Dear List, Many thanks to all those lovely peole who responded so quickly! Doreen - you are right, it is Abraham the elder in the 1841 census. I mistakenly gave you the wife of one of our later Abrahams. Thanks very much. What I'd dearly like to know is where they came from: after scouring the churchyard I couldn't find any earlier Stansfields, but one gravestone had a referenced to our Edward Stansfield as 'of Chadderton' (d.1857), so I wonder if they came from there. Any idea which churchyard I should look in? I'm interested in the Todmorden connections of Stansfields, which I found, to my surprise, just by putting the name in a web search: there is whole site on the family, which seems to have originated from there as far back as 1066, so we are probably related to Gracie and Lisa... and I have found a family tree at the Society of Genealogists which is several yards long. The challenge is where we all fit in. On a visit to Todmorden we found Stansfield Hall, on the site of the original building (C15 I think), not in Stansfield ownership for centuries, and rebuilt by Thomas Feilden in the C19, now in flats. There are huge numbers of Stansfield graves in the C19 churchyard above the town, and more even older ones in Hepstonstall, where there is a stained glass window in the New Church endowed by Stansfields (pics of it make an excellent screensaver!). So lots to work on. The 1848 plan of the club houses looks like a building plan layout for the site, but it shows Middleton Hall and its gardens, which according to Bamford was demolished earlier than that. It is a wonderful thing, but HUGE: I had a reduction copy made which is, I think, quarter size and that is 2ft 6in x nearly 4ft! Middleton library really should have a copy if they don't already. We lived in a corner shop (10 Cheapside ) until 1959, and left shortly before all those streets were demolished. I knew nothing about the club houses until recently, but as many of my family were silk weavers living in Union Street, Fielding Street etc. they must have lived in some of them. There is a good architectural reference I got from Middleton library which has details of how they were constructed, with the ginnel leading to the back yards and separate entries to keep out the dust. I do remember playing in the ginnels, yards and backs. Cheers for now Kathy Stansfield