CHAPTEE II 



THE WEDGWOOD FAMILY 



So numerous are the Wedgwoods in Staffordshire, that 

 they might almost be described as a clan. They 

 resided principally in Burslem and the neighbour- 

 hood; but they spread from thence into Yorkshire, 

 Cheshire, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and other 

 counties, where many of them continued to work at the 

 pottery trade. 



The surname of Wedgwood half fills the parish 

 registers of Burslem in the seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries. It is said that one-third of the inhabitants of 

 the parish then bore the name. According to old 

 deeds and charters, the first Wedgwood resided at a 

 place called Weggewood, a hamlet in Staffordshire, 

 about four miles west of Newcastle-under-Lyme. As 

 far back as 1370, in the 13th of Edward III., Thomas 

 de Weggewood was frank pledge, or head borough of 

 the hamlet of Weggewood. 



The family accumulated property, not only by their 

 industry, but partly by their marriages to ladies of 



