Settlement Act and Removal Order, what do you think was going on here?

[wanderingtopographer]

My ancestor, Alexander, was born in 1792 and baptised in the parish of Ingleton, Yorkshire. He married a local woman named Mary and had three sons, all of them baptised in the parish church, where Mary was buried on her death in the spring of 1823. Later that year Alexander married a woman named Agnes in Middleton, Westmorland, but he soon returned to Ingleton with his family and another son was baptised there in 1824. So far it looks to me like he was an Ingleton native who may have lived in Westmorland for a few months?

In 1827 the family are mentioned in the Quarter Sessions at Skipton. The churchwardens and overseers of the parish of Kirkby in Kendal were appealing a removal order that had been approved by the Justices of the Peace at Ingleton, who were trying to send the family there. I can see no link to Kirkby in Kendal (and either way, I don’t think it was successful, as later census and burial records show Alexander and Agnes living in Ingleton until their deaths in the 1870s) and do not believe from looking at the jurisdictions maps that it was part of the parish of Middleton, which is about 13 miles away. Agnes herself was baptised in Preston Patrick, about 7 miles south of Kendal.

Could anyone theorise on what was going on here, and why Alexander, who in all other respects was an Ingleton native, had his settlement rights questioned? The only reason I can think of is that Alexander worked in Kendal some time between 1825 and 1827 for long enough to gain settlement there.

It is driving me a bit bonkers!

(as an aside, if someone can recommend a good book or article that covers how the 1662 Settlement Act worked in practice that would be very much appreciated - I'm struggling to find anything that explains how many of the eligibility criteria they had to meet, and how the "40 day rule" impacted this)

If he'd been hired there for a year, that would gain him a settlement. He had to have been hired for the full year, not just worked there for a year but on a week to week or day to day basis.

Do any settlement examinations survive in the records of either parish?

I know that my great great grandfather was removed from Parish as late as 1900. He was a habitual drunk suffering with cirrosis who was travelling around Yorkshire for work. Just before he died he was removed from Leeds.

Very few settlement examinations (the ones that do are named individually in the catalogue and don't relate to this family), and no overseers books after 1825 which is a little infuriating - although I'm planning a trip up to the archives in the hope that it was mentioned in the churchwarden's accounts, which do survive. Can't find any similar surviving records via the Cumbria archives catalogue.

It's possible he was working there for over a year - there's a 2 year window between the baptism of his son, which gives his place of abode in Ingleton, and him popping up in the Quarter Session records. Looking at the records in more detail it does look like the order was successful and the family were removed (only to return permanently at a later date). In 1841 his wife's Westmorland-born mother is living with them (listed as a pauper in fact) which supports the idea that there was some back and forth.

That's interesting Shmoigel as one of the children mentioned in the removal order (my x3 great grandfather) made his way to Leeds as an adult, where several branches of us remain to this day ;-)

Is there anything about the family in the newspapers? You might get a clue from that.