Hardaker Family History

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Welcome to the Hardaker Family History website.

This site contains two related family history studies. The first is about the ancestry of Brian and Shirley Hardaker who emigrated from England to Australia in 1967 and raised three sons in Armidale New South Wales (Our Family Tree).

The second is a one-name study of the Hardakers in the area of West Yorkshire where many of our Hardaker ancestors lived (Hardaker One-name Study). It grew as a broadening of the above study to try to break down some ‘brick walls’ in tracing our Hardaker ancestors. Click here for more information about this one-name study.

The two family trees have some degree of overlap meaning that certain individuals, mainly Brian's direct Hardaker ancestry, appear in both family trees. This can be important when looking at the result of a name search (the same person can sometimes appear twice).

In the course of researching our ancestry over a period of at least 30 years, and with the assistance of many other enthusiasts, a sizeable collection of historical information related in some way to the Hardakers, mainly from the West Yorkshire area, has been complied and is being added (slowly) to this site. We hope you find the information we publish interesting.

The photo top right is of Thackley Corner in 1947, part of the village of Idle near Bradford in West Yorkshire. Idle was the home place of several of our ancestral families through the 1700s and 1800s, although our Hardakers came from Rawdon, across the valley of the River Aire from Idle. Members of these various families are recorded on this site.

The photo on the left was taken in the area of Thackley Corner in about 1898. It shows four generations of our ancestors. Along the back are three Brown siblings, with Rachel Stansfield Brown who married John Lee Hardaker in the centre. Seated on the left is Mary Brown, mother of the children at the back, with John Bertram Hardaker, son of Rachel and John Lee Hardaker on her knee. Seated on the right is Betty Stansfield, mother of Mary, with Richard Hardaker, John Bertram's elder brother, standing beside her. Sitting in front is Samuel Hardaker, half-brother of John and Richard and son of John Lee Hardaker by his first wife Sarah Jane Hardaker, who died in childbirth.

Family history research beyond living generations can at times be based on minimal evidence, and many of the old records contain errors. Inevitably some guesswork is necessary at times. We will (over time) include explanations of the assumptions made or conclusions reached in developing the family trees on this site. It is almost certain that some errors exist in these trees, and we welcome the opportunity to discuss alternate theories with any other researchers of the families presented here.

We hope any relatives out there will find our effort to be of interest.

Please watch this space.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or comments about the information on this site, please contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.