Hebdens have been in York for hundreds of years but the detail of this branch begins about 1780 with the birth of FRANCIS HEBDEN. It is at the turn of the 19th century when FRANCIS HEBDEN marries Sarah Roundell. They have six cihldren between 1803 and 1819 all christened at St Lawrence, York. - John, Francis, Ann, Hannah, Mary, Elizabeth and Jane. Their son FRANCIS was born in 1805 and by the time he was 27 he married Mary Middleton Hawkswell in York. Francis worked at the Hebden & Poppleton Linen Factory on the River Ouse in York, which would indicate that his parents were from the York area. One also presumes that Poppleton was a family name (rather than relating to the village just outside York) because of his grandson Alfred’s middle name.
He and Mary had three sons, James, John, and FRANK. Nothing is known of James and John but Frank was born on October 12th 1839. He had married, in Middlesex, by the time he was twenty, to a Kate Emma Loosemore who was the daughter of Henry Loosemore of Hampshire.


Frank died very young, at the age of 38 (April 22, 1878), of a form of throat cancer, leaving Kate a young widow with seven children, one of whom was born posthumously.
Frank Englis Hebden was the eldest child (1869-1919, Henry Francis came next (1870-1948), then Mary Middleton Hebden. Mary married a Charles Beasley, had two daughters and eventually died at the age of 80.


Alfred Poppleton Hebden (1874-1919) followed with Percy Loosemore Hebden born two years later. Percy died as a baby, that same year. Bernard Sydney Hebden (1877-1960) was a baby when his father died and it was his younger sister Kate Alice Gertrude who was born four months after her father’s death.

It can’t have been easy for Kate Emma to raise all these children but most of them grew to maturity.

By 1881 Kate was living in Carisbrooke Hampshire. The eldest child, Frank Englis does not appear in the household but Kate is now 38 and a schoolmistress and is head of a very large household. The census shows Henry to have been born in York whilst Mary and Alfred were born in London. Bernard and Kate were born in Gosforth, Newcastle, presumably where their father died. Also living with them were a couple of lodgers but also Kate’s sister Flora Loosemore, who was a spinster and working in the wool business. What happened to young Frank is uncertain though the census does show an eleven year old, born in Newcastle and living with an aunt in Arreton Hants. The likelihood is that this is Kate’s eldest child.

ALFRED POPPLETON HEBDEN born in 1874, married a Henrietta Emma Batchelor on Valentine’s Day in the year 1900 in Nelson, British Columbia. They had five children, some born in Nelson B.C. except for the youngest who was born in Victoria B.C. Alfred Roy Cecil, George Albert Arthur, Alice Dora, Gordon Ernest, Frederick Aubrey and John Clarence all married in Canada, probably in Victoria. Alfred Poppleton died on November 1st 1919

Alfred Poppleton’s sister KATE ALICE GERTRUDE HEBDEN also married in British Columbia in 1898. Her husband was T H Calland and they had four children.

When Alfred and Kate went to Canada is unknown or whether they went alone or the whole of the fatherless Hebden children went together.

Two of the other brothers married and had children but where the marriages took place or where the children were born in not noted.

BERNARD SYDNEY HEBDEN (born May 24, 1877)in Gosforth, married Ellas Dorothy Perry and had four children, Henry Bernard, Richard P, Josephine and Sidney. Bernard Sidney was a plumber by trade and died September 12, 1960.

HENRY FRANCIS HEBDEN(born August 8, 1870) married Mabel Sommers and eventually died in 1948 having had two daughers Daisy and Masie.