"Memoirs of the Hartley Family of Bingley and Staveley,  Yorkshire"
by Minnie Growse (1864-1939),

Foreward
Introduction
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Low Hall
Notes
Hartley, Staveley
Hartley, Bingley

memoirs Notes

Notes on the Hartley Family of Bingley and Staveley

Anybody who reads Minnie Growse's "Memoirs of the Hartley Family" may be left with the impression that they were almost entirely a family of Country Parsons, who also owned the Advowson of the living of Staveley.  Certainly, in that branch of the family many of its members took Holy Orders,  Two were Vicars of Bingley, five were Rectors of Staveley, and one Vicar of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire,

The descendants of the Rev, John Hartley, Vicar of Boroughbridge broke tradition by taking up medicine, his son and three grandsons all being doctors, one of them being killed in the hunting field and lowered into his grave by four Masters of Foxhounds, But it is clear that they all had farming in their blood,  I feel pretty sure that those Hartleys living at Eldwick in the 17th and 18th Centuries were Yeomen farmers.  The facts that they do not appear to have owned Eldwick Hall (which belonged to the Stansfields), and that one of them died in the snow in 1791, returning from Halifax market, point to this, and when they occupied the Staveley living they "farmed their own Glebe", and Frederic Hartley of Low Hall, Knaresborough, had a farm of 150 acres, though he took no practical part in its running, in that he never actually worked on the land himself.  He was always clad in sober black, and Colonel Granville Baker, who married Lorina, daughter of Alfred Octavius Hartley, once said to me, "The trouble about the Low Hall Hartleys was that they never took their coats off," After the First World War, Joshua Hartley ("Joe") took an Agriculture Degree at Cambridge and afterwards farmed very successfully in Norfolk. He died in the 1960s having retired to Terrington in Yorkshire.

Several Hartleys were schoolmasters, two headmasters of the grammar school at Kingley, as well as being vicars there.  James, later Rector of Staveley, was headmaster of Otiey Grammar School, while Curate there, and Alfred Octavius was Head of Fauconberge Grammar School, Beccles, from 1853-1870, before taking  the living of Steeple Ashton, and one of his sons, Charles, was Principal of the Royal College Colombo 1903-14, before settling in British Columbia.  Other clerical members of the family were his son, the Rev, Alexander Hartley, the last Hartley Rector of Staveley, who sold the Advowson, and the Rev. Richard Hartley, eldest son of Frederic Hartley of Low Hall, who was a Chaplain in the Royal Navy.

But several members of the family had no inhibitions about going into industry or commerce.  In the "Chronicles of Bingley and District" by Harry Speight (published 1904), it was stated that the oldest steam-driven cotton mill in Bingley was built in the early 1800s by William Charles and Thomas Hartley, "Cousins of Dr. Hartley, Vicar of Bingley,"  (This vicar was the son of the first one).  Another became a leather merchant in Leeds, and yet another owned a large stone-mason's business in London, though I do not think he played a very active part in its running.  At least two took to the Law, and one was a partner in the solicitors' firm of Blyth, Dutton, Hartley and Blyth of Old Gresham,St. London.  I met a lawyer in Germany in 1963 or 1964, who told me that the firm was still in existence and "was much respected".  I find now that the firm is still in existence as Blyth Dutton and Co,

In ancestry the earlier Hartleys appear to have been "wholly English and, indeed, Yorkshire."  They married women with names like Harper, Rawson, Longbottom and Aitken, though Dr. Reaney in his book "British Surnames" says that the list one is the Scottish form of Atkin. The Rev. James Hartley had not run true to form!  As the age became more cosmopolitan, however, we find that one of Frederic Hartley ( of Low Hall) sons, Frederic Arthur, married the daughter of an Irish soldier. Major F.Y. Cassidy, and another. Harry Percival, married a Norwegian.  (There were no children of this marriage).  But previous to this. Low Hall Frederic had himself brought in new blood by his marriage to Elizabeth Swanwick.  My mother and my aunts plus by father used to  talk about Malton Hartleys - the father was a well-known practitioner who was known as "Kill'oss Joss" because of the furious way he used to drive his gig,  Richard Hartley, son of Frederic Hartley of Low Hall was with him on one occasion when a huge box of pills  fell out and he began trying to pick them up, but all Dr, Hartley said was, "Never mind, my boy, they are only bread pills for the old women." He had five or six sons, all of whom except one were doctors, and. he was a lawyer, probably with the firm of Biyth, Dutton, Hartley and Blyth.  Apart from the fact that the Swanwicks had at least one strain of Welsh blood, by their descent from the Henrys, Elizabeth's mother was the daughter of Thomas ffoulkes of Gwernigron, Nr. St. Ascph, Co. Flint, and a Welshman of the ^Jelsh.

         But, by and large, the Hartleys are a very English family which until recent times does not appear to have put down roots outside England.  Now, there are three young families of Hartleys growing up in Australia, the sons of Richard St. John Hartley, who retired there after a lifetime in the Army,  And one son of Frederick St. Aubyn Hartley is in South Africa, with a numerous progeny.  And another of his sons is a planter in Malaysia.  The other three sons of F. St. Aubyn Hartley have a number of male descendants $  Douglas Hartley (son of Frederic Arthur) has one son, and so had Joe (Norfolk farmer), who is in the Gunners.  Thus there seems little possibility of the family becoming extinct in the foreseeable future, quite apart from the numerous others who must exist somewhere, could they but be traced. Perhaps Charles Hartley, late of Colombo, has some descendants in Canada?  Anyway, may they all flourish.'

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