Comments:
      Not much is known about the first Thomas Longshaw or his son Charles. The following was written by the daughter of the second Thomas Longshaw born 1776: "My father was a chance child, his father was a clerk or something in the office of the Duke of Bridgewater. I remember this distinctly. I think his mother must have married after his birth."
    His granddaughter wrote: "He worked for my other Great-grandmother, whose name I believe to have been Boardman and who lived at Pendlebury. I imagine she had a little farm and a few hand looms. Her daughter, Nancy, had married very unhappily a man called Morton, she had three children and her husband died before the fourth was born. My grandfather had felt deeply grieved for her life and when her husband died, married her." It seems that Nancy was the one who founded the weaving businesss and expanded it "loom to loom, and mill to mill" while her husband tended to the farm and raised the children.
      An excellent history documenting the Chantler, Longshaw and Rothwell families was researched and written by Margaret Killick Ramsay and is available to family memebers.