>Is archived information (including census returns, boat owners etc.) >available for the Sankey, Manchester/Bolton/Bury, and Bridgewater canals? The above Bolton reference has caught my eye. I have recently joined your list because of the following: At 1851 census, 33yo Job TURNER (36yo wife Mary) was a wharfinger ('wharf manager') b at Priors Marston in Warwickshire. His children were b Oxford OXON, Bolton MAN, and Stretton under Fosse WAR. The family in 1881 were then living at the Canal Shop at Monks Kirby by the Stretton Tollgate, and it is likely that Job worked the canalside where he accepted, warehoused and dispatched goods. At his granddaughter Julia's birth in Jan 1881, son William was described as a corn merchant, yet a few months later at the 1881 census on 04apr1881, William's young family was at High St in Kidlington Oxon and he was listed as a 33yo retired farmer ('lucky' or 'unemployed' man?). The Turner family was to be found in Bolton another generation later in 1908, where my grandparents married and sired my Dad. He remembers his father William TURNER as a coal merchant in Oxford about 1920. My question: What are the links between Bolton/Oxford/Stretton with corn/coal ? Canals seem to suggest a likely answer, but what might the full story be? _________________________________________________ Frank Whillans <[email protected]> "Coranderk" 47 The Righi, Eaglemont Melbourne Victoria 3084 Australia Telephone 03-9457-2893 (local), +613-9457-2893 (overseas)