The Swendells are from my mum’s side of the family. Before I started researching my family history we’d always believed that they’d originated from Canterbury. It transpires that they only spent a short amount of time there towards the end of my great great grandad Henry Swendell’s time as a soldier. Henry along with previous generations of Swendells had been born and raised in London.
Because of my great, great, great grandad writing letters to the King, three of his sons being sentenced to be sent to Australia as convicts and another of his two sons joining the army there are lots of documents available which allows a reasonable picture to be painted of what the Swendell’s life was like in the 19th century.
The Swendells moved to Bradford en masse in the late 19th century, presumably on the prospect of working in the booming cotton mills. My grandma, Catherine Swendell, was born in Bradford in 1917.