Hi Anna
Gay managed to narrow down the possibilities for places and dates of Roylance deaths, and I’ve also developed a theory about what might have happened to William Roylance and Rachel Bordman.
I must stress that there are a lot of deductions and assumptions in the following outcomes so please take them as suggestions to be checked out more thoroughly. It’s an intriguing set of possibilities though.
First, there are no relevant Roylance deaths recorded anywhere apart from Mossley (Hartshead) and Dukinfield. Neither is there any trace of William and Rachel Roylance in the 1851 census, although I now suspect that might simply be due to transcription errors that confound the various search engines.
Second, there are potential death records for John and Tabitha Roylance in Mossley (1855 HAR/16/92 and 1859 HAR/21/42 respectively), but the only option now left is to manually check the records at the Parish Church (St George). This process reputedly costs £22 per hour so, needless to say, I didn’t bother. As Gay said, it’s not a common name so it might be something you want to raid your piggy bank for and follow up yourself. The website is
www.mossleyparishchurch.org.uk, but the GENUKI website is more informative about family history research
www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LAN/Mossley/StGeorge.shtmlThird. In short, I suspect that William and Rachel Roylance went their separate ways at some point between 1845 and 1859. Whereas William shifted to the Luzley area of Mossley, Rachel stayed in Dukinfield and the couple’s children remained with her.
I eventually found Rachel Roylance in the 1861 census, living at Wharf Street, Dukinfield with her now married eldest daughter, Jane, and her youngest daughter, Margaret. Jane is married to Joseph Nield (Mottram-in-Longdendale, St. Michael: Tameside ref CE31/6/164) and they have a child, Henry. The transcribers have mistakenly listed her as ‘Rachel Roylane’ which is why she proved difficult to find.
More interestingly from your perspective, her next door neighbour is Thomas Roylance, a 24-year old tin plate worker who is married to Hannah (Walker). The 1859 marriage took place at Audenshaw, St Stephen Tameside ref: CE7/1/148) and there's no obvious death record for Hannah in the UK.
If your earlier assumption about John Thomas dropping the ‘John’ is correct, this potentially new information might help you explore his later history in Australia. Audenshaw is part of Tameside and it’s right next door to Dukinfield, but an evaluation of the above marriage certificate is the only way of being certain that this is your man.
The 1871 census has Rachel still living at 144 Wharf Street, Dukinfield with her youngest daughter Margaret, and it seems most likely that she died at Dukinfield, 1878 (Tameside ref: DUK/60/52). It also seems that Margaret remained unmarried and there’s a possible death in 1902 (AST/127/93).
One blind alley is that there’s another Margaret Roylance born 1844, Mossley, who’s actually the daughter of William’s younger bother, John Roylance.
On the other side of the coin, by 1861 my theory is that William Roylance has moved 3 miles away from Dukinfield to the Luzley area of Mossley where he was born and others of your ancestry had remained.
The 1861 census has a tin plate worker of that name and the right age living as head of the household next to the Hunters Tavern, Luzley. He is listed as ‘married’ but has an unmarried housekeeper named Esther Rigby’. Esther was born 1822 in Newton, Hyde, which directly adjoins Dukinfield and is now part of Tameside. There are several children in the household bearing the second name ‘Rigby, but none named ‘Roylance’.
William Roylance, head, b 1806 Mossley – tin plate worker
Esther Rigby, b 1822 Newton - housekeeper
John Thomas Rigby, b Stalybridge, 1848 – tin plate worker
Josiah Rigby, b 1855 Stalybridge (DUK/20/27)
Tabitha Rigby, b 1856 Stalybridge (Tabitha Ann DUK/35/59)
William Rigby, b 1859, Stalybridge
Nathanial Rigby, b 1861, Luzley
There are two features about these births that might indicate William’s relationship with Esther Rigby being something other than simply employer and housekeeper.
William Rigby’s (1859) full name when the birth was registered at Dukinfield is Roylance William Rigby (DUK/45/44). Nathaniel Rigby’s birth (1861) was registered at Hartshead, Mossley which would be right for the 1861 census address (HAR/29/26). Luzley is a very small hamlet between Mossley and Ashton under Lyne, now part of Tameside. There are photographs of the area at
www.ashton-under-lyne.com/photos/gallery14.htmMore significantly, by 1871 the Rigby children have all transformed into Roylance, and Esther is now listed as William’s wife. That would be a fairly common occurence where people were filling in census details as co-habitees; similarly, there was often no formal adoption process where the new husband was not the children's birth father.
I can’t find a reference to any marriage at all for Esther Rigby, but if I’m right about the connection to William, marriage to him wouldn’t have been possible until Rachel Roylance had died in 1878. He is still with Esther in 1881 and there’s a death record for William Roylance in 1888 (Hartshead HAR/48/24).
If you want to check for possible burial locations, a good way to do this is by googling ‘Tameside Burials’, entering the site, clicking on the Family History section and following the instructions that will get you into the searchable database. It’s far from complete but you’ll find plenty of your ancestors listed. (Once you’ve found somebody, don’t forget to click on the right-hand column which will give additional information about people who are buried in the same grave/ plot).
You can check or order all the certificates I've listed by visiting
www.cheshirebmd.org.ukI hope this theory helps you to move your search forward a bit.
Woody