Visiting Middlesbrough, England

Near the end of our journey, Concetta and I are going to visit Middlesbrough, England, where the Davis family lived just before they immigrated to the United States. For some reason when they moved to Middlesbrough from Wales they changed the family name from Davis to Davies. Once they arrived in America in the 1870s, they changed it back. The following is some history of the Middlesbrough I gleaned from the local Dorman Museum:

Although the original settlement of Middlesbrough dates back to the Norman Conquest it is in the latter part of the 19th and 20th centuries that the town’s identity began to evolve.

In 1829 the Middlesbrough part of the Hustler family (of Acklam Hall) estate was sold and eventually went on to business men associated with the then world famous Stockton and Darlington Railway Company. They developed the land into coal shipping at Staithes to export coal from the Durham coalfield. This was just upstream from the present Transporter Bridge. Their ambition was to develop a port that would rival those of Sunderland and Newcastle.

As the first years saw massive amounts of coal moved the owners decided to commission the laying out of the purpose built town of Middlesbrough. The town, perhaps the first 'new town' developed in Britain, was designed on a grid pattern with a market square and church at its center. As the town grew, reaching 9,332 by 1853, other industries began to thrive. These included, shipyards, iron works, printers, breweries and an earthenware company.

In 1841 an Act of Parliament appointed an Improvement Commission to govern the town, meeting to deal with civic issues and the controlling of the market. In 1846 they were able to commission the building of Middlesbrough Town Hall by William Lambie Moffatt.

Henry Bolckow became the first town Mayor of Middlesbrough in 1853, he also went on to become the town’s first member of Parliament when the town became enfranchised in 1868.

Most of the men and their families in the original township came in the 1840s and 1850s to provide the labor in the newly founded industries.

In 1862 the soon to be British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, described Middlesbrough as, ‘the youngest child of England’s enterprise’ and ‘an infant Hercules’.

The vision of the town council was to extend Middlesbrough to the south. Therefore they bought up more building land and speculative housing deals were done creating villa and Victorian terraces in which the upper and middle classes could live. The praise by the Prime Minister for it’s successful was echoed in 1889 when the Prince of Wales said, "Your borough is young in years but the great increase in its population since 1841, and the wonderful development of its commerce are most remarkable and have given it already a position usually reserved for age…….it may be truly said that at the present moment Middlesbrough ranks amongst the highest reputations- not of England only but of the World for the importance of great and varied inductors, especially her vast iron trade."

In the 1870’s industry continued to grow as iron production gave way to steel production and, that produced, traveled the globe. Later the salt works, chemical production and bridge building also grew.

Although today heavy industry has all but ceased, the modern world is still stamped with the name of the town. Girders that make up bridges throughout Africa, Asia and even Sydney Harbor Bridge all bear the legend ‘Dorman Long and Co Ltd., Middlesbrough, England’.