The following words are the introduction to an article written by Martin Griffiths, a descendant of the Dalton Family, back in 2010 for “The Journal of the Dalton Genealogical Society”. It was entitled “The Dalton Family of Church Lawford, Warwickshire, Clockmakers“.
A Dalton family lived in Church Lawford and the surrounding area, a few miles west of Rugby. For over four hundred years. The earliest Dalton record in the parish registers for Church Lawford was made in 1580 and in the neighbouring parish of Wolston there is a Dalton marriage recorded in 1563. The last know descendant with the Dalton name to live thereabouts died in 2008.
One member of the family emigrated to Kansas in 1870 – This was William Dalton 1843-1914. Alice Dalton, a half-sister of William, married Harry Griffiths and they emigrated with five children to Ontario in 1910. There lives in North America have been documented in “The Journal of the Dalton Genealogical Society”.
But what about the indigenous family and other Daltons in England and overseas?
The parish registers are nearly all there is to give evidence of their lives. They appear to have been farmers, butchers, carpenters and clockmakers. There is evidence of some education in the family as some were clerks of the parish council, some helped look after the poor and some were churchwardens.
In the early 20 century one had a diverse career: a newspaperman, an author, a secretary to a bishop, a lay reader and political assistant to a future Prime Minister (Stanley Baldwin).
The earliest known family is that of Thomas Dalton who married Jane, surname unknown. Their burial dates are 10th October 1609 and 1t October 1598 respectively; no baptism dates have been found. They had a son, John, who married Jane Barber in 1602, and she was born on 27th March 1580. Thus Jane Barber has the earliest recorded date for the family in Church Lawford though she was not a Dalton till she married. The earliest recorded true Dalton in the parish was John’s elder sister, Kathleen, for her marriage to John Haule is in the register, 10th February 1589. A John Dalton married in Wolston, the neighbouring parish to the southwest, in 1563, but his relationship, if any, is unknown.
There were many Daltons about at this time; most fit into families but some are hard to place. John and Jane had a family of at least five sons. The third was Daniel, born 1612. He married Ruth Coxe in 1637, and they had two sons, Robert in 1637 and John in 1639, but John died in 1640. Ruth died in 1666. There are grounds for some suspicion about Daniel’s behaviour at this time; one or two babies appear and die young with comments in the register such as, “A child of Daniel Dalton” but the mother cannot be found.
Daniel then married Elizabeth Band, a widow, in 1668. Their family was more successful at surviving and the second of seven children was a son, Daniel, 1673-1768. The parish register very helpfully mentions that he was a carpenter and against his burial record is the notation: “Many years Clerk of this Parish in ye 95 years of his age”. On a visit to Limestone Hall, a farmhouse which a Dalton family had rented or owned in the 19th century, the author was told that a local legend has it that the Daltons were clockmakers. In the 18th century carpenters and joiners made clock cases and fitted clock movements and faces bought in from other sources. Further corroboration is provided in the St John’s House Museum, Warwick, where there is a very fine long case clock veneered with many squares of burred walnut. The face is engraved: Daniel Dalton, Church Lorford (sic) 1765.
Daniel’s youngest brother, Edward, married Sarah Goode in 1743. One of their descendants, Dr. George Dalton, living in Edgbaston, has a Dalton long case clock, a single weight model which his father, also George, bought, in a Church Lawford public house.
George, the father, was a farmer at Bretford, the next village to the west of Church Lawford. until he died in 1975.
The full article, along with further photographs and a family tree can be found in the Warwickshire Collection at Nuneaton Library.