Wandering Woolfolks: Miracle in Ullock

Thursday we drove to Keswick, a popular tourist town in the Lake District. After some shopping and lunch began the most remarkable series of coincidences. Aiden had planned to drive us back through the mountains and lakes in the Lake District when he noticed me looking up something in the road atlas. I told him I was looking for Ullock, ancestral home of my Pearson ancestors. Nothing else was said and we started back to Carlisle. After stopping at the slate mine Aiden told me we were going to Ullock. I told him I didn’t expect to find anything there and didn’t want to waste our time but he insisted that it wasn’t that far out of the way. While trying to find Ullock on the map again I saw the nearby town of Pardshaw and said that I remembered seeing that name in my genealogy research so we headed there first. We drove through Pardshaw but didn’t see anything interesting so we turned around and drove back through to see if we could find a cemetery. There just happened to be a man getting out of his car so we asked him if any Pearson’s lived in the area and he said yes, a Dr Pearson lived just down the road but he was originally from Scotland. Then he mentioned that the village was the home of the Quakers so I told him that my ancestors were Quakers. He said the Quaker Meeting house was just up the road from where we had turned around so we headed in that direction. Just as we arrived at the Meeting House another man arrived who happened to be the caretaker. When we told him why we were there he gave us a short tour and a history of the place. Then when walked up the hill to Pardshaw Crag where one of the earliest Quaker sermons was given. Next we drove to Ullock and while walking around the village saw a lady in her yard and asked her where a bridge was. When I mentioned that I had some Pearson ancestors from there she looked surprised and told us she had some Pearson markers she would show us. Not sure what she meant we followed her to her back yard. She had researched some history of the town and knew quite a bit about the Pearson’s. When we reached the back yard she pointed to a stone tablet built into the wall of her house that said “Christopher Peareson (sic) 1660”.

Christopher Pearson was the name of my ancestor from Ullock who lived there at that time! Also she had another stone inscribed, “John Pearson 1747” in her garden. She said the found the stones on their property, the site of an old blacksmith shop.