John Adams

1. The oldest traced Abba is Thomas Abba, born in Kendal, Westmorland, in 1810. He married Hannah Harrison in the early 1830’s and was a Bobbin Turner (used a lathe to make the wooden bobbins used in textile mills). He enjoyed wrestling (as did his oldest sons) and has an entry in the 1840 Westmorland Gazette.

2. Thomas and Hannah’s children were: Harrison b. 1834, Thomas b. 1838, Agness b.1840, Mary b. 1844, Sarah b. 1849 and Robert b. 1853. All three sons were Bobbin Turners. Harrison was sentenced to 3 months hard labour after an assault. Robert married Elizabeth Thistlewaite in 1874 and had one son, William, who eventually moved to Carlisle where that branch of the Abba family are going today! I don’t know what happened to Elizabeth, but Robert remarried in 1885 to Harriet Frances Knight. Their eldest child was James Knight Abba and his youngest child was James Knight Abba. Their youngest grand daughter was Marjorie Knight Hutchinson, Jenny’s Mum. William Abba’s youngest son was also James Knight Abba, so he must have thought well of his Step-Mother!

3. When Joan Hutchinson was born in 1920, she was raised by her Grandparents, Robert and Harriet Abba in Cumberland. Joan was granted a prize of 100 pounds by the Gilbert Murray Trust Fund for studies of ancient Greece in 1957 (see above under Hutchison).

4. The youngest child of Robert and Harriet Abba was Maggie Abba (b. 1894), an Apprentice Dressmaker in the 1911 Census. She married John Henry Cecil Hutchinson in December 1918.