John Harrison was born at Laxton on the 4th of December 1856 and baptised there the following January, fourth of the ten children of Woodall Harrison and Harriet Wainman. The 1861 census has him a boy of four in the Laxton household; the 1871 has not found him with certainty — a farm servant of the right age at Bowthorpe Hall may be him — and by 1880 he was a labourer of Eastrington.
That April the banns were read at Eastrington church for John and Annie Scott of New Fields, in Howden parish — three Sundays running, with the wedding noted in the margin: the 6th of May 1880. Mum transcribed the register: both of them twenty-two, his father Woodhall, labourer, her father George Scott, labourer; John signed his name, and Annie made her mark. Their first child was born at Howden; by 1883 they had settled at Eastrington as neighbours of his parents — Main Street first, then the house on Station Road that the 1891 census measures at two rooms. Two rooms, and in time ten children: three of them — Robert, Harriet and George — lived up the road with their grandparents. Station Road itself was the railway's street, platelayers to either side of them on the new Hull & Barnsley line.
The 1911 schedule is in John's own hand, a firm signature under "I declare that this Schedule is correctly filled up", and it counts his family plainly: married thirty-one years; ten children born, eight living, two died; three rooms; "General Labourer on Farm". His grandson Bill put the trade into words: "John Harrison spent all his life working on farms, digging dykes and cleaning rivers in the Eastrington area." Bill added, "He died when I was about six" — the record makes Bill eighteen that year; memory keeps its own calendar.
Annie died in the summer of 1916, aged fifty-eight, and was buried at Eastrington. John's last years were spent at Hive, the hamlet by Gilberdyke; he was buried at Eastrington on the 22nd of May 1929, aged seventy-three.
Composed from validated records · 2026-07-04