartlepool, carrying on his father’s business. By then James Mann had established his own butchery business, with two shops, at High Street, where the family was living when Ann Hunter Mann was born in 1849, and Victoria Dock.

There is no trace in the 1851 Census for Hartlepool or Stranton of Jane Mann, or her son Thomas and his wife Mary. I can only assume that business had taken Thomas elsewhere, and that Jane had gone with him.

James & Ann Mann appear in that 1851 Census along with their two eldest children [the ages recorded are a bit wayward]:  

James Mann  35  Butcher                          **  Great-grandfather of William & Albert Mann

Ann Mann  30

William Mann  2

Ann Hunter Mann  1  

By 1855 they had set up in Market Place [where they lived over the shop], but still kept the branch at Victoria Dock.  

James Mann & Ann Hunter had six children in all:

William Hunter Mann   6 May 1847- 20 Mar 1893 [See below]  

Ann Hunter Mann   31 Aug 1849- 22 May 1892. Married 1877 to George Robson [1848-1882]. George was a marine engineer, son of George Robson, a farmer. In the 1881 Census she calls herself Annie H Robson [see below]  

Mary Jane Hunter Mann  4 Jan 1852-1921.  Married 2 December 1885 to John Edward Ringwood, a Mariner from Newcastle, son of Robert Ringwood, a painter.  

James Ainsley Mann  19 Feb 1854-1913 See below.  

Ellen Hunter Mann  28 Dec 1856.   Married 18 October 1883 to John Simpson, a boilermaker.  

John Thomas Mann  21 Jul 1862-1926.  A fitter, and later a marine engineer.          **   Grandfather of Albert and William Mann.

Apart from his other interests, James Mann became a shipowner, albeit in a small way. In Sir Cuthbert Sharpe’s “Modern History of Hartlepool” he appears on an 1850 listing of shipowners as owning 49 tons. There was nothing quite that small built between 1837 and 1850, though J P Denton did launch several in the range 70-100 tons. A little digging on the internet unearthed a list of Hartlepool shipowners in 1860, and among the entries was this, indicating that he had shares in at least four ships, firstly the Wear-built John Buddle:

John Buddle, 199 Tons, Wear, D. Blacklaw, J. Mann, J. Weldrum  and secondly a Canadian-built ship Runnymeade, in which William Mann also had a share:

Runnymeade, 211 Tons, Prince Edward Island, James Mann, Wm. Mann, H Anderson

Finally, these two entries, taken from the Ship registration records compiled by H.M. Customs and Excise at Hartlepool, which show firstly details of Arab registered 1855/03/12, built in West River, Prince Edward Island in 1841. Subscribing owners listed: James Mann of Hartlepool, Durham, Butcher; Joseph Goldsmith of Stockton on Tees, Durham. And lastly details of Morgiana registered 1850/03/12, built in Pattanel in 1830. Subscribing owners listed: James Loveday of Hartlepool, Ship Owner; James Mann of Hartlepool, Butcher.

Buying into the booming shipping industry was a shrewd investment in those heady days, and many local businessmen did very well from it, though few prospered like the Furness family. They arrived in the town in 1851, in the shape of John Furness, a coal trimmer from the West Riding, whose eldest son, Thomas, was a grocer, who eventually set up shop in Lynn Street. Thomas prospered, became a wholesaler and importer, then invested in two small coasting brigs that delivered his butter, cheese and lard imports from Europe.

From this small beginning, by 1877 Thomas Furness & Co was running steamers to the United States, from where they imported meat products. By 1891, the company had acquired Withy & Co to become Furness Withy & Co, and now owned 18 ships, had shares in 21 others, and an interest in seven other shipping companies, and a shipping and shipbuilding empire was born. That was Victorian West Hartlepool.

The ambitions of James Mann didn’t run quite that high, but he did  have aspirations in directions other than butchery and ship-owning, perhaps influenced by having spent part of his life at The Angel, when his father, Thomas Mann, was landlord there. Sometime prior to the Census of April 1871 he followed his father into innkeeping and took over the licence of the Alma Hotel, on Town Wall, where the family, apart from William, was on Census night:  

1871 Census

James Mann   55      Innkeeper    

Ann Mann   50          wife        

Ann H Mann  21        daughter 

Mary J Mann 19        daughter 

James A Mann 17      engine fitter at works 

Ellen H Mann  14      daughter 

John T Mann  9        son 

Ann Hunter  21          niece 

Agnes Santon  18      general domestic servant 

The niece, Ann Hunter, must have been the daughter of one of Ann’s brothers. James still appears as the landlord of the Alma Hotel in Kelly’s directory for 1879, but he was 63 by then, and no doubt thinking about retirement. Two years later, when the 1881 Census was taken, he had handed over the Alma licence to his son, James Ainsley Mann, and the butcher’s business to William.

James Ainsley Mann 1854-1913

William Mann  W    33 Hartlepool   Son      Butcher  

James Ainsley Mann (1854-1913) served his time as a fitter, and also became briefly a Marine Engineer until he took over the Alma Hotel licence in the late 1870s. In 1883 he was living in Church Street in West Hartlepool, presumably to establish residence, since on October 18 1883 he married Eliza Dawson, a young widow from round the corner in Lynn Street, the daughter of a builder named Francis King.  

When James Ainsley Mann married the widowed Eliza, the stable, or at least an interest in it, came with her. Coaches were an obvious investment to go with the horses to make the cab business and livery stable, based in Brougham Street, Hartlepool. Then, while he made some money ferrying mourners to and from funerals, the obvious next step to make even more was to become the undertaker, too, and James Ainsley Mann was obviously not one to miss the main chance.

Some time during the next ten years, the Mann family left the Alma Hotel and Town Wall to take the licence at the Empress Hotel in Durham Street, where James Ainsley Mann appears as the landlord in 1894. That explained another puzzle: why John Thomas Mann was living at the Empress Hotel when his daughter Olive was christened in 1895. He and his wife, Mary Ann, had obviously moved in temporarily with James and Eliza. James Ainsley Mann eventually gave up the Empress, but retained the other businesses, moved to Friar Terrace, and became a Town Councillor for Hartlepool North Ward.  

His brother John Thomas Mann (1862) was probably a bit distracted that census night, because he had something on his mind: the fact that his seventeen year old future wife, from just round the corner in Hills Court, Mary Ann Hall Robertson, was three months pregnant. John Thomas Mann was clearly by no means as lugubrious as he looks!

Mary Ann  was born in Hartlepool on 22 Nov 1863, the daughter of Robert Robertson, a seaman from Shetland, and Jane Hall, the daughter of a  carpenter and shipwright from Morpeth, by way of North Shields, named Thomas Hall. So what brought them to Hartlepool?  

On 30 April 1881, just a few weeks after the 1881 Census, nineteen year old John Thomas Mann did the decent thing, and plucked seventeen year old Mary Ann Hall Robertson out of service and Stranton to marry her at Holy Trinity, Hartlepool.

They barely had time to settle into their new home at 2 Dock Street, Throston, before their son, John Oswald Mann, was born five months later, on 6 October 1881.

In her portrait Mary Ann may look cool and haughty, but appearances obviously deceive. Not that she was the only Victorian member of the family who needed to hurry towards the altar.

Jumping the gun is pretty commonplace on our tree, and the record is held by Sarah Merwood, who was seven months pregnant when she married John Harvey in 1833 on the Isle of Wight.

The mystery is how and where those prim Victorians found the privacy to do it?

Mary Ann & John Thomas had at least seven children:

John Oswald Mann  6 Oct  1881

Edith Maud   Mann 13 Feb 1884

Olive Mann   28 July 1886

James Mann  16 Jan 1889 – killed in action 13 June 1918

Annie Gertrude Mann 1893

Fred Mann    30 December 1900; died November 1906

Doris  Mann  12 September 1902  

Mary Ann Hall Robertson (1863)

John Thomas Mann (1862)

This Census entry took me an age to find, because the transcriber made an error with the name. I found it eventually because it occurred to me that perhaps John Thomas Mann and his future wife, Mary Ann Hall Robertson might have met because they were neighbours. So I entered the  name of Mary’s father,  Robert Robertson, who I knew was living in 1881 in Hill’s Court, Hartlepool. The Census disks allow you to browse through neighbours, and sure enough, it turned out that Hills Court led off Town Wall, and I soon found the Mann family, under the name Mason, living round the corner at the Alma Hotel.

James Mann had retired and finally achieved the status of Gentleman, and widower, since Ann [Hunter] Mann was buried at St Hildas on 30 June 1880. James himself was buried there on 17 February 1885.

JOHN OSWALD MANN & JANE ISABELLA MANN

1881-1967 and 1880-1976

Like many others in the Mann-Oswald family, John “Ossie” Mann became a marine engineer, and spent most of his working life at sea. From 1903 to 1928, he worked for Jacobs, Barrington and Garratt, Consulting Engineers, suppliers of engineering crew. For fourteen of those years he sailed as Chief Engineer. He then worked briefly for an American line, before returning to his former employers.

During the First World War he joined the Royal Engineers, became a Lieutenant, and served in the Middle East and India. He  contracted malaria there, and after a spell in hospital was transferred home, where he served in the Inland Waterway section for the duration.

He married Jane Isabella Oswald in January 1907, and their first child William Oswald Mann [q.v.] was born in December of that year. Their second child Albert Oswald Mann was not born until 1916. They lived in Throston for a while, but eventually moved to the fine late Victorian house in Elm Grove that Jane’s brother Jack had bought but rarely lived in. Susannah Oswald lived there with them after the death of William in 1929.

When Bill was born, his father was four years into his career as a sea-going engineer, which meant he was absent for long periods, leaving Jane to bring up the baby with the help of Susannah. No doubt Jane did it efficiently, but without much warmth, for though she was intelligent and had a sharp sense of humour, she was not a warm person, or at least found it hard to show affection.  

Bill’s most vivid memory of his early years, which was still crystal clear seventy years later, was of the morning of 16 December 1914, when a group of German battle-cruisers slipped into Tees Bay under cover of darkness and shelled Hartlepool at dawn, killing 122 people.  

He was a hard-working and able scholar throughout his school career at Henry Smith’s Grammar School in Hartlepool. Unfortunately he found French impossible to grasp, and since it was a mandatory subject in those days, without it he could not get his School Certificate.  

As a result, a further academic or professional career was ruled out, and he had to settle for a safe job with the LNER as a Booking Clerk. He spent a great deal of his working life as a Relief Clerk, going wherever help was needed throughout County Durham and North Yorkshire.  

See  photos of  Bill Mann and his brother Albert Mann

Hello - I came across your family site because I live in Elm Grove Hartlepool (no 11). I've only read some of the Hartlepool  part, but found it very interesting. A lot of my ancestors have marine connections, and I was a pupil of Robert Wood, local historian, who was passionate about the town history. Read his books, if you haven't already - they're very interesting. In one of them he describes how new ships were sold in 64th shares, and as you say, many people did this, including Thomas Furness. This might account for the 49 tons! I'd be glad to give any info you might need about this area. It's on the edge of what was an area of fabulous houses belonging to Timber Merchants and Ship-owners, but sadly many of them are now gone.    Best wishes   Susan Quigley       (susan.quigley@ntlworld.com)

Clippings kindly supplied by researcher Grenville Davies

NORTHERN DAILY MAIL 8th SEPTEMBER 1917

Killed in action on August 23rd, Lance Corporal T B (Bertie) Mann, of the D.L.I., age 26, dearly loved and only son of Mr and Mrs Mann, of 3 Harte street.

Northern Daily Mail 29 October 1943           WARDEN WORE BOOTS OFF DUTY

West Hartlepool magistrates today fined Ernest Mann (32), of 5 Lancelot street, £1 for an offence under the defence regulations. He was summoned for wearing boots issued to him as a warden when not on authorised civil defence duty. Defendant pleaded guilty, and said he wore them because they were the only pair he had to wear. Mr Stringfellow, deputy town clerk, prosecuting, said the defendant was enrolled as a warden in November, 1942. Weekly bulletins were posted at the centre containing various instructions, among them that boots were not to be worn otherwise than on duty. The boots were in good condition when issued to  him, but now they were practically worn through. When a witness gave evidence about the posting of the weekly bulletins, the chairman (Alderman Geo. Turnbull), asked, "how many people read these bulletins?" "Very few", was the reply.

1st Generation [2/2]

WILLIAM OSWALD MANN

Railway clerk  

M  

1907  

Hartlepool  

BARBARA ELLEN STEELE

Joiner  

S  

1908  

Newcastle

2nd Generation [4/4]

JOHN OSWALD MANN,

Marine Engineer

M

1881  

Hartlepool  

JANE ISABELLA OSWALD

Marine Engineer

M  

1880  

Hartlepool  

ROBERT MALCOLM STEELE

Joiner

S

1881  

Newcastle  

MARGARET SCOTT

Miner  

S

1882  

Gateshead

3rd Generation [8/8]

JOHN THOMAS MANN

Marine engineer

M 

1862  

Hartlepool  

MARY JANE HALL ROBERTSON

Sailor  

M 

1864  

Hartlepool  

WILLIAM OSWALD

M 

1852  

Cramlington, Northumberland  

SUSANNAH LAMBERT

Master mariner  

M

1851  

Sunderland  

JOHN STEELE

Dyer

S  

1841

Edinburgh  

JANET YOUNG WARNOCK

Provision merchant  

S  

1847  

Eaglesham, Renfrewshire  

STEPHEN SCOTT

Miner  

S  

1852  

Newcastle 

MARGARET SMART

Innkeeper  

S  

1854

Newcastle 

 4th Generation [16/16]

JAMES MANN

Butcher/Innkeeper  

M

1814  

Hartlepool  

ANN HUNTER

Pilot  

M

1821

Hartlepool  

ROBERT ROBERTSON

Mariner 

M  

1826

Lerwick, Shetland  

JANE HALL

Shipwright 

M  

1826

North Shields  

HENRY OSWALD

Miner  

M  

1820  

South Shields  

JANE HEPPLEWHITE

Miner  

M  

1821  

Hebburn  

ISABELLA WEARS

Mariner 

M  

1831 

Sunderland  

HENRY STEELE

Cotton & linen weaver  

S  

c1800  

Ireland  

MARGARET HOOD

Shoemaker  

S  

1818  

Edinburgh  

HANNAH DUNN

Brewer  

S 

1829  

Killingworth, North’land