The Delanoy family of Barmby and attempted murder at Saltmarshe

Since my last post we have had Easter, some lovely sunshine and also snow. I put my tomato plants out into the greenhouse and think they are surviving but shocked!! The snowdrop  flowers have now all died back but I try not to cut them until they have put the goodness back into the bulbs. I have a variety of daffodils and while some have finished flowering others are still in bud so the garden is still looking ok. I am looking forward to getting out a bit more and sitting in friends' gardens but it is still a bit cold.

I am keeping busy on the local history front and have been working on two family trees which I have enjoyed. But I am also adding pages to my website which I hope will go live soon as the existing one is very out of date.

One page is about the history of Barmby and I have just added a paragraph into it about the Delanoy family. The Delanoy family of Barmby were descendants of a Dutch family who came to England in the seventeenth century with Sir Cornelius Vermuyden who drained the Isle of Axholme

An Isaac Delanoy - sometimes written as De la Noy- married in 1649 at Sandtoft where there was a church for Protestants working on the drainage.

A branch of the Delanoy family had 'migrated' towards the Carlton/Drax area and then across the river to Barmby by the mid eighteenth century. They were farmers and there are several family graves in the Barmby churchyard.

One John Delanoy died in 1827. His son William was born in 1816 at Barmby. In 1850 he married Mary Marshall and their son William was born the following year. The family had settled in Doncaster where William became landlord of the Wood Street Hotel. He gave this up and became a currier and harness maker in Baxtergate. His son, also William, followed him in business initially and also became a prominent freemason. in Doncaster. In 1880 he wrote the story of St George's Lodge of which he was a member.

But by 1891 he  had moved to Egypt where he worked for the government and took a leading role in Egyptian freemasonry. In 1901 we read that

The King has granted unto Mr. William Delanoy authority to wear the Insignia the Fourth Class of the Imperial Order of the Medjidieh, conferred upon him by the Khedive of Egypt in recognition of valuable services rendered  to his Highness  by Mr Delanoy in his capacity of Director of Stores and Industries in the Prisons Department of the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior.

He died in Egypt in 1931. A long way from Barmby.

I am also working on a page about Saltmarshe. Although I have produced a small booklet about the village which visitors to the honey stall outside our house can buy there is nothing about the village on the website.

It always amazes me how such a small village had so many families who emigrated in the first half of the nineteenth century to Canada and the USA. I suppose that there were so many more opportunities there for young people than there were as farm workers in East Yorkshire. And of course with the internet their descendants can connect with  the 'home country'. 

And I can write too about the fight of the ferrymen. One Saltmarshe ferryman man was charged with  attempted murder after he hit his rival's boat with an oar as they both tried to entice passengers into their boats. He was acquitted after the judge said if he had meant to murder the occupants of the other boat he could have done so quite easily!!

Finally I have included here a colourised old picture of Howden. Some views of Howden are appearing on e bay at the moment and I have a program too that will do this to my black and white old postcards.  But I am not quite sure what I think. It certainly brings the pictures to life but of course we can never be sure what colour clothes, shop fronts etc were a hundred years ago. The computer sometimes has some odd ideas 

I think it's a matter of taste.