They then moved, via a stay (1868 to 1873 approx) in Glossop, Derbyshire, to the cotton-weaving mills of East Lancashire, and connected with the family OWERS who had moved up from Suffolk to the same part of Rochdale. The resulting family, my paternal Great-Grandparents - Frederick MOTHERS and Maria OWERS - then moved over the Pennines to Nelson and Barrowford, Lancashire, changing to the MATTHEWS surname, about 1880, where the connection with the CHICKEN descendants from the western watershed was established.
Frederick was the only son of Thomas MATHERS and Susan ELMER, with 7 sisters. Maria was one of seven children of Will OWERS and Sarah JOHNSON (again, all girls). They married at Smith St Methodist Chapel, Rochdale, on the 8th May 1878, when Frederick was still only 16 years of age and Maria was just turned 17 and 8 months pregnant! Sometime between 1882 and 1886 they moved to Nelson, Lancashire, following Maria's widowed mother and sisters who had moved to the same town before the 1881 Census. Most of the Owers girls married in or around Nelson, and were living with their families in Nelson at the time of the 1901 Census. Maria's mother Sarah remarried there in 1883.
Frederick's sisters, using the surname MATHERS stayed in and around Spotland, Rochdale, ending up in the Bacup and Todmorden area by the time of the 1901 Census. Four of the seven married before that Census, and their descendants (BELLERBY, HILL, BARKER and WOOD) may well be still living in that area. Their mother Susan (nee ELMER) was living in Todmorden with two unmarried daughters in 1901.
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