The Beardmores of South Staffordshire: Dennis Beardmore’s sheet
A large hand-lettered family tree, “The Beardmore Family of South Staffordshire, England, Sheet No. 1”, compiled by Dennis W. Beardmore of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and revised seven times between July 1958 and November 1972. It traces a different family: the descendants of Benjamin Beardmore, a stocktaker who died at Deepfield, Sedgley, in 1839 aged 76, who lived around Sedgley, Coseley, Bilston and Wednesbury and, from about 1900, in Newport, Monmouthshire. Dennis found no connection between his family and ours, and they are not in our tree.
This copy belonged to Rick Beardmore. Beside “George Beardmore, the novelist” he has written “MY UNCLE (JRB)”.
What it says about our family
Among his notes of June 1970 on other Beardmore families, Dennis wrote this paragraph. The right-hand edge of the copy is blotchy, and words that cannot be read are marked [?].
There are many Beardmore families in North Staffordshire. One of [these], the Beardmores of Farley, Cotton and Alton can trace their line as far back to a Thomas Beardmore who died at Farley in 1568. [This family] seems to have descended from a Richard de Berdmore who died [in 1295?]. These Beardmores are listed in the Kingsley Parish Registers as early as [?]. Two members of this family, in 1905–6, tried to prove a connection between them and Lord Invernairn and the Beardmores of Uplands House, but there was no proof. Anyone interested in this branch of Beardmores [should contact] Mrs Olive A. Dale (née Beardmore) of 92 Hassam Parade, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs. Mrs Dale has carried out 18 years of research on the Beardmores of North Staffs. At one time, this family owned a considerable amount of land in Farley, [Cotton and?] Alton, North Staffs, and their pedigree contains many eminent people, including George Beardmore, the novelist.
Lord Invernairn was Sir William Beardmore (1856–1936), head of the Glasgow shipbuilders William Beardmore & Co., after whom the Beardmore Glacier in the Antarctic was named. The Beardmores of Uplands House, Fareham, Hampshire, appear in Burke’s Landed Gentry. The 1905 attempt is probably the work behind the notes of Jeremiah Beardmore of Bucknall, dated 1905, that Olive used on her sheet about Jeremiah of Kingsley.
The rest of the sheet
Dennis also noted that the Beardmore name first appears in the Sedgley registers in 1777, and that the earliest family story, that this Beardmore family came from Scotland, could not be proved. His notes on the origin of the name repeat the derivation given above: ‘berd’, an edge or rim, and ‘more’, a moor.