A Preston working-class autobiography

A native of Preston, Josiah Rogerson, emigrated to America as a teenager in 1856 and lived there until his death in 1926 at the age of 85. He wrote an autobiography that has been photocopied and deposited at the Brigham Young University in the USA. The first two chapters describe his early life in Preston. It is especially valuable since early working-class autobiographies are so rare.

I am grateful to Patricia Heaton for sending me the link.

Reproduced below are some excerpts from those early chapters.

His mother was Jane Marsden before her marriage:

Her father and mother, and her uncles and aunts were well educated people, wealthy, and at one time the sole owners of Little and Great Marsden, near Burnley. Her father or uncle, left England and came to America about 1750, was at one time a judge in the County or Judicial capacity in Charleston, South Carolina, died there, leaving plantations, slaves, ships with cargos of sugar, rice, etc

The family tried unsuccessfully to claim the estate.

Religion was important in the life of his mother; not so, his father:

My father in his youth leaned to, and is believed joined the Methodists, and continued with them, and a believer of their tenents, to some extent until about his 30th year, from which time he rapidly became alienated from them, and from this time denounced all religious sects, as man-made schemes, for money making and humbugs.

Britain’s first Mormon converts

His mother was a Baptist, but when the Mormon missionaries arrived in Preston in 1837, she was one of the first fourteen baptised in the Ribble in August of that year. Those fourteen were the first British converts to Mormonism.

It would seem to have been the custom to clothe infant boys in dresses, for he writes: ‘I remember some incidents that occurred in my fourth year, as for instance the last dress, and first corduroy pants and waist I wore.’

Josiah was taught to read at the Baptist Chapel in Leeming Street. He would have learned more from his uncle, Robert Robinson, who died when Josiah was nine:

He was a man of considerable education having taught a day and night school, up to the time of his death for thirty-five years. Was known, and celebrated for his attainments in Mathematics, Geology, Mineralogy, and Astronomy, on which latter science he loved to lecture; many of which he delivered at the Swendenborg[ian] Chapel, in [Avenham] Preston, as also on Geology, fossils, etc., a large cabinet of which he collected during his life, from all parts of the earth.

Up until Robert’s death, Josiah would read to him daily from one of the Preston newspapers and from Reynolds Miscellany.

There is also a mention of a Father Bate’s School in London Road, which Josiah attended for a few months, paying for his tuition by ‘sweeping and dusting’.

I will post more from the autobiography shortly, but if any members want to read the complete first two sections now, they can find them here: The autobiography of Josiah Rogerson