Heavisides Family Tree

By Research Volunteer, Carole

Here Carole, one of our Reseach Volunteers, shares her story on researching the Heavisides family tree.

I started on a project in March compiling a family tree for the Heavisides family who were local to Darlington and Stockton and ran a printing business on Silver Street in Stockton for many years. This was particularly apt since I was working as a Printers Devil.
There are many Heavisides items in the museum collection, some of which I have documented on the cataloguing system on a previous project.

Two of the booklets I worked on are pictured here.

Michael was known for printing the ‘Heavisides’s Almanack’ but also produced booklets covering subjects of interest such as, ‘Rambles by the River Tees’ and ‘The Invention of the Lucifer Match’.

I had experience of working on family trees from my job in Stockton Central Library though to be fair I had forgotten more than I remembered in the 4 years since I retired.
I was using Ancestry.co.uk for most of the research but have found it frustrating when I was unable to check some minor details in the library, added to which my laptop at home is extremely slow. As with these things it is ongoing as new records are added to the internet all of the time.

One thing I have learned during this research was that Stokesley was also an important place for printing. Who knew that the place we like to go for a coffee on a Friday afternoon was such a hub for publishing?

More recently I have been searching for items in the Museum collections inventory which may be useful for the Council led Townscape Heritage project which is researching businesses in and around Stockton High Street. This is also of interest to me and I have found it surprising how regularly premises change hands over the years and highlights how thriving the town of Stockton once was. I have just got going on this but I am hoping to find some relevant interesting items in the Museum collection.
Being able to take part in these projects has saved me from going completely stir crazy over the last months.

Photograph of Michael Heavisides who was known as one of Stockton’s first social photographers.

There are over 1000 of his glass plate negatives in the museum collection showing people and scenes from around the area.