John Berry was the second child, and only son of James and Ann Berry of Esholt, near Idle. A pleasant walk along the Leeds and Liverpool Canal then, as now, would take you to Calverley Carr; the home of Bethiah Robinson whom he married in 1806. He was a clothier, which could mean he was a handloom weaver or engaged in other processes of preparing cloth.
In the nearby city of Bradford the woollen industry was making fortunes for some and misery for others. The family moved there after maybe twenty years of the rural life and John took work in one of the mills.
Perhaps the transition unsettled John or introduced him to “bad company”: he was a woolcomber by day and a poacher by night. He was arrested at least twice and spent Christmas 1842 doing hard labour at the Wakefield House of Correction.
He and Bethiah had eleven children, one of whom followed his father into a life of crime and ended up being transported to Australia for highway robbery.
John Berry died in 1847 at the age of 61.
Father of Hannah , son of James and Ann Berry
Born in Esholt on 17th July 1786 and baptised on 30th July at Guiseley, Yorkshire
Married Bethiah Robinson on 22 September 1806
Buried at Bradford Parish Church (now Cathedral) on 28 October, 1847