ELIZABETH HEBDEN was born in 1757.
There have been some questions around Elizabeth herself. Was she a single mother of four ? Had she simply married a relation called Hebden ? Or was she a young girl called Elizabeth who had married a Hebden but in future years her reputation was to be impugned. Personally, I have no idea and I bow to the superior knowledge of family genealogists who have looked into the matter. It appears that Elizabeth never married , produced five living children and the name of her “partner” or why she never married is unknown.

Elizabeth died in Stalling Busk at the age of 79 (1836) still unwed. Her children, assuming they all had the same father, may have been the product of someone named Hodgson because of the surname of the youngest, Edward Hodgson Hebden.

The only daughter was MARY who was born in 1792 and nothing further is known. JOHN was the eldest boy, born in 1777, and appears to have died unmarried and childless in 1839.
FRANCIS was born in Stalling Busk, married a girl called Mary and died in 1865, having had three daughters and a son. Little is known of them except their dates of birth and death. Nancy died aged 34 and Mary was 60, both apparently unmarried. George was 80 when he died and would seem to be another single, childless man. In 1881 he was living in Bainbridge, a farmer of 90 acres, with his sister unmarried Mary living with him. The census has him down as George senior as in the same district there was another George Hebden (noted on the census as George jnr.), six years younger, also single and childless, living with a sister Elizabeth and nephew, Edward George Metcalfe. Despite the closeness in ages they were infact uncle and nephew.

Of the remainder of Francis’s children, Elizabeth married a William Law and produced three little Laws. There was also a WILLIAM b 1794 but nothing certain is known of him jsut yet. There is a possiblity that he went off on his travels and ended up in Brighton, raising children who in turn, for some reason, came to Burnley in the 1880s. Hopefully this will be clarified in the not too distant future.

It is the Elizabeth Hebden’s youngest child, EDWARD HODGSON HEBDEN of whom most information is known. He was born in Stalling Busk in 1800. He married a MARGARET METCALFE when he was about 23 and farmed in the Stalling Busk for at least the next 25 years as the census for 1851 shows him there with his family.
He and Margaret had six children, many of whom were outlived by their father. The eldest child WILLIAM died when he was about 22, GEORGE HODGSON HEBDEN (the George jnr above) died in 1907 and his sister ELIZABETH (also mentioned above), outlived him by a good few years, living until 1921. There were also three other daughters MARY, SARAH & ANN all of whom married.

Mary had married a Richard Metcalfe and they had two children. By 1881 Margaret cannot be traced and her mother Mary had died and Edward George Metcalfe ( who had been born in Bingley in 1866 ) was now living in Stalling Busk with his uncle George and aunt Elizabeth.

The 1881 census, drawn up two years before EDWARD HODGSON HEBDEN died shows he had moved to a farm called Raven Royd in Bingley.
Edward was 80 by now and farming 100 Acres. His youngest daughter ANN was unmarried and housekeeping for her widowed father. With them, working on the farm was his grandson Edward Birtle.

Edwards mother was Sarah. The full name of her husband is unknown as by 1881 she was a widow living in High Houses, Hawes, with five of her seven children. Sarah eventually died in 1903.

Why he moved to a farm in Bingley is uncertain. He had, whilst he was living in Stalling Busk, been the owner of the land that he had farmed and it had been a much larger enterprise of about 300 acres. For some unknown reason he left the area and took up farming in Bingley but it is not known whether he sold his Stalling Busk holdings or retained them and simply rented them out. Nor is it known whether he owned the land in Bingley or rented that. He would have been about 60 when he upped sticks to Raven Royd, which is quite an age for such a change even if he did have one of his grandsons and a daughter with him to ease the move. One can only imagine that it would have to have been very much in his interests to do so.

Edward died at Raven Royd, Bingley in 1883 and it is not known what happened to his family who were with him. They may have remained in the area or moved back to the Stalling Busk area where their family were still.