JONAS HAMMOND'S COMMONPLACE BOOK

 

This is book of mainly births and deaths which took place in the Four Lane Ends area of Bradford in the period 1837 to 1865. It also includes well known Bradford characters and clergymen, perhaps with their details coming from newspapers. Some of the entries supply fascinating extra details about the cause of death, relationships within a family and various bits of tittle tattle.

Jonas Hammond who compiled the book was born in 1810 to Benjamin Hammond, a miner of Manningham and his wife Ann Roper. His family were connected to Westgate Baptist Chapel and probably so were many of the people mentioned in the books pages. He lived in the Roundthorn area of Girlington and was at various times a farmer, coal dealer and a brewer's clerk at Hammond's Fountain Brewery owned by his cousin James Hammond. The original is in the Bradford office of West Yorkshire Archives under the reference PRE/1/1. It is handwritten into a foolscap size note book whose cover and first page is missing. The transcription starts partway through an entry which began on a page which has not survived. The transcript is in the order the entries were made. We have given each entry a reference number which is used in the name index.

 

A NAME INDEX TO JONAS HAMMOND'S COMMONPLACE BOOK

 

This is an index to people mentioned in the book and is in alphabetical order of surname and within a surname, Christian name order. The first column is a reference number we have created to identify each entry in the Commonplace Book. Then follows Christian name and Surname if mentioned. There are two relationship columns. The first one gives the relationships within an entry. The second identifies relations of Jonas Hammond himself. The comments column further helps in identifying people.