The Sneyds of the Potteries

Well Street, Hanley — the grocer's shop

The family tree makes two very specific, entirely unverified claims about this line: that Samuel Sneyd, born Madeley 1769, "a grocer of Hanley", died on 20 September 1856 at No 3, Well St, Hanley; and that he left a widow, Elizabeth Margaret Oliver of Oswestry, Shropshire, who outlived him by five years and died on 1 December 1861. No record behind either. Nobody had ever opened a Staffordshire census.

Here is Well Street five years later.

The address in the enumerator's own hand: Well St, Grocers Shop.

What it does give outright is a household: a James Sneyd, engraver, born Hanley about 1819, with two daughters who paint pottery for a living. The tree gives Samuel and Elizabeth five children and this archive publishes only one of them — Samuel Charles, born Hanley 1810, who sailed. James stayed, kept the shop, and engraved.

And why this took so long to find. FreeCEN holds 1861 for Staffordshire and, on testing, nothing else: a control search for John Smith born 1800–1805 in Staffordshire returns 31 people and every one of them is 1861. So Samuel Sneyd, who died in 1856, could never have appeared however hard he was looked for — and his son Samuel Charles had been in Australia for twenty-four years. coverage established by control test

Ann's parents, and the night the family slept in two houses

This archive knew James Sneyd's wife as «Ann» across four censuses, then as ANN BIDDULPH from a free index, and said plainly that her parents were a generation it had never had. The 1851 census names them.

Queen Street, Stoke upon Trent — seven people

And Well Street, the same night — five people

Where the Staffordshire Sneyds are

Madeley holds 149 of 551 — and Keele, the hall the discredited graft reached for, is four miles up the road and holds a handful. The family this archive actually descends from were weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths, brickmakers and labourers in the Potteries. The graft →

And the weaver himself has a burial at last — or one of two

The Sneyd line's oldest name is WILLIAM SNEYD OF MADELEY, and until today he rested on a citation reading “Sneyd Web Site”, a birth year of 1746, AND NO DEATH AT ALL. The National Burial Index holds eight William Sneyds buried at MADELEY ALL SAINTS across two hundred and fifty years — 1574, 1640, 1659, 1762, 1780, 1791, and then two that matter:

What has changed is the shape of the problem. Yesterday the oldest Sneyd was a web page. Today he is one of two documented burials in the right parish, with ages, and the better of the two agrees with the tree to within three years — which is what a stated age at burial does.

Ann has a surname at last

Four censuses give James Sneyd the engraver a wife called ANN and nothing more — Ann, 41, in 1861; Ann, 52, in 1871; Anne, 61, in 1881. The free Staffordshire index names her.

And it names four children, by their mother's maiden name

The Staffordshire birth index records the MOTHER'S MAIDEN NAME beside every child. Four Sneyd births carry BIDDULPH:

And one detail the index states plainly

Elizabeth Ann was born in 1839. The marriage is 1842. The eldest child came three years before the wedding, and the registrar recorded her under her father's surname with her mother's maiden name beside it, which is exactly how the index is built to work.

Searched 15 September 2026 at staffordshirebmd.org.uk — 391 Sneyd births and 322 Sneyd marriages, free, and never used by this archive before.

Thirty-six Sneyd wills, and a labourer at Keele

The Diocese of Lichfield and Coventry wills index, 1550–1810, is free and this archive had never opened it. It returns thirty-six Sneyds. Not one of them is of MADELEY. documented

Staffordshire Name Indexes, staffsnameindexes.org.uk, searched 14 September 2026. The site indexes twenty-six collections but NOT parish registers or bishop's transcripts, so it cannot answer the Madeley burials directly.

What it does to the Keele graft

This archive has an open question it calls the Keele graft: whether its own Sneyds were attached to the Sneyds of Keele Hall by someone who wanted a better ancestor. The labourer cuts the question loose from the answer. Being a Sneyd of Keele does not make a man gentry, because in 1772 a Sneyd of Keele was a labourer. A humble Sneyd in that parish needs no descent from the squires to explain him. it weakens the graft without disproving it

And nothing at Madeley

Sneyd of Madeley returns nothing in an index of thirty-six Sneyd wills spanning two hundred and sixty years. The control is the same search without a place, which returns all thirty-six, so the engine and the surname both work. a controlled null

The rest cluster where this archive already knew to look: yeomen at Woodhead in Burslem in 1707 and 1717, a gentleman at The Birches, Burslem in 1708, a spinster at Woodhead in 1722, a wheelwright at Newcastle under Lyme in 1676. The Potteries, two generations before the potteries.

Catherine, who lived four years

She was born at Hanley in 1845 — Staffordshire BMD reference HAN/007/057, mother's maiden name Biddulph — and this archive found her there yesterday, new to it, as the fourth child of James and Ann. She is in neither of the two households the family occupied on census night in March 1851, and now there is a reason: she had been dead for sixteen months.

Elizabeth Margaret Oliver gets a father with a trade, a street, a grave and three children

This archive has had her baptism — Oswestry St Oswald's, 19 May 1782, father David Oliver, mother Mary — from a paid index, and nothing else. The Shropshire Parish Register Society's volumes are printed, free and out of copyright, and they were never opened here. They give the family whole.

And a candidate for her mother, called a candidate

The baptisms give the mother only as «Mary». The printed Llanyblodwel register has «1772, June 12. David Oliver of Oswestry p: bac: & MARY OWENS sp: … lic: mar». He is of the right parish; the forename pair matches; 1772 sits properly before 1777, 1782 and 1789; and a man buried in 1808 aged 59 was about twenty-three in 1772. Against it: nothing links the entry to the baptisms except those fits, and David and Mary are two of the commonest names on this border — the same volumes hold David Olivers at Blodwell, Trefyrclawdd, Pentreshanel, Sweeney and Willow Street across a century. The control is that the shortlist is one long: all eight volumes hold exactly one David Oliver marriage between 1765 and 1782, and the only other in the series is to an Anne Morris in 1799.

And Madeley, where the Sneyds come from, turns out to be two places

The Staffordshire Parish Register Society printed Madeley. The volume is on the Internet Archive and is lending-restricted — its text returns HTTP 401 and a borrow needs an account this archive will not make. Its public snippets still show «Margaret d. of William Sneyd, Weaver» and «Thomas s. of William Sneyd of Gt. Madeley», and this archive holds Samuel Sneyd baptised at Madeley All Saints in 1781 with his father given as William Sneyd, weaver. The snippets carry no years, so nothing is attached: those are children of a weaver of that name in that parish and no more. What it settles for nothing is that the register distinguishes Great Madeley from Little Madeley — and this archive has written «Madeley All Saints» from the beginning without ever asking which half.

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