No discussion of Manchester’s history can avoid the central importance to the city’s fortunes of the textile trade. What began as a Roman Fort (Mamucium) and became a manorial township in medieval times saw a record-breaking transformation from the early 19th century, taking it to becoming the world’s first industrialised city – nicknamed Cottonopolis.

In the 16th century it had already become a flourishing market town based on the wool trade. Fustian (a coarse cloth originally made of cotton and flax) was woven here from the 1620s, and the weaving community was swelled by Flemish immigrants. Their Protestantism may also have influenced the city in becoming a significant centre of Puritanism in the 17th century, which saw the city side with Cromwell against Charles I. A Manchester linen weaver, Richard Percival, is often said to have been the first casualty in the English Civil War.

A damp climate and a multitude of fresh water sources from the Pennines aided the growth of water-powered cotton mills from the late 18th century – one of them, Quarry Bank Mill, is among the best preserved and can be visited today as a museum of the cotton industry. The cotton itself was imported via Liverpool, thanks to a navigable link between the cities (which have long been rivals, not just on football fields) since the 1720s.

Manchester now developed as the natural distribution centre for raw cotton and spun yarn, and a marketplace and distribution centre for the products of this growing textile industry. Richard Arkwright is credited as the first to erect a cotton mill in the city. To cotton mills must be added bleach works, textile print works, and engineering workshops and foundries, all serving the cotton industry.

The growth of the city was matched by expansion of its transport links. The growth of steam power meant that demand for coal rocketed. To meet this demand, the first canal of the industrial era, the Duke of Bridgewater’s, was opened in 1761. Soon an extensive network of canals was constructed, linking Manchester to all parts of England. One of the world’s first public omnibus services began here in 1824 and in 1830, Manchester celebrated the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the world’s first steam passenger railway.

Manchester’s population exploded as people moved from the surrounding countryside, and from other parts of the British Isles, into the city seeking new opportunities. The population of the whole city in 1841 was around 255,000, and had rocketed to more than 717,000 by 1911.

Particularly large numbers also came from Ireland, especially after the Potato Famines of the 1840s. This helped to transform the city from its Puritan past to being a significant English centre of Catholicism. It is estimated that about 35% of the population of Manchester and Salford has at least some Irish ancestry. Large numbers of immigrants, mostly Jewish, later came to Manchester from central and eastern Europe, giving the city the largest Jewish community in England outside London.

Data provided exclusively to this magazine by www.thegenealogist.co.uk, extracted from the site’s census collections, shows a further transformation in the city’s employment between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.

In 1841, almost all of the top 20 occupations revolved around the textile industry. These included weavers of both cotton and silk, plus piecers, spinners, winders and dyers. Something as specific as ‘fustian cutter’ even makes the top 20, with more than 1000 people listed with that precise trade. (You can look up old trade names in a useful glossary online here .)

Compare this with 1911, however: here TheGenealogist’s census data reveals a very different picture. Now the dominant jobs are carter, clerk, salesman, warehouseman and machinist – showing both the rise of clerical professions as the city’s fortunes prospered, but also the transformation from manual labour to factories.

Surname data also extracted by the site shows that in 1841, half of the top 20 surnames in Manchester were also to be found in the top 20 of the country as a whole – but 70 years later this had risen to 15. This perhaps reflects how industry had brought people from all over the country to the city, and therefore it was becoming a microcosm of the nation. In 1841, top 20 surnames that distinguish the area were Jackson, Ogden, Booth, Whitehead, Barlow, Butterworth, Hilton, Turner, Harrison and Lee. Interestingly, seven of those 10 have all been used for characters in the British TV soap opera Coronation Street, filmed at Manchester’s Granada Studios and set in a fictional suburb of Salford. In 1911, the five top surnames not in the national top 20 were Jackson, Harrison, Thompson, Shaw and Booth.

TheGenealogist also has Manchester-specific records such as various trade directories, various Constables’ Accounts from the early 17th and late 18th centuries, parish records from Manchester itself and surrounding parts of what is now Greater Manchester and of course many general records from Lancashire and Cheshire which will cover the city.

There are many museums in the area to visit which reflect its industrial history (see here). See here for details of Manchester’s archives.