Cloth Seal, Clothier's Seal, Halifax, Stansfeld of Bowood, Successor to Sam Hill
Cloth Seal, Clothier's Seal, Stansfeld of Bowood, Successor to Sam Hill, Image & Found by Huite van der Meer.
Found in Friesland, Holland, east of Leeuwarden, 30mm.
A chevron and three fleurs-de-lis, a canton, SAM.HILL.NEAR.HALIFAX around // G. STANSFELD / OF BOWOOD / SOLE SUCCESSOR / IN TRADE / TO SAM HILL
There are a number of clothiers from West Yorkshire with the surname Stansfield. The following were taken from History of the family of Stansfeld in the parish of Halifax and its numerous branches, by John Stansfeld 1885:-
1561 Edward Stansfield of Erringden, 1598 Richard Stansfield of Sowerby, 1601 Henry Stansfield of Heptonstall, 1641 Samuel Stansfield of Halifax (left to his nephew John Stansfield "one pyre of lomes, warping wough, and warping ringe, and all the implempts. to the same."). All the above would appear to be too early to be connected with this seal.
See BSG.CS.00976 for another Stansfeld of Bowood cloth seal with no mention of Samuel Hill.
From Mike Patrick, "George Stansfeld (or Stansfield) Junr. appears as a Trustee in the will of Samuel Hill (probate 1760)":-
"The first two generations of the Stansfeld family were yeomen clothiers. In late seventeenth-century Halifax, Josias, of the township of Sowerby, and his sons James and John were weaving woollen cloth as well as farming, and the combined income was enough to give them a decent social position. James's son George (1685-1745), of Bowood, Sowerby, who came of age at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was a manufacturer. As such, George's production differed from that of his ancestors in terms of the scale and relation to the market. In 1731, he boasted that he intended to make 2,000 pieces of cloth in the coming year. These 2,000 pieces probably represented about twenty times the output of his grandfather Josias. George Stansfeld shipped this large number of cloths to merchants in Holland and London with whom he had an extensive correspondence.
In the fourth generation, several members of the Stansfeld family became involved in the expanding scale of woollen production in Halifax. George's son, another George (1725-1800), inherited his father's business in 1745 and continued to trade as a manufacturer. George junior was also involved in the export trade and, while keeping up his father's connections with merchants in Holland, became active in seeking out new markets for his cloth."
The Stansfields of Halifax: 'A Case Study of the Making of the Middle Class', by John Smail, in "Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies", Vol. 24, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 27-47
Richard Hill, [d.1780] of Kebroyd, son of Samuel Hill, in 1746, went into partnership with his father at Kebroyd Mills but after a disagreement left to set up in business on his own. Sam Hill's business was not carried on after his death in 1760. His estate was wound up by his trustees, John Nuttall, Robert Nuttall, both of Bury, George Stansfield of Sowerby, Merchant, John Whitacre of York, Merchant and George Ramsden of Clifton, Gentleman.
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