There may well have been other children but they have not yet been found...as yet.
William and Francis are names that crop up with alarming regularity in the THORPE family and this has caused quite some frustration.

WILLIAM THORPE (born 1799), a farmer of 20 acres, married ELLEN GRAYSON (b1805) on May 5, 1822 in Pateley Bridge.
Their family seems quite modest in size for those days, numbering only five offspring.
The eldest of the children was JOHN THORPE, b. 1827, Pateley Bridge. WILLIAM THORPE b. 1830
REBECCA THORPE, b. 1833
SARAH THORPE, b. 1824.
JANE THORPE, b. 1826.
FRANCIS THORPE, b 1840
MARY THORPE b 1840. Francis and Mary were twins.

Also, in 1851, at William’s home, there was a Mercy Smith, a grand daughter or grand neice. Neither Sarah nor Jane could be found in the 1851 census but they would have been the only ones of William's children old enough to have been married with a child, so presumably Mercy belonged to one of them.

Parker Grayson appears in the 1851 census too, as a visitor at the home of a widow MARY THORPE. Mary was 68 and a charwoman while Parker was unmarried, 50 and a linen weaver and cowper (born Pateley Bridge). He actually appears on the census transcript as Parker Wayson aged 50 but I am 100% confident that he is one and the same. A picture keeps coming into my mind of a little old man who just moves from relative to relatives house, outliving them all. The question is…….who was Mary and who was she widow of ?

JOHN THORPE and HANNAH DICKINSON had eight children.
The eldest was GRACE THORPE b. December 29, 1844. She married DAVID STOREY in about 1863 and in 1881 could be found at Mill Road, Pateley Bridge.
Nothing more is known about the second child, ELLEN born 1847
JANE THORPE, b. 1849 probably died young.
SINCLAIR THORPE, b. 1854 married a lady called ANN (surname unknown). This first Sinclair Thorpe was a labourer and, in 1881, was living at Old Church Lane, Pateley Bridge.
SARAH THORPE was born in 1862 and nothing further is known of her. WILLIAM THORPE was born a few years later in 1865 and he grew up to become an agricultural labourer. In 1881 he was living with his parents in New Church Lane.
GEORGE THORPE, b. 1867 was still a scholar in 1881 and living at home with his parents and brother.
JOHN THORPE, my great great grandfather, was born 1855 in Pateley Bridge and died sometime between 1903 and 1932 in Nelson, Lancashire.
John was a blacksmith, and in 1881 had become a journeyman (which I understand is someone who has gone through apprenticeship but not yet become a master at his trade) However, before 1892 he had become a Master Blacksmith.
Around 1876, when he was in his early 20s, he moved to Stockton. Whether this was intended to be a permanent move or he was away temporarily looking for work, there is no way of knowing. He boarded at Percy St, Stockton and whilst there he married a young girl, ELIZABETH COWHAM DOBSON on January 29, 1877 at the Register Office, Stockton, Co Durham.

JOHN and ELIZABETH, moved back to Pateley Bridge shortly after the birth of their son John in 1877. John carried on with his trade in Pateley Bridge and took up residence at Church Green near where the rest of his family were living. The place where they lived, near the river, has now been redeveloped and has modern cottages built over the site. One of the cottages is called Blacksmith Cottage which made it relatively easy to find the general place where they lived.

The whole family upped sticks and first moved to Shipley with Johns brother Sinclair and his family. Why Shipley I have no idea and there does not seem to be any family link with that area, so I can only assume it was something to do with the growth of the weaving industry at that time.

Sinclairs family settled in Baildon Yorks, whilst John and Elizabeth travelled on to Nelson in Lancashire some time after 1881.
In 1901 they were living in Wilkinson St, from where Great grandpa Tommy was married but by the time of Eizabeth Cowham Dobson’s death in 1932, she had been widowed and moved to Whittycroft Farm. This was her daughter Honor's poultry farm but now lies under a modern housing estate.
John had, in later years, been crippled when an anvil fell on his leg. He died when he and Elizabeth lived on Princess Street, Nelson sometime between 1924 and 1928.

Up until publication of the 1901 census I thought that JOHN and ELIZABETH only had four children.
The 1901 census shows them to have infact had ten. The eldest - JOHN, mentioned earlier, was born in 1877 at Percy St, Stockton where his parents were both living before they married. (It is thought that perhaps John snr was lodging with Elizabeth Cowham Dobson's mother and stepfather).

JOHNjnr became a blacksmith like his father and married ANNIE. He had a daughter and a son called James who, I believe, also had a son James. In 1932, when his mother died, John jnr was named on the death certificate as informant and was, at the time, living on Beaufort St, Nelson just a couple of roads away from Princess Street,where his parents had both lived a few years before.
HANNAH JANE who seems to have been known as just Jane, was the second eldest child and born in 1880 in Pateley Bridge. She worked as a cotton weaver and was witness at her younger brother Tommy's wedding. She married JOE CHARTERS and had no children.

ISAAC DOBSON THORPE born in 1889 and named after his heroic grandfather, married Lucy (surname unknown), a lady who hailed from Boston in Lincs. They had no children.

ELIZABETH(Lizzie) b1888, married WILLIAM (Billy)CHARTERS. (Joe & William were related but I am not sure how close). Lizzie & Billy had one child, Kathleen, who stills lives in Nelson and has her own family.

MARYb. 1886, eventually married Thomas Walton and emigrated to New Zealand, probably before 1916.

ELLEN b1884 and known as Nellie, married JOHNNY FOULDS and they had three children. Hilda, who died very young, Mary who married late and John who was also married. Johnny Foulds and family went out to a textile mill in India (for the Nelson family - large, well known textile family) but only stayed there for one three year contract.

SINCLAIR THORPE born in 1892, worked in the textile trade and married EMILY CROWTHER and had two children, a son called SINCLAIR (b 1916) and a daughter called GLADYS.
Sinclair Snr died aged 72 in 1964 and his wife Emily died almost 30 years later in 1991, at the grand age of 92.
Gladys had married a man called KNOWLES and their descendants now live in Norfolk.
SINCLAIRJnr, married ISABELLA CANNING in Scotland, travelled the world and raised four children. It is pleasing to hear that the name SINCLAIR has been passed down to further generations and perhaps will continue to further ones.

PARKER THORPE, son of John and Elizabeth was the "Black Sheep" of the family, had one son by his wife Bertha Adshead, also called Parker. Parker jnr was an ableseaman on the motor torpedo boat 41 when it hit a mine in Harwich on the 13th February, 1941. The following day Rommel entered North Africa and Able Seaman Parker Thorpe died from his wounds.
His father (Parker Thorpe snr)later moved to Carlisle where he married a much younger lass and there was at least one child.

Finally there were three more daughters Honor, Grace and Gladys who were born in 1896, 98 and 1900 respectively.

HONOR married GEORGE CROWTHER(no relation to Sinclair’s wife Emily) and she seems to have been everyone's favourite auntie. George Crowther had qualified as a pilot at the end of the First World War but did not see any action.
Honor and George had only one child which was stillborn. They lived at Whittycroft which was a poultry farm but not in the strict sense of the word farm as we would think of one today. Although called Whittycroft Farm, it was more of a cottage and had been beautifully restored by Honor. After her father John died, Elizabeth Cowham Dobson Thorpe had grown frail and went to live with Honor at Whittycroft, where she eventually died in 1932.
Honor and George also had a small factory on the canal bank near the Old Imperial Ballroom where they made fishcakes which they sold to the big stores like Woolworths and on their own market stall in Nelson's old open market, which stood behind the Bowker’s shop. Eventually Honor and George retired to Nelson, near Victoria Park, Carr Hall Road.

GRACE married TOM DAWES. They had three children (Grace, Tom & ??) They lived in Accrington where Tom had a garage. He was also a rep for a crockery firm and a Class 1 referee. It is said that he was once linesman at an FA Cup final and also officiated at many big matches. Aunt Grace was a lovely looker, very close to Honor and well liked by everyone.

GLADYS the youngest of the children is believed not to have actually been the child of John and Elizabeth but rather the illegitimate daughter of Mary, who would have been roughly about the same age as her mother when first faced with impending motherhood. Raising Gladys as their own, John and Elizabeth enabled Mary to continue with her own life and eventually she married Tom Walton, a shopkeeper. Tom and Mary emigrated to New Zealand where they set up their own general store. In about 1927, after Gladys had married a hairdresser called Lawrie, they sent for her and she and her husband also emigrated to New Zealand. Nothing further is known of them.

Then of course, last but not least was Tommy Thorpe, who was the third child and the last to be born in Pateley Bridge, Nidderdale.

Great Grandpa THOMAS THORPE was born January 22 1881 in Pateley Bridge and by 1903 he was lodging at 49 Wilkinson St, Marsden, Nelson. He was a cordwainer by trade and married his wife CHARLOTTE HARTLEY on the 3rd October 1903 in Marsden.
TOMMY, as he was always known, was remembered as a wonderful grandfather to the extent that his eldest grandson was determined to be the kind of grandfather that Tommy had been for him.
He was tall and lean and quite angular whilst his wife Charlotte was short and round. He was reputedly a great reader, with his head forever in a newspaper or book but he himself only owned two books. One was a dictionary and the other was "Lord Darling And His Famous Trials", which still sits on the family bookcase, inscribed by Tommy with his name. The fate of the dictionary is unknown.
He was quite adventurous for a small town lad. He bought a car when they first came out in Nelson though he never learned how to reverse and when he wanted to turn around the passengers had to lift up the car and turn it to point in the reverse direction. The first day he had the car (an open top) there was a family trip to visit relatives in Whitby. It was a drive that took all day, the roads not being geared up to cars and my gran, his daughter "Bet" was wearing a hat covered in cherries. By the time they returned there wasnt a single cherry on the hat. Before TOMMY THORPE died in 1951 in Marsden he had bought land, had commercially built a couple of houses, owned a tennis court, an icecream parlour cum sweetshop as well as having set his daughter up in business. Sinclair, my grandmother's cousin, told me Tommy was a careful man (which is probably why he ended up with land etc and, when he went and bought sweets from his uncles sweet shop, Tommy would charge full whack with no discount for family. However, his wife Charlotte, a warm lady who loved kids (and incidentally who made the toffee), would stick a few extra in when Tommy wasnt looking.

My grandparents, as far as I can make out, ended up with one of those “rub along” marriages, as I believe that Granny Bet grew a little disappointed with her husbands lack of ambition.
I have a couple of photographs of their wedding day and, looking at them once with my mother, I was chuckling at the Stan Laurel type of hair style that my grandfather had at the time.
As he grew older he became better looking but I passed comment that I was surprised that he had so much success with the ladies (three marriages and, it is rumoured, a couple of extra liaisons).
I already knew that my grandfather’s second wife Gladys Watson (nee Bowker) was, in fact, my grandmother’s cousin on her Hartley side. What I then discovered was that before he married my grandmother Bet, he had been engaged to Connie Bowker – Gladys’s sister and another of Bet’s cousins. I don’t know what brought the end to Auntie Connie’s engagement to my grandfather but there didn’t seem to be anything acrimonious about it. I certainly recall Auntie Connie & her husband (Uncle Loll), as well as Grandma Gladys, being an integral part of my childhood. My grandfather's romances with first Connie, then Bet and then Gladys did however bring new meaning into the phrase “keeping it within the family”.

ELIZABETH HEBDEN nee THORPE died in 1960, aged 55, of breast cancer.

The Thorpe family would seem to have been a rather close family and as was often the norm in those days, Sundays were the days when everyone had to troop up to John and Elizabeth's house for Sunday lunch. Elizabeth ruled with a rod of iron and there was no excuse for anyone to miss the weekly family gathering. The children would eat first followed by the adults after which the girls would do the washing up while the men did men's things. One Sunday Parker junior didnt like what was dished up for him so his grandmother Elizabeth took it away and put it in the oven to keep warm. Afterwards it was served up to a famished Parker for his tea. Sinclair jnr just looked at his cousin and said "You better eat it up because it wont taste so good next Sunday!" I mentioned earlier about the difficulty of tracing back through the THORPE OF PATELEY BRIDGE. This is primarily because of so many generations having children of similar ages and the same names. For example, of the earliest THORPEs that I have been able to verify, it would appear that the two brothers WILLIAM and FRANCIS both had sons called William and Francis, all born around the same time. One side seem to be shoemakers and the other side seem to be farmers but even that seems to be interchangeable.
The 1861 census shows a William Thorpe born about 1827 in Pateley Bridge that could be the son of either of the brothers. This William was a joiner, with a young wife of 25, Elizabeth, who was a dressmaker from Stockton. There was also a sister in law staying called Alice Edon.

I have drawn up a tree of three earlier generations but for the moment it can only be supposition and needs more work to make sure that I have the right people in the right boxes.

I believe it goes something like this……..

THOMAS THORPE was born Abt. 1667 had children FRANCIS b. Abt. 1687, THOMAS THORPE, m. ELIZA PULLEYN, October 17, 1681. & JOSEPH THORPE.

FRANCIS THORPE (son of Thomas) born Abt. 1687 married HELENA HARDCASTLE November 13, 1711 in Pateley Bridge, daughter of THOMAS HARDCASTLE and ELLEN .
They had children FRANCIS THORPE, b. 1720. and ELIZABETH THORPE, b. October 22, 1712
FRANCIS married ELLEN PROCTOR 1774 in Pateley Bridge and had FRANCIS b 1776 who married SARAH SINCLAIR

Various Thomas, Francis and Williams needed to be inserted into here, in the correct places.

One Francis Thorpe, who cropped up in my searches, bought the New Mill at Summerbridge in 1825. He would likely have been born around 1780(?) He died in 1854 and the business was carried on in the same name of Francis Thorpe & Co by his manager and book-keeper. Unfortunately, in 1883 a sudden flood occured and carried off a great deal of linen yarn that had been laid out in the river field. This loss caused the bankruptcy of the business at New Mill.

My grandmother used to tell of how there were an awful lot of twins in the family. There do not appear to be any examples on her maternal lines but I have come across quite a few examples of twins in the Thorpes of Patelely Bridge, adding weight to my theory that they are all just one big family.

If you have any information on THORPE OF PATELEY BRIDGE that would make the job easier I would love to hear from you.

Incidentally, on researching into the Hardcastles of Nidderdale, I have discovered that they married into the Thorpes a few times since as early as the 1500s. They also married into the Hebdens of Pateley Bridge/ Stokesley.