On Warnocks and other Non-Farmers

Warnock Family Photo—circa 1918

Back Row, L-R:

• Florence (Warnock) Anderson: 12/05/1893—02/1987 s. p.; m. Harry E. Anderson, ca. 1914.

• John J. (Jack) Dowd: 08/04/1896—03/01/1968 (m. Edith).

• Edith (Warnock) Dowd: 06/11/1895—01/29/1989; m. Jack Dowd. (1child, d. in infancy)

• Howard Warnock: 08/29/1900—04/15/1967; m. ca. 1922 Elsie Susan Reinke. (1 child, Edythe 10/26/1923—01/7/1998 had issue).

• Ethel (Warnock) Sonniksen: 12/16/1897—05/21/1997; m. Otto Frederick Sonniksen ca. 1920 (1 child, Carolyn (Sonniksen) Guinea 04/08/1930—06/19/2006; m. Benjamin Guinea, had issue.)

Front Row, L-R:

• Sherwood Thornton (Dutch) Warnock: 11/19/1906—11/23/1965; m1. 11/18/1937 Harriette Amelia (Healey) (Warnock) (Martin) (3 sons); m2 Alice Horgan (no children).

• David Warnock: b. 10/22/1868 Tartaraghan, Armagh, N. Ireland; d. at work in Cheney Silk Mill, Manchester, CT, 1944; m. Matilda 06/30/1892 (3 sons and 3 daughters as pictured).

• Matilda Jane (Thornton) Warnock: 03/04/1870 Tartaraghan, Lurgan, Armagh, N. Ireland; d. 1955; m. David.

• Wesley Leroy Warnock: 10/17/1911—01/15/2002 at Evanston IL; last residence was in Winnetka; m. 03/29/1937, Eunice Ann Sewell from Huron, S. Dakota, b. 02/18/1913. (1 child, Melinda, b. 12/1937.)

The family lived on Walker Street in Manchester, Connecticut, the children were born there and most are buried at Manchester in the East Center Street Cemetery. David was a loom fixer and Matilda was a quiller. They emigrated from N. Ireland when in their teens.

Our family has a very long history in the Seymour, CT area.  But of course the genealogy has mixed and mingled with other streams and rivers in the course of time and recently I got to wondering about the Warnocks.  I tend to fixate on the Healeys and Bassets and Gressots and all the names that go back on the farm for generations.  So I asked Dad.....and here’s what I got.

Hi Dad, I was watching the series about Queen Victoria on PBS, and there was an episode about the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s.  I always thought Warnocks came over at that time, but it looks like it was somewhat later.  Do you know what motivated them to leave Ireland?  DO you know anything about what their lives were like in Ireland, were they farmers?

Just curious.

On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 9:13 PM Bill Warnock <bill_warnock@msn.com> wrote:

Well, they did come after the famine immigrants. My grandfather David and his wife Matilda (Tilly) Thornton emigrated as teenagers and married in Manchester. They were textile workers: he a loom fixer, and she a quiller. They worked along with other relatives in the Cheney Brothers Silk Mill at the bottom of Main Street in Manchester. The Mill building is now a condo. I speculate that the Cheney Brothers were also Northern Irish and imported their experienced countrymen as employees. David, from Portadown, County Armagh, was a devout Methodist (hence his youngest son named Wesley). He died when I was about 5 or 6. Your Grandma Martin told a story showing that he was also a devout Orangeman. She used to put me in a stroller and walk down Main Street to met "Pa" and walk home with him. One day she said she wanted to stop in at Murphy's (5 and 10 cent store--I guess it would be a Dollar Store today) to make a phone call. She said the reply was, "Harriot, do you have to go into Murphy's--the phone company is right up the street." The Murphys were Irish Catholics. I have copies of birth/baptism documents for David and Matilda, and I have put additional info on Ancestry.

So I'm not all farmer. In addition, my 3d g-grandfather, Issac Rowe (b 1799), was brought to Seymour in 1810 from Brattleboro, Vermont, by his Mom, Phillipa (Perry) Rowe, along with his twin brother Frederick, to work in General Humphreys' woolen mill in Humphreysville. When General Humphrey was a Lieutenant Colonel, he was an aide to General Washington during the Revolution. After the war, General Humphreys was appointed Ambassador to Portugal. During that tour, he had 400 Merino sheep smuggled out of Spain to Derby Landing (then a seaport). He sold the sheep at a hefty price to New England farmers. His plan was to buy their wool for processing at his Humphreysville Mill. I think they made cloth for a Presidential garment. The General's marital status is somewhat vague, and his hiring of a troop of young boys is noted in Seymour Past and Present. In any event, Isaac and Frederick later opened their own fulling mill on 8-Mile Brook in Oxford. I've already related how Isaac thereafter went to (now) Detroit to pick a spot for another mill and drowned in Lake Saint Clair on his way home.

This all implies that if you get sick of gardening, by heritage you can always branch off into textiles: perhaps, spinning, weaving, or dying. Rather than raising silk worms or sheep, you could grow flax for fine linen. I'm just saying . . . 😈.

Love,

Dad