Alan and Chris Piper of Matlock offer this fascinating ‘Who do you think you are’ tale of the life of Chris’ great-great-great-great grandfather, Isaac Farnsworth.
OUR ISAAC was a framework knitter. He was baptised in Ripley in May 1782 and married Anne Buckley, from Ible, near Bonsall, in Derby in August 1795. A year later their first daughter, Ann, was baptised in Wirksworth.
They appear to have had other daughters, Hannah in 1798 and Sarah in 1800. There were, of course, other Isaac Farnsworths around in 1800 – one worked on Derby porcelain, while another was a chiropodist and “corn-cutter to the nobility”. But the life story of this Isaac Farnsworth – if he is indeed one and the same person as ‘our Isaac’ – would make a costume drama to rival ‘Poldark’, with more than a touch of ‘Who do you think you are?’ thrown in!…