Who was Edward Jackson?

Summary

EDWARD JACKSON, the younger brother Thomas Jackson

When Edward Jackson was born on June 4, 1810, in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, England, his father, John Jackson Jnr, was 41 and his mother, Ann Haywood, was 34. At the age of 18, he joined his older brother Thomas Jackson (then aged 22) to emigrate to America in order to seek work in the rope making trade after the family had hit financial problems following the imprisonment of his father. (See separate card)

Despite being brought up and learning rope making from his father from the family home in Ilkeston in the county of Derbyshire in England, Edward surprisingly reports that the two of them left from the county of Staffordshire to come to America.

We speculate that that was close to Birmingham where Thomas Jackson already had a relationship with a woman who would later become his wife in America.

We have been left with detailed accounts from both men relating how they settled on the edge of a canal in Reading, PA, and started a small rope manufactury. Edward’s account is provided next in this section while Thomas’s more extensive account is

With hard work and determination, they gradually expanded their business despite repeatedly suffering major floods.

Having arrived in America in 1922 Edward is recorded as marrying an American woman, Rachel Evans Rigg on February 16, 1833. They had two children during their marriage and one of them, Margaret Ann Jackson, born in 1833, is recorded in the Federal census of 1880 as “keeping house” for Edward after the death of her mother.

Edward amicably left the rope-making company to Thomas while he took over a general store (and finally a hotel) strategically located right next to the canal locks that came to bear the family name.

He later sold the store because of his physician’s advice but repurchased it 21 years later.

He and his “wife” of the time (Margaret?) lived in a beautiful log cottage away from the general store, but that did not insulate him from the devastation from the unpredictable floods. In 1869 there was an enormous flood from which his wife had to be rescued from a second floor window before the whole cottage was lifted off its foundations and sent down river to devastation.

By then Thomas Jackson’s rope works had moved to a new location well away from the river after an earlier disastrous flood in 1850 which totally closed the business for months.

Edward died on November 5, 1896, in Reading, Pennsylvania, having lived a long life of 86 years.