Job Burton

BIRTH & BAPTISM First name(s) Job Last name Button Baptism year 1818 County Essex Country England Place Elmdon Mother's first name(s) Hannah Father's first name(s) Joseph Father's last name Button Baptism date 03 Jan 1818 Father's occupation Shepherd Residence Elmdon Archive Essex Record Office

I am adding a series of census records to docs because they help to show who is related to whom in this messy family setup with poor recording. Follow Job through his mother's docs, and these.

Also, Job is just one of many shepherds in the Button/Burton family, and it seems they have been shepherds for a very long time. Even when the census reports them as ag. lab., it is likely that many of them were in fact shepherds.

Shepherds were among the best paid agricultural workers for centuries, which might account for why we don't find Buttons or Burtons in the poor house or later work house, even when times were particularly hard. I will add to Job's site some articles and photos of traditional shepherding in England. There is one about Australian shepherds in colonial times on Thomas Mansfield's site because he and his sons continued as shepherds in Victoria. See docs and media.

Definitely at Elmdon where his family stayed.

1841 census, Elmdon: Hannah Button, b1779-83, 58-62yrs, original 58yrs, head, Job Button, 23yrs (23-27yrs), b 1814-1818, Elmdon, Jamima Button, 30yrs (30-34yrs) b 1807-11, Elmdon, Joseph Button, 18yrs(18-22yrs), b 1819-23, Elmdon, John Button, 15yrs (15-19yrs), b 1822-26, Elmdon.

1851 census, Main Street, Elmdon: Job Burton is a 32yr old unmarried shepherd, living with his mother Hannah Button, 65yrs born Wendon Lofts in 1786, now living on parish allowance as the widow of an agricultural labourer, also Ann Clement, 10 yr old scholar, b 1841 at Elmdon, who is Job's niece and Hannah's granddaughter, probably daughter of Jemima if only I can find their marriage.

1861 census, Elmdonbury, Elmdon: Hannah Burton, 75yrs, b1786 Wendon Lofts, pauper, widow, head of household, Job Burton, 40 yrs single b 1821 Elmdon, shepherd, Ann Clements, 20yrs b 1841 Elmdon, dressmaker, granddaughter of Hannah, Joseph Thomas Burton, grandson of Hannah Button, 1yr born 1860, Quendon Essex [Joseph Thomas is son of Joseph and Sarah, who was also born Rickling/Quendon, not far from Chrishall]

1871 census, Elmdon: Job Burton, head of household, 52yrs, single, shepherd, born 1819 at Elmdon, with Josephine E Clement, his niece, 21yrs, a servant, born 1850 at Chrishall, and Stephen Clement, his brother-in-law (husband of Jemima? Julia?) born 1813 at Elmdon, 58yrs, also a shepherd.

1881 census, Hinxton Street,Ickleton Cambridgeshire: Job is a farmer of 40 acres, 64 yrs born Elmdon, living with his brother-in-law;

head of household, Stephen Clements, 67yrs an ag lab; Julia O Clements, Job's sister 68yrs born Elmdon and Stephen's wife; and their Clements grandson Christopher Clements, 18yrs born Chrishall, ag lab. Are they all working for Job? Or for Stephen? Is he just visiting the Clements family? Implied that he is living there, See docs [Is Julia O, the same person as Jemima?]

Job's death is registered at Saffron Walden. Both Ickleton and Elmdon fall in the Saffron Walden registration district, so he might have died in either.

FARMING SHEEP In order to get any kind of production from thin and often impoverished soils, fertiliser in the form of farmyard manure had to be applied. However, the physical problems and cost of hauling vast quantities of manure from the farmyard to the distant fields were too great. To overcome these problems, farmers employed animals to do the work for them - sheep. The era of 'The Golden Hoof' had arrived.

If you owned a farm in the 19th century, a well managed flock of sheep and a hard working shepherd were essential, so much so that your shepherd was the most important worker on your farm. As most downland villages were set in valleys and downland fields were the farthest away, the shepherd had to have somewhere to store his tools and medicines. It was hard, physical work with flocks having to be moved daily and the shepherd also had to have somewhere to eat, rest and sleep, especially during the lambing season.

The shepherd's hut was a kitchen, dining room, bedroom, sitting room and storeroom all rolled into one. The designs vary but all were constructed to provide the shepherd with practical and durable accommodation. The old huts had a stove in one corner for warmth and cooking, and a window on each side so the shepherd could see the flock. A hinged stable door, which was always positioned away from the prevailing wind, enabled him to hear the flock, and strong axles with cast iron wheels were used to withstand the constant movement from field to field.

The durability of these huts is evident today with many fine examples still being used by farmers, mainly as storerooms, and can often be seen parked up alongside fields. Many more have been consigned to agricultural museums giving testament to days gone by.

A crook, staff or stick has been a shepherd’s multi-purpose tool-of-trade since man first herded sheep. It has even become a religious symbol for high-ranking clergy to show their responsibility for their flocks.

A stick has many uses. It’s a support for walking over rough terrain; a means of catching ewes and lambs around the neck or legs, and a defence weapon against flock predators. Few shepherds ever had money to buy a stick, even if they were available. Sticks in shops were for sale to tourists, so unless an old shepherd and stick dresser gave you a stick, the only option for a young shepherd was to start and make their own, hoping they’d get some help from a local expert who would reveal his secrets!

But a shepherd’s stick is more than a tool of trade; it also makes a personal statement about the owner so you‘d never criticise a fellow worker’s stick, no matter how ugly it was.

So it’s easy to see how the craft of stick dressing developed into a competitive art form, with one shepherd trying to beat his mates on the next farm, in the next valley. There was intense competition among shepherds for sticks to be presented to Royalty, so their secrets became even more jealously guarded.

Mr George Snaith, without doubt was the most famous stick dresser of all time who turned the craft into a mind-boggling art form with few tools and no electricity. He did all his intricate artistic work in a cold shed illuminated by a paraffin lamp, with a pocket knife he made himself. Some of his massive stick collection is now housed in Alnwick Castle while his relatives hold the rest.

Stick types 1. Straight staffs. Made from stout sticks of native timbers such as Manuka or Lancewood. 2. Thumb sticks. These are made from sticks with a natural V near the top used for the walker‘s thumb. Deer antler is sometimes used to make the V and it’s joined to the shank with a spigot on the shank fitting a hole in the horn. 3. Wooden headed sticks. These are cut out of a solid block of wood from which the sapling shank is growing. 4. Horn headed sticks. These are made from animal horns, usually rams but goats and cattle horns can be used.

Sheep-farming has been a major industry in Essex, for centuries, including north-east Essex and at Colchester, both within the town wall and around the town and the district. Wivenhoe’s main medieval industry was, apparently, sheep-farming. The products included wool, leather, meat, and horn and bone artefacts. The Trust uncovers a range of evidence of the wool industry, such as large quantities of bones, as well as spindlewhorls (used in the spinning of wool), loomweights (used in the weaving of cloth), and even some fragments of fabric. Wool would be spun into yarn and this would be used to make thread, which would be woven to produce cloth. Colchester has a long history as a cloth-making town, and its boom times were the 13th-15th and 16th-17th centuries, when it participated in national and international trade. The wool industry is fascinating, and the whole industry was based on sheep… From Wikipedia: ‘… Each bale of cloth could represent the work of up to fifty people from in and around [medieval] Colchester, including shepherds, wool staplers, carders, wool combers, spinners, dyers, weavers, fullers, roughers, shearers, pressers and merchants. The town was surrounded by watermills used in the fulling process … At its peak, Colchester was exporting 40,000 bales of cloth annually, specialising in grey-brown russet cloth… By 1373 there were two wool fairs in the town, and wool was exported via Colchester’s Hythe port to Zeeland, Flanders, Calais, Saint-Omer, Amiens, the Mediterranean, Sweden, Prussia, Gascony, Spain, and later in the 15th century to the German Hanseatic League, especially Cologne. Colchester’s main trade partner outside England was Bruges …’ . (See 20 facts about the cloth industry at Colchester below!) The cloth-workers were exploited and restricted by their employers and by the Dutch Bay Hall, and vulnerable to fluctuations in trade. (In 1725, ‘the Poor distressed Bay Weavers in Colchester’ sent a petition to the King, complaining about the oppression of their Masters ‘the Bay makers that trade to the Dutch bay Hall’, for reducing their wages; it was signed by over 120 bay weavers. In January 1725 there were weavers’ riots in Colchester. Rioters broke into the town gaol and released a rioter, and the ringleader John Curtin was shot dead after resisting arrest. At the request of the baymakers, troops were sent to suppress the rioting.) 15 Cloth merchants (clothiers, baymakers) could acquire great wealth and power from their exploitation of the labour of their cloth-workers, and they paid for the building of some of the best houses in the town. The Minories art gallery and art school on East Hill was originally a fine house, bought by baymaker Isaac Boggis in 1731: the property once included an adjacent bay and say warehouse on the east side of the house. Winsley’s House at the east end of the High Street was the home of wealthy baymaker Arthur Winsley; he founded Winsley’s Almshouses in Old Heath Road and his memorial survives in St James’ Church.

In 1806, the castle keep was used as a wool store for the town’s annual wool fair. 18 The cloth trade was, for centuries, the staple industry of Colchester. It went into terminal decline in the 18th century and ended in 1833 when Peter Devall, the last baymaker, sold up.