History search reveals family ties to Howard and Bullough

In 1856 the Accrington firm employed 150 workers - at its peak its Globe Works dominated the town, employing almost 6000 workers and covering 52 acres.

There weren't many families in the town who didn't have one of their folks making Lancashire looms and other textile machinery.

Jose Jackson, who hails from Accrington, has been digging into family roots and found a fascinating story about her husband Tommy's great uncle.

He was John Jackson, whose own father John was a foreman and then manager at Globe Works and lived at Victoria View, Accrington.

John junior, born in 1869, served an apprenticeship at Howard and Bullough, after leaving St Paul's Episcopal School and became an expert erector.

In 1895, however, he moved to America, to the company's plant, H and B Machine Company in Rhode Island, where he was placed in charge of the erection department, setting up the cotton and wool machinery.

Five years later he was appointed the plant superintendent and in 1911 went into politics, serving as an Alderman for Pawtucket.

Two years later, while sailing home for England, to visit family, with his wife Sarah and three children Janie, Fred and Ada, he was diagnosed as having appendicitis and despite having an operation in Lancaster Hospital, which was deemed a success, he died the next day.

The flags at Howard and Bullough were flown at half mast and he was buried at Accrington Cemetery - his funeral arranged by Messrs Waddington and Son, of King Street and Blackburn Road, Accrington.

Jose has also discovered that John's brother Frederick, worked at a Howard and Bullough plant in Poland and that his sister Emma married a Prussian soldier called Samuel Harvey, whose father was a wool merchant in St Petersburg.

According to family folklore, the couple escaped Prussia during World War II on a Trans Siberian express, with jewels, currency and papers sewn into the linings of their clothes.

Sam, it is said, then became a British spy.