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Frances Staines born beside the Grand Union Canal

The picturesque rural landscape of the English Midlands is enhanced by the Grand Union Canal as it wends its way from the Thames north to the Soar and Trent Rivers. Sometimes cutting through the ridges, sometimes led by tunnel through waterdivides, the Grand Union Canal brought new possibilities to the cities it linked and to the villages that happened to be beside it. Serene today, it was once a lifeblood artery of the industrial revolution. Villages that sat beside it provided services for both the canalmen and those who brought cargo to the canalboats. Those minutae villages of the rural Midlands that happened to be beside the canal became busy communities with pubs and blacksmiths servicing the needs of the boatmen and of the farmers whose commodities could be sent to Leicester, Northampton, Birmingham and London. This photo was taken between two of them: Crick and North Kilworth. Construction began in the 1790s and by 1810 the Canal was handling 350 000 tons of cargo in London. Into this story, enter Thomas Staines. Thomas was a blacksmith who settled at North Kilworth to operate as a blacksmith. He married Sarah Davis and they had 9 children, raising 8 of them: Thomas 1811, William 1813, Elizabeth 1815, John 1816, Anne 1818, Samuel 1819, Frances 1821, Catherine 1823, John 1827. At least 2 of their children, Frances and Samuel Staines both migrated to New South Wales as young adults, Frances as a lady's maid to Mrs Dobson wife of a Royal Naval captain. Frances married William John Noblett in Sydney. Their daughter, Frances Susan Marion Noblett married James Murray and from them one of the Queensland clans of Warrawang Murrays descend. [PHOTO: Ian Sehbens]

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