Please note: some names refer to people who appear in sections still under construction.

1.

A map of the area around Derby showing the towns, villages and stately homes featured in this story. The roads shown are 18th century turnpike roads.

From the top:

Chatsworth House, the home of the Cavendish family and the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire. The Cavendishes were the leading Whig family in the county. The family vault is in All Saints, Derby. In Ward's day Lord George Henry Cavendish was one of two MP's for the borough of Derby.
Chatsworth House

Newton, the birthplace of Jedidiah Strutt.

Riddings, the village where the Ellis family came from.

Codnor, where the first Baptist chapel in Derbyshire was built.

Ashbourne, where the Shrovetide Football Match still takes place.

Belper and Milford, where the Strutts built their mills. Belper had a Society for Political Information founded by the Strutts. William Strutts handed out copies of Paine's 'Rights of Man' to his workers.

Brailsford, the village where Thomas Ward of Stretton married in 1720 and 1728.

Kedleston Hall, the home of the Curzon family, the leading Tory family in the county. The stately home on which Government House, Calcutta was based. The Curzon family produced one of the most celebrated Viceroys of India, Lord Curzon.
Kedleston Hall

Little Eaton, the home of Henry Redhead Yorke.

Darley Abbey, the site of a paper mill. The home of William Evans, a dissenter and mill owner who married William Strutt's sister, Elizabeth.

Uttoxeter, where a dissenting chapel was attacked after the Birmingham Riots.

Stretton, the home of Thomas Ward, farmer and William Ward's paternal grandfather.

Findern, the small village which gave birth to a dissenting academy founded by Dr. Ebenezer Latham. The academy later moved to the Friar Gate Chapel, Derby, and Dr. Latham became the second minister there. The village was where Jedidiah Strutt did his apprenticeship; where he discovered the invention that made his fortune; his business partner; and where he met his future wife. Findern was also where Edward Fletcher (William Ward's maternal grandfather) came from.
Findern

Ockbrook, the home of an established Moravian community.

Foremark Hall, the seat of Sir Thomas Burdett, parliamentary reformer and MP who was instrumental in getting the Reform Act through Parliament in the 19th century.

Lichfield, where Erasmus Darwin started practising medicine successfully, and from where he made his first contacts with the men who later became known as the Lunar Society, many (including Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Wright, and Matthew Boulton) were his patients.

 

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