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WELCOME
Burton upon Trent and River Trent, from Stapenhill
Welcome to my site, which is
dedicated to the memory of my beloved father, Philip Sydney NORTON, who died in 1989. His
immediate family group excepted, he never knew his NORTON
family. How I wish I could share my discoveries with him!
Although my name is now Blanche CHARLES, my own family name is
NORTON. (Strangely enough, my paternal grandfather was Charles NORTON, so I appreciate the coincidence). On these pages, I have traced our family line back to
its progenitor, another Charles NORTON, who married in Stapenhill
in 1700 and lived in the village of Cauldwell until his death in
1755. I, however, live in Wellington, New Zealand - a world away
from the rather specific area of South Derbyshire and Burton on
Trent, around which this part of my research (and thus the greater
part of the material presented within these pages) is based.
My Dad was born in South East London,
but his Burton-born father, a hop merchants' clerk for Mann, Crossman & Paulin, presumably moved
south before the company withdrew from Burton on Trent in 1896, to
concentrate on their London brewery. (Albion Brewery was registered in October 1901 as a
limited liability company and they sold their Burton lease to
Marston, Thompson & Co in 1902).
Although the two youngest, thanks to
the ravages of World War I and Edwardian London's pollution, my
father and his older brother, (Frederick) John, were, after 1916,
the only survivors of my grandparents' five sons. It wasn't until
after WW2 - and more than a lifetime's worth of experience
(including that as an escaped
Prisoner-of-War) - that my Dad arrived in New Zealand. Having
previously spent his late teenage and early adult years in South
Australia, and the immediate pre-war years in South Africa, he
passed the latter half of his life here, until his death in 1989.
Sadly, I never knew my grandparents.
It was my privilege, though, in my adult years, finally to meet, and
to come to know and love, my Uncle
John, in Cambridge. Since my Dad's and my uncle's deaths, I've
also been fortunate to have traced and met some of my NORTON
cousins from around Burton on Trent, Derbyshire and Leicestershire,
and to have found others in Canada. Having spent many years
researching our shared family history, I have created these pages
with the aim of sharing my findings with my cousins - and with the
additional hope of attracting hitherto unknown family - and of
introducing my father's grandchildren (the only descendants of my
grandparents to bear the NORTON name), to the heritage of the man and the
family they never knew.
Stapenhill Online Resources are listed at
STAPENHILL OPC RESOURCES &
LINKS
East Midlands General Baptist History :
EAST MIDLANDS BAPTIST RESOURCES | 
