Bartram’s skills as a blacksmith were called upon for repairs to metalwork and for sharpening tools at Uttoxeter workhouse and brick yard. In January 1831 he was paid a total of £9 6s 10d for such work. A year’s bill for sharpening and mending tools, possibly at the brick yard amounted to £2 14s 0d. An additional £1 15s 5½d was received for a year’s ‘repairs, nails and other metal work for House’, presumably the workhouse. In 1833 he mended and sharpened picks and harrows and in 1835 was paid for repairing tools for stone breaking. A detailed bill of 1835 lists ‘Nails, mending locks, mending a key, mending dung forks, mending of ironwork on alms houses, mended a cow chain, plaits for a wagon, fixed the mangle, mended a pair of stuffers, steeling a brick hammer, 5 dowels, a pair of pincers, window bar repairs, repaired a table, hoop on washing dolly, mended a ladle, mended door handle & mended fire shovel’. He was paid £2 0s 7d.
In March he received £0 3s 0d for repairs and mending locks. On this occasion he was paid by constable James Mills. Sometimes Bartram took in overnight lodgers. In April 1832 he took in Francis Evans and family, William Robson and Thomas Johnson. In September 1832 he was paid £0 3s 0d by the constables of Uttoxeter for 12 nights’ lodgings.
Sometimes receipts were signed by Enoch Bartram. Occasionally, he may have been called upon as a rat catcher.
Bartram was born in Birmingham in 1790. In the 1841 Census Sampson Bartram the elder was listed as living with his sons David, a blacksmith; Sampson the younger, an apprentice joiner; William; and his daughter Hannah in a freehold house in Carter Street, Uttoxeter. Ten years later, Sampson, now 61, was living with his wife Sarah, 55; and William an apprentice blacksmith. By 1861 he was once again listed as a blacksmith. Sarah has disappeared from the record and Sampson was living with William, 30, and Hannah, 27, a housekeeper. The change from blacksmith in 1841 to master blacksmith in 1851 may represent Bartram’s advancement in his profession. The way in which people defined themselves in relation to others, however, in this case through a gradation in status, may also represent one of the ways in which Bartram formulated his identity.
The Census returns reveal only part of Bartam’s family. What follows is supported by documentary material but there are some areas where doubt remains. Bartram married three times. First to Mary (1784–1823) the daughter of John and Mary Allport of Uttoxter. The marriage took place in 1823. Sampson and Mary had at least three children: Enoch (c.1816–1889) who became a blacksmith in Lincoln; David (1817–1899) who moved to Shawnee County, Kansas; and Sampson. There may also have been another child, Amos (b.1820), a cattle drover lodging in Kineton, Warwickshire at the time of the 1851 Census. Bartram’s second marriage was to Priscilla (1807–1838), the daughter of Joseph and Sarah Burton of Uttoxeter. The marriage took place on 3 October 1825 in Stone, Staffordshire. Sampson and Priscilla had two children: William (1831–1905) and Hannah (c.1833–1862). Sampson’s third marriage to Sarah (1783–1858) took place in 1842.
Sources
Peter Guillery, The Small House in Eighteenth-Century London, A Social and Architectural History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009),13.
Kansas Territory Census 1865, ks1865-4
Poll Books and electoral Registers, Pirehill South, Uttoxeter, 1832
National Probate Calendar, Sampson Bartram, 11 April 1863
Staffordshire Record Office, D3891/6/34/4/028, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 15 Jun 1829
SRO, D3891/6/35/3/20–21, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 28 Jan 1831
SRO, D3891/6/37/10/47, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 19 Jan 1832
SRO, D3891/6/37/10/55, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 19 Jan 1832
SRO, D3891/6/37/12/55, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 31 Mar 1832
SRO, D3891/6/38/6/006, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, Jan–Dec 31 1832
SRO, D3891/6/39/11/1, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 12 Apr 1832
SRO, D3891/6/39/11/2, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 9 Apr 1832
SRO, D3891/6/39/11/8, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, Sep 1832
SRO, D3891/6/39/17/1, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 25 Jan 1833
SRO, D3891/6/40/10/8, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 24 Jan 1834
SRO, D3891/6/41/1/13, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 24 Jan 1835
SRO, D3891/6/41/1/16, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 24 Jan 1835
SRO, D3891/1/7–20, Uttoxeter, St Mary Parish Registers
TNA, HO 107/1007/14 Census 1841
TNA, HO 107/2010, Census 1851
TNA, HO 107/2105, Census 1851
TNA, Census 107/2074, Census 1851
TNA, RG 9/1954, Census 1861
This is a work in progress, subject to change as research continues.