Robbie Williams

	Robbie Williams Farrell Family Tree Robbie's Mother's Family were originally from County Roscommon in Ireland, and came across to England looking for work some time after the end of the Potato famine in the 1860s, so had probably managed to survive the worst of the famine, but could not find adequate paid work in the devastation left in its wake, and it seems likely that Thomas Farrell (Robbie's Great Great Great Grandfather) followed other Farrell relatives over to Staffordshire. These first "pioneers" had left Roscommon about the time of the famine and established a small colony of Roscommon Irishmen working around the potteries, forges, and pits of Tunstall, Wolstanton, and Stoke-on-Trent, sending money back to the families in Ireland, establishing themselves, then bringing other members of the families over when they were old enough to take on the harsh manual labour required of them in the Victorian Industrila revolution. Ironically English capitalism rescued the Irish poor where English central Government and Irish land owners and local government had failed. But life was still hard for a labourer and his family, and Thomas dies aged 63. The son of Thomas Farrell, Michael Farrall (the spelling of the surname varied through the generations as the early Farrells were illiterate, and so the spelling of the name did not become fixed until compulsory education came in from the 1870s onwards) was also born in Roscommon and came over with his parents, he was Robbie's Great Great Grandfather. He had a slightly more skilled job than his father becoming a bricklayer and bricklayer's labourer, building the forges for the Iron and Pottery works, and the houses for the men who worked there. Conditions improved for the family which is reflected in the fact that he lived till 1934, well into his 70s. Robbie's Great Grandfather John Farrell (the name has become fixed in its spelling by the time he is born in 1885, all the children now being able to read and write) moves up a step on the work ladder, working as a Holloware Presser at a Pottery Factory. The family had managed to move away from the hard outdoor labourring and the heat of the debilitating heat of the forge furnaces for healthier employment, allowing John to live till 1976, into his early 90s.

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