Eighth Generation - James Horner of Pateley Bridge

  James Horner, the father of Thomas Horner was the only son of Thomas Horner and Anne Lupton of Whitehouses [1] .

       That year must have been a painful one for his parents Thomas and Anne, as it was the year in which their second daughter Mary died [2] . Perhaps having a son James eased some of their sorrow. James joined his three-year-old sister Margaret,and they may have become very close [3] . In 1651 the five year old James and his sisters Margaret, eight, and Jane, two, would have watched as the tiny coffin of their little sister Ann was buried in Saint Cuthberts Church in Pateley Bridge [4] .  By 1651 James and his family had moved to Gouthwaite.

       In 1667 James lost his mother Anne, when he was only twenty-one years old [5] . His sister Margaret may have married by this time, but his younger sister Jane, only eighteen, and his youngest sister Anne may have found this very hard.

       James also had a sister Anne Horner who married a William Burrell in 1678 [6] . James lost his father in 1692 and was his executor. This Thomas Horner was described as of Low Bishopside in 1692 in his will. He was buried at Pateley Bridge and mentions property at Whitehouse. Thomas’s son William and granddaughter Ann Burrell are mentioned in his will [7] .

       James married Margaret `Smith and had four sons, John, Thomas William and John baptised in Pateley Bridge in 1671, 1675, 1679 and 1684 [8] . James appears to have been close to his mother’s family and had land at Whitehouses. In 1689, a James Horner of Whitehouse was the executor of the will of John Lupton of Braisty Wood who owned land in Appletreewick [9] . These lands at Whitehouse appear to have remained in the hands of the Horner family of Bishopside until they were sold in the early nineteenth century by James' grandson William Horner of Ripon.